When the Paris Agreement was adopted at the world climate conference in the French capital on December 12, 2015, the 195 participating contracting parties agreed in Article 4, Paragraph 2, to submit “Nationally Determined Contributions” (NDCs) to the Secretariat of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) every five years. They are meant to outline how each respective country plans to reduce emissions, thereby contributing to achieving the agreed-upon climate target – namely, limiting global warming to below 2°C and ideally to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. The contribution objectives are to be regularly updated with a view to making them more stringent: Ambitions should steadily increase to promptly reach a global peak in emissions, leading to a rapid decline toward net-zero emissions. If NDCs prove insufficient for achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement (as has been the case so far), national contributions should be revised. The contracting parties agreed that the “Global Stocktake” process of the UNFCCC Secretariat would monitor progress.
The European Union submits a joint NDC on behalf of the EU and its member states. The last such submission was made to the UNFCCC Secretariat on December 18, 2020, and includes, among other things, the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. This goal is to be achieved in the EU through the Fit For 55 package.
Time and again, submitted NDCs face criticism for their lack of ambition. Implementing the existing NDCs in full would lead to an increase in global average temperatures of 2.4 to 2.6°C, falling short of the goals of the Paris Agreement. This is referred to as the “target gap.” In addition, the NDCs would have to be adhered to and corresponding measures to achieve the goals would have to be implemented. So far, this has not often been done or has been done inadequately, leading to “implementation gaps.”