The Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) is a concept and a set of national climate action plans that form the core of the 2015 Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It is a commitment by each country to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change. The NDC framework was created to solve the problem of the previous climate regime, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which only set mandatory emission reduction targets for developed countries, a system deemed unfair by developing nations.
The mechanism works on a five-year cycle, requiring each Party to the Paris Agreement to prepare, communicate, and maintain successive NDCs. Article 4 of the Paris Agreement requires that each new NDC must represent a progression beyond the previous one and reflect the country's "highest possible ambition," a process often called the "ratchet mechanism". NDCs typically include specific targets for GHG emissions reduction, adaptation measures, and the policies a country plans to implement across sectors like energy, transport, and agriculture. The first NDCs were submitted following the Paris Agreement in 2015, and the second round was due in 2020.
The NDC framework connects directly to the Paris Agreement's long-term goal of limiting the global average temperature increase to "well below 2°C" above pre-industrial levels, while pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. The process is informed by the Global Stocktake (GST), a comprehensive review of collective progress toward the Paris Agreement's goals that occurs every five years, with the first one concluding in 2023. The NDCs were initially referred to as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) before the Paris Agreement entered into force in 2016. The core structure of the NDC as a country-driven, self-defined pledge has stayed the same, but the requirement for increasing ambition every five years ensures the framework is constantly being strengthened.