Effective South- South Cooperation under FIPIC

In 2015, international community agreed to a new global framework to combat the challenges posed by climate change in the form of the Paris Agreement (PA). The agreement aims to limit the global temperature rise to well below 2°C¹ , adapt to adverse impacts of climate change, and make financial flows consistent with low carbon climate resilient development pathways. This framework puts in place a process, for achieving these goals, wherein countries are required to submit new and increasingly ambitious climate plans or Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) by 2020 and every five years after 2030 describing actions they intend to undertake to achieve these goals. Such plans should facilitate clarity and transparency amongst all Parties² . Most of the countries had submitted their INDCs and a further ratification document along with its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). On 5 October 2016, the threshold for entry into force of the PA was achieved and it entered into force on 4 November 2016. At the moment, 171 Parties of 197 Parties to the Convention have already ratified the Agreement.

However the challenge now is to effectively implement these NDCs and enhance the ambition levels when updated plans are submitted every five years. It was the first time that countries especially developing countries, were asked to develop national plans that decouple economic growth from carbon emissions and increase growth as well as decrease emissions. Therefore, knowledge about how to lower the costs and increase the economic benefits of low-carbon growth is relatively new and unevenly shared across the world. Further, the fundamental challenge that still remains is that many developing countries lack the appropriate institutional frameworks to support implementation along with the lack of technical knowhow and access to finance i.e local capacities. The need of the hour is to support such developing countries to find practical solutions to their NDC implementation challenges which will require technical expertise, practical application, understanding of the wider development challenges and donors and understanding of business, investors, marketing and finance.

At the recently ended COP 23 in Bonn that was presided over by Fiji, one of the key decisions was on operationalizing the ratchet-up of ambition through the Talanoa dialogue. This is essential to establish a backbone of strong facilitative dialogue process and essential in ratcheting up ambition. The current political context, however, is complicated and parties need strong support on capacity and analytical tools.

However, challenges and opportunities facing developing countries are different in many ways from developed countries.  We believe that solutions have to be properly rooted in each country/state’s context.  North-south links remain important but there is great value in a south-south focus on sharing learning and experience on transforming approaches between developing countries.

A plenary is being organised in this regard to dwell upon:

• How to develop a consensus on practical priorities for addressing knowledge and capacity gaps hindering NDC implementation and enhancement in developing countries;
• Exploring ways in which Southern think-tanks can work together to address these gaps, and
• Identifying opportunities for collaborative R&D on issues like enhanced deployment of RE among developing countries
• Identifying options to address the looming needs that these countries face to adapt to the changing climate
• How developing countries through a common voice can collectively pursue other countries to raise their ambition level.