Despite the global pandemic, 2020 is an extremely important year for the global climate agenda. Under the Paris Agreement, 2020 is the year for signatory countries to submit their new or updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) by 2030, which consider higher levels of ambition.
It is also the year in which the formal implementation of the Paris Agreement begins and in which countries are invited to present their Long-Term Strategies for Decarbonization (LTS).
LTSs are instruments that allow countries to define the technological pathways to decarbonize their economies and the institutional and public policy arrangements to implement them. Likewise, it allows anticipating the challenges of decarbonization and designing strategies in early stages to ensure a just transition to those who could be affected by the transformation.
Developing an LTS is urgent. The science is clear about the need to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 to avoid global heating above 1.5 degrees Celsius and the point of no return this milestone represents. While LTS were initially devised as decarbonization strategies to reduce emissions, many countries are including long-term adaptation strategies in them as well.
Decarbonizing comes with many benefits
A new IDB-ILO report shows that decarbonization in Latin America and the Caribbean can create 15 million net jobs by 2030 in sectors such as sustainable agriculture, construction and renewable energy. Decarbonization can also bring new investments, decongest traffic in cities, promote electric mobility, increase competitiveness, air quality and the quality of life of people. This is even more relevant as countries confront the pandemic and look for options to recover.
Some Latin American countries are at the forefront of the climate agenda. For example, Costa Rica has already published its LTS, and countries like Colombia, Chile and Peru are actively working to develop their strategies. The IDB, through NDC INVEST and the Deep Decarbonization Pathways for Latin America and the Caribbean (DDPLAC) project, is supporting these four leading countries in the design of their own LTSs.
Peru moves towards carbon-neutrality
Peru is one of the most impacted countries in Latin Americaby COVID-19 and a recovery process of considerable proportions is expected, which it calls “climate-smart economic revival”.
The country sees the climate agenda as an opportunity to promote a sustainable and inclusive economic revival and improve the quality of life for Peruvians, and it is making important advances with the implementation of the Paris Agreement.
Peru is updating its NDC, finalizing a National Adaptation Plan, and it is also updating the National Strategy on Climate Change by 2050 (the Strategy), which incorporates a vision of carbon neutrality and long-term adaptation. This will be presented as it’s LTS at COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021.
To continue this progress, NDC INVEST, with support of the IDB’s French Climate Fund, and the 2050 Pathways Platform, are supporting the Government of Peru to report the update of the Strategy through an innovative Robust Decision Making (RDM) technique, which models technological routes to decarbonization under the following principles:
- Co-construction and alignment with multiple development objectives: decarbonization options are discussed with relevant actors in Peruvian society, not only in terms of their potential to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, but also in terms of their potential benefits and alignment with other development objectives, costs, and uncertainties to consider. In this way, the modeling incorporates decarbonization options that maximize the quality of life for Peruvians and lead to manageable costs for citizens, the private sector and the government. In April this year, the first workshops were held with actors from the most important sectors in terms of greenhouse gas emissions such as energy, transport, forests, agriculture, industries and waste.
- Ambition and local context: the process of co-construction with the actors who best know the functioning of the Peruvian economy and society allows working on the design of an LTS that will be in accordance with the reality on the ground and that will build on existing processes on the climate and development agenda.
- Robustness: RDM incorporates uncertainty variables by simulating hundreds of scenarios, making them robust in the face of uncertainty. Also, it allows identifying the most important vulnerabilities and possible action measures to counter them.
- Generation of local capacities: The project seeks to install analytical capacity in Peru and institutionalize the science-decision-making relationship. In the country, a team of researchers from the Universidad del Pacífico, who are leading the process, is being trained by the University of Costa Rica to combine their existing analytical capabilities with the use of the RDM method. UCR professionals successfully used this tool to estimate the costs and benefits of the Costa Rican Decarbonization Plan.
A second round of workshops organized by the Ministry of the Environment will be held in August to share the preliminary results of the project with sectors and refine them based on their feedback. In this way, Peru is advancing towards the definition of a robust LTS and confirms its commitment to climate ambition and support for a sustainable and inclusive economic recovery.
Further reading:
Jobs in a Net-Zero Emissions Future in Latin America and the Caribbean
Getting to Net-Zero Emissions: Lessons from Latin America and the Caribbean
NDC INVEST Bulletin: ACL in Numbers: Vol. 2, July 2020
Electric buses offer Latin American and Caribbean transport a green and profitable future
Photo: Flickr – vcheregati
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Hi! I’ve been working on conservation agriculture as an alternative to the traditional burning agriculture in Junin area. I can share the information and results form our CCAC funded project.