By Theophilus Ikpome
The Republic of Uganda has become the 152nd party to submit its new climate action plan to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The Ugandan climate action plan which comes in the form of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) commits to a series of mitigation policies that hope to cut emissions by 22% by 2030 compared to business-as-usual levels. Uganda also committed itself to a series of adaptation measures.
However, all actions are conditional upon international support.
Countries around the world have been submitting their pledges to the UNFCCC, setting out how far they intend to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. These promises, known as “intended nationally determined contributions”, or INDCs, will determine the success of the new climate agreement that the UN aspires to sign off in Paris in December this year.
Countries have agreed that there will be no back-tracking in these national climate plans, meaning that the level of ambition to reduce emissions will increase over time.
The Paris agreement will come into effect in 2020, empowering all countries to act to prevent average global temperatures rising above 2 degrees Celsius and to reap the many opportunities that arise from a necessary global transformation to clean and sustainable development.
An informal deadline of 1st October 2015 marked the cut-off to be included in an INDC summary from the UN. Some 148 parties made the cut. Another 48 countries responsible for 10% of the world’s emissions are yet to submit their INDCs.
