Nationally determined contribution

The nationally determined contributions (NDCs) are commitments that countries make to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions as part of climate change mitigation.

[3] NDCs embody efforts by each country to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

[4] The Paris Agreement requires each of the 195 Parties to prepare, communicate and maintain NDCs outlining what they intend to achieve.

[4] The NDCs due before the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference are called NDC 3.0, and some countries have published them.

[6] Prior to the Paris Agreement in 2015, the NDCs were referred to as intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) and were non-binding.

The rates of emissions reductions need to increase by 80% beyond NDCs to likely meet the 2 °C upper target range of the Paris Agreement (data as of 2021).

The Intended Nationally Determined Contributions pledged during the 2015 Climate Change Conference are converted to NDCs when a country ratifies the Paris Agreement, unless they submit an update.

[14] Some of the pledges in the NDCs are unconditional, but others are conditional on outside factors such as getting finance and technical support, the ambition from other parties or the details of rules of the Paris Agreement that are yet to be set.

[15] The establishment of NDCs combine the top-down system of a traditional international agreement with bottom-up system-in elements through which countries put forward their own goals and policies in the context of their own national circumstances, capabilities, and priorities.

[23] The information gathered from parties' individual reports and reviews, along with the more comprehensive picture attained through the "global stocktake" will, in turn, feed back into and shape the formulation of states' subsequent pledges.

As of 31 March 2020, 186 parties (185 countries plus the European Union) had communicated their first NDCs to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat.

A report by the UN stated in 2020 that: "the world is way off track in meeting this target at the current level of nationally determined contributions.

[30] The rates of emissions reductions need to increase by 80% beyond NDCs to likely meet the 2 °C upper target range of the Paris Agreement (data as of 2021).

[31] According to the 2020 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), with the current climate commitments of the Paris Agreement, global mean temperatures will likely rise by more than 3 °C by the end of the 21st century.

[31] According to the stocktake report, the agreement has a significant effect: while in 2010 the expected temperature rise by 2100 was 3.7–4.8 °C, at COP 27 it was 2.4–2.6 °C and if all countries will fulfill their long-term pledges even 1.7–2.1 °C.

[42] NDCs have an antecedent in the pledge and review system that had been considered by international climate change negotiators back in the early 1990s.

Probability that countries achieve their Paris Agreement Goals according to their nationally determined contributions (left: entire world; right: Europe only) [ 1 ]
Number of countries that have submitted first and second versions of NDCs by 2023 [ 4 ]
Number of parties in multilateral environmental agreements, such as the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change [ 22 ]
Paris climate accord emission reduction targets and real-life reductions offered
Updated probabilistic forecast of CO 2 emissions, based on data to 2015 [ 1 ]
Scenarios of global greenhouse gas emissions. If all countries achieve their current Paris Agreement pledges, average warming by 2100 would still exceed the maximum 2°C target set by the agreement.