Namibia aims for 92% greenhouse gas reduction
Namibia aims for 92% greenhouse gas reduction

Namibia aims for 92% greenhouse gas reduction

Ellanie Smit
ELLANIE SMIT

WINDHOEK

Namibia aims to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 92% by 2030, a project which is estimated to cost more than N$100 billion.

This is part of the country’s updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) that will be submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The universal Paris Agreement, agreed upon by parties in 2015, requires countries to submit NDCs to the Convention’s secretariat every five years.

Environmental Commissioner Timoteus Mufeti says the NDCs are a key element of the Paris Agreement and they define each country’s contribution towards the objectives of the agreement.

Carbon footprint

These include holding the increase in global average temperature to well below 2° C above pre-industrial levels while pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5° C before the end of the century.

“This is a threshold which is scientifically regarded as the limit of safety, beyond which many of the effects of climate change - floods, heatwaves, sea level rise and more intense storms - are likely to become much more catastrophic.”

In its draft NDC, Namibia pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 92% by the year 2030, representing a 3% increase to the pledges it made in its initial NDC of 2015.

Mufeti says this NDC is comprised of energy, agriculture, forestry and other land uses, waste and industrial processes and product use.

Overall, Namibia aims to reduce 24.18 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCO2 Eq) by 2030 as compared to 26.34 MTCO2 Eq under the business as usual scenario.

Funding

The implementation of this NDC is calculated to cost about N$112.3 billion, of which N$65.2 billion is for mitigation measures and N$47.1 billion is for adaptation targets.

According to Mufeti, about 90% of the funding required to implement the NDC will be mobilised from multilateral and bilateral sources and only 10 % of the funding will be sourced domestically.

“This NDC is very ambitious and to achieve this, a number of interventions are lined up.”

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Namibian Sun 2025-02-20

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