The IPU has released a new guide to help parliaments and parliamentarians enhance their oversight of national climate commitments, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
This guide is essential for ensuring that countries meet their obligations under the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit global warming to 1.5°C.
With the 2025 deadline for NDC submission fast approaching, the guide highlights a critical window of opportunity for parliaments to shape their countries’ climate futures.
The guide provides detailed background information about NDCs and outlines 10 practical actions that parliaments can take to strengthen their oversight practices.
These actions include ensuring a consultative and inclusive approach to developing the commitments, aligning NDCs with national policies, monitoring alignment with international commitments, strengthening legal and institutional frameworks, securing sufficient funding, and tracking and reporting on progress.
The new guide is a sister product to the IPU’s 10 actions for greener parliaments (and those who work in them) published last year and designed to encourage parliaments to reduce their carbon footprint.
Both guides are part of the IPU’s climate campaign Parliaments for the Planet which aims to mobilize parliaments to accelerate action on the climate emergency.
Quotes
IPU Secretary General, Martin Chungong said: “With last year shattering heat records and 2024 poised to be even hotter, it’s critical that parliaments push their governments to ramp up their climate ambitions. Parliaments are pivotal in transforming these pledges into robust policies backed by solid budgets and ensuring governments are held accountable for their promises.”
Find out more about the IPU’s campaign to mobilize parliaments to act on the climate emergency.
Supported by the ASU Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory
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The IPU is the global organization of national parliaments. It was founded more than 130 years ago as the first multilateral political organization in the world, encouraging cooperation and dialogue between all nations. Today, the IPU comprises 181 national Member Parliaments and 15 regional parliamentary bodies. It promotes democracy and helps parliaments develop into stronger, younger, greener, more gender-balanced and more innovative institutions. It also defends the human rights of parliamentarians through a dedicated committee made up of MPs from around the world.
For more information about the IPU, write to Thomas Fitzsimons at [email protected]