The Lima Call to Climate Action and the role of national pledges

Overview

The key to interpreting the Lima Call to Action is understanding national mitigation pledges (called INDCs), and their central role in ongoing negotiations. The Lima outcome brought quite a bit of clarity to these pledges, but also highlighted key differences between major countries and challenges to be overcome.

Further to the Lima outcome, national pledges are:

1. Required of all parties, though they must reflect national circumstances, and are unlikely to be legally binding
2. Must be transparent and comparable, and guidelines were set out to this end
3. Not required to include adaptation or climate finance
4. Not subject to UN or peer review before the conference in Paris in December 2015, although the UN will make a report on the aggregate impact of pledges in November 2015.
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