Climate change mitigation entails taking steps to decrease atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses (GHGs). These actions range from making use of renewable energy resources like solar panels and windmills, protecting open spaces, or stopping the spread of invasive species.
UNDP assists countries in adopting cost-effective climate change mitigation solutions, including helping them craft and implement their intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). These efforts aim to decrease emissions while simultaneously increasing carbon sinks.
Adaptation
Human activity has contributed significantly to climate change by emitting heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, warming it further and creating increased risk such as sea-level rise, more extreme weather events and food insecurity.
Adaptation can reduce the risks and impacts associated with climate change. Communities are increasing flood defenses and creating more resilient infrastructure; farmers are decreasing fertilizer runoff and erosion during intense rainfall events; businesses are switching to renewable energy and installing water-tank systems – all methods which help adaptation efforts reduce risks from climate change.
However, adaptation alone will not address climate change effectively. Decisive and early action must also be taken on mitigation, including transitioning to more energy efficient forms that emit lower greenhouse gas emissions – this will prevent further warming – while at the same time improving biodiversity and land productivity and combatting climate change and its impacts – providing multiple environmental and economic benefits, like reduced power bills and better health outcomes.
Mitigation
Changes to climate conditions – such as global temperatures increasing, glaciers shrinking and shifting rainfall patterns – are being driven by human actions such as fossil fuel burning and unequal energy use, which increases heat-trapping greenhouse gasses in Earth’s atmosphere.
Scientists agree that to effectively mitigate climate change’s most devastating impacts, we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions from all sectors of society and strengthen natural “sinks” like forests and oceans to absorb them. Strategies can involve technology advancements as well as behavioral changes for mitigation strategies to be most successful.
Health benefits associated with mitigation measures may include reduced exposure to air pollution and an increase in physical activity. Over 3.3 billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change; these include poorer countries whose residents only contribute a fraction of greenhouse gas emissions globally but who could experience severe and irreparable climate-related damage as a result.
Carbon pricing
Carbon pricing – be it carbon taxes or cap-and-trade systems – can be an extremely powerful policy instrument to redirect investments away from fossil fuels toward more carbon-friendly alternatives. Emitters will have strong incentives to lower their emissions in order to decrease taxes or permit costs and, as a result, mitigate climate change impacts like flooding, heat waves, drought, sea level rise and sea level drop. Carbon pricing also raises revenue for governments through taxes on energy or auctions within cap-and-trade systems that generate rebates for consumers while investing in green technologies or infrastructure projects.
Rising momentum among countries and businesses to implement carbon pricing policies aimed at driving down emissions while shifting investment toward cleaner options is driving change across the world. There are currently 64 carbon pricing policies active or planned that cover 22% of global emissions.
Partnerships
As the largest multilateral fund devoted to environmental issues, GEF is well suited to providing integrated solutions with systems thinking that offer multiple global environmental benefits while avoiding tradeoffs or duplication across various Conventions.
At a global level, developing country parties have submitted emissions targets known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs) while developed nations use the Kyoto Protocol’s clean development mechanism to undertake project activities that will lower emissions while increasing sinks.
Energy efficiency – commonly defined in economic literature as the ratio between desired energy output and actual energy input – has become one of the main policy levers to combat GHG emissions. There has been much discussion as to whether forests should remain unmanaged or be managed for wood production; no system exists to account for storage and substitution effects in either option; while Paris Agreement encourages integrated accounting methods but few specific examples have yet emerged.