From 15 to 17, the Pacific Community and the Regional Pacific NDC Hub organised a two-day workshop in Niue, entitled “Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) and Climate Change Training”. This activity aimed to support Pacific leadership for climate action and enhance national institutional knowledge, attitude, and skills towards climate change.
Despite being one of the world’s smallest nations, Niue is determined to take great actions to address climate change. From 15 to 16, the “Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) and Climate Change Training” was conducted for the representatives from the Government of Niue – with the support of the Regional Pacific NDC Hub and the Pacific Community – to support national institutions in designing adaptation and mitigation plans.
Gathering more than eight participants, the workshop provided an overview of pertinent aspects to implement NDC as a lever to fulfil the Paris Agreement objectives. What type of mitigation actions can be implemented? How to develop NDC Monitoring, Reporting and Verifications processes (MRV)? How to finance NDC projects? All these questions were answered through a series of presentations and debates, allowing participants to actively engage in the session.
The event also focused on enhancing the understanding and capacity of Niue Environment Agency to develop potential actions and take the lead on implementing Niue’s NDC.
“The Pacific Community is committed to addressing climate change issues through knowledge, science and capacity building. Through this training, we are aiming to help Niue civil servants to understand better how their NDC can help to build resilience from the most devastating impacts of climate change and support a shift to low carbon technologies through prioritising climate change policies and measures and securing necessary climate finance to do so” explained Coral Pasisi, SPC’s acting Director of Climate Change and Environmental Sustainability Programme.
Niue submitted their NDC to the UNFCCC Secretariat on 25 November 2015. Despite having negligible greenhouse gas emissions, the island has committed to revamping its national power grid with renewable sources from 2 % in 2014 to 38%. Upon additional international assistance, Niue could also increase its contribution to an 80% share of renewable energy of total electricity generation, or even higher levels, by 2025, equating to a reduction of approximately 3.1 Gg CO2e annually.
