Understanding the Transformational Impact of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs)

Abstract

The Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) are a set of climate change policies and actions under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). NAMAs, designed with a bottom-up approach through national processes, focus on active involvement of developing countries in climate change mitigation actions. One term, “transformational impact,” has been widely used as a key concept or metric of the NAMAs. However, this concept does not have one internationally agreed-upon definition, thus creating barriers especially for the NAMA funding process. Therefore, it is essential to examine how “transformational impact” is defined and to understand commonalities and variations in this definition across different organizations involved in the NAMA process. As a part of the Masters Project, interviews were conducted with people from 12 different organizations and the interview transcripts were qualitatively analyzed. The analysis suggests that interviewees believe that the NAMAs’ transformational impact should go beyond a project-centric approach to mitigation actions to include non-greenhouse gas benefits, such as broad national government projects. Each organization emphasized different themes in the interviews. The international organizations and institutions mainly focused on national ownership of the NAMAs, whereas funding agencies stressed the actual projects of developing countries. The results of this study suggest that the NAMAs should create a platform to facilitate communication about the NAMA process among different organizations.