º£½ÇÉçÇø

Authors: Julia Katharina Schönfeld and Professor
Editor: Cait Hewitt

The Paris Agreement requires countries to formulate Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) towards reaching the global temperature goal of limiting warming well below 2°C while pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C relative to pre-industrial levels. At present, countries’ emission reduction plans fall collectively short of what is required to meet this goal. Ensuring that forthcoming NDCs reflect countries’ ‘highest possible ambition’, as expected under the Paris Agreement, is therefore essential.

What does ‘highest possible ambition’ mean in practice? Neither the Paris Agreement nor subsequent guidance provide clear answers. This ambiguity is reflected by the wide variation in mitigation efforts found in the latest round of countries’ NDCs. It also presents challenges to policymakers, legal practitioners, and civil society organisations who want to hold countries accountable for delivering measurable, reportable, and verifiable action in line with the Paris Agreement.

This briefing introduces a new framework designed to translate the legal expectation of ‘highest possible ambition’ into a practical, evidence-based approach for both designing and assessing national climate pledges. The framework is based on three pillars, each supported by specific criteria, to evaluate whether a country’s NDC reflects its best efforts.

Key points

1. Domestic: NDCs should be based on a faithful assessment of mitigation options, using national capabilities.
2. International: NDCs should support the achievement of the ParisAgreement temperature goal, while balancing equity.
3. Implementation: NDCs should account for co-impacts of the measures and be actionable in the near-term to ensure ambition is translated into action. 
4. The Paris Agreement – Highest Possible Ambition Framework aims to provide governments with a tool to demonstrate that their NDCs reflect their genuine best efforts, while also equipping negotiators, practitioners, and civil society with guidance to interrogate whether the highest possible ambition has been pursued.