LDCs and the Paris Agreement: moving from international commitments to national implementation

A series of webinars will bring together participants from least developed countries to discuss their strategies to implement the Paris Agreement and share their diverse experiences and lessons learned.

News, 20 July 2020
A solar-powered building alongside wetland

A solar-powered drying platform for fresh fish in Sudan as part of a programme to increase resilience and sustainability of local livelihoods (Photo: Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0))

The Paris Agreement offers a global framework to work together to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Paris Agreement implementation officially kicks off this year and to achieve its goals, it’s critical that we increase ambition, achieve net-zero emissions and improve climate resilience. 

A new IIED webinar series, launching at the start of August, will bring together practitioners from least developed countries (LDCs) with global practitioners, technical experts and other stakeholders to share their experiences in implementing the Paris Agreement in their national frameworks and policies. Participants will also explore the opportunities and challenges in bringing the agreement to life. 

The LDCs are both the most affected by climate change and the smallest contributors to it, yet they are still proactively working at national level to put the goals of the Paris Agreement into practice. LDCs are leading global ambition on climate action: designing long-term, low-carbon development strategies, reporting on progress towards their mitigation and adaptation actions, and finding new solutions to the consequences of climate change.

Speakers in the webinar series will share experiences and updates from their own countries, reporting on progress since the agreement’s ratification in 2016, and consider how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected work on their implementation activities.  

The first webinar will take place on Tuesday, 4 August (11am-12pm GMT+1) and will discuss 'What does the Paris Agreement’s transparency framework mean for the least developed countries?

Based on the experience of current transparency arrangements, which is how countries monitor, review and verify their climate actions under the UNFCCC, this webinar aims to increase understanding of the implications of the new framework for LDC practitioners.

The conversation will focus on sharing lessons learned from implementation of the present reporting framework that could inform the upcoming process. It will include an overview from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat on new reporting requirements and contributions from  experts from Malawi, Liberia and Sudan working on their countries’ reporting processes.

The second webinar on 'Experience sharing on long-term strategies in least developed countries' will take place on Thursday, 13 August (12-1.30pm GMT+1) and will focus on the experiences of LDCs currently in the process of developing their long-term strategies

Not only will this showcase the unique opportunities coming out of the process, but it will facilitate a dialogue among LDC practitioners on the common challenges and concerns they face.

The final webinar, hosted by IIED in partnership with the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) on Tuesday, 8 September (11am-12.30pm GMT+1), will examine 'Loss and damage – research, policy and lived experience in LDCs'. 

This discussion will feature  LDC national experts sharing their lived experiences of loss and damage, and to ensure that loss and damage remains a priority issue in the lead up to and at COP26.

All three webinars will use the online Zoom video conferencing platform, and more details are available or will follow on the individual event and registration pages.