Certified Expert in Financing NDCs

Nationally determined contributions (NDCs) were key to adopting the 2015 Paris Agreement, which outlines national goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and identifies financial needs for mitigation and adaptation efforts. Most mitigation and adaptation contributions outlined in the NDCs of developing countries are based upon receiving international support. While support from the international community has addressed some capacity gaps, many conditional NDCs of low-income countries have finance, capacity-building, and technological needs. Recipient countries are hindered by the lack of accurate monitoring of climate finance flows, which prevents them from making more informed decisions about planning, prioritization, allocation of climate change resources, and measuring and evaluating progress.

The Certified Expert in Financing NDCs (CEFNDC) is an online course that addresses this knowledge gap and provides a comprehensive overview of the different facets of NDC contributions and the resulting financing implications. This course is based on Frankfurt School’s extensive experience in international practical project and advisory work as well as education programs in the area of climate change and finance.

Course Details

The objective of this e-learning course is to become familiar with the different facets of NDC contributions and the resulting financing implications. The course aims to empower the participants to learn about different ways to finance commitments mentioned in the submitted NDCs.

Suggestions & Recommendations

This course gives you the flexibility to decide on timing and pace of your learning experience. However, we will provide you with recommendations for you to take as much as possible from this course.

Your Schedule: We will provide you a course schedule including voluntary and mandatory deadlines. The course schedule serves as guideline for your personal learning schedule and will help you to complete the programme within the given time frame.

Exercises: Even though the exercises in the script are not mandatory we strongly advise that you use them as an opportunity to check your knowledge and to prepare yourself for the final exam.

Networking opportunities: Use the forum to introduce yourself to your peer participants and start interesting discussions.

Unit 1: Introduction – Linking science, policy and finance

Unit 1 aims to answer the question “can Paris pledges avert severe climate change”? To do this, it briefly introduces the basic concepts of climate change science, introducing climate change from different perspectives and providing the dynamic interplay of climate politics, business and finance. This leads to how these different perspectives were captured in the NDC submitted in the run-up to the 2015 COP, and how they aim to limit global warming to 2°C through mitigation strategies and climate resilience goals.

Unit 2: Different perspectives on financing NDCs

This unit delves deeper into NDCs as national climate plans. You will understand the challenge for the countries of mobilising and managing finance for NDCs and get to know the different characteristics of existing NDCs. Unit 2 discusses also the spectrum of design elements of NDCs. This will help to understand the potential financing needed to implement the NDC and barriers hindering investment.

Unit 3: Mitigation contributions of NDCs

Mobilising and managing finance for NDCs is a multifaceted challenge and differ for mitigation and adaptation. The objective of this module is to map the different types of contributions laid out in NDCs for mitigation by sector. You will understand how mitigation contributions of NDCs are supporting transformational change to a low carbon economy.

Unit 4: Adaptation contributions of NDCs

The objective of this module is to map the different types of contributions laid out in NDCs for climate adaptation by sector and to understand how finance flows for adaptation. You will learn how countries develop political frameworks to strategically plan and implement (necessary) adaptation measures and how these are linked to existing development plans.

Unit 5: Financing implications of commitments

An enabling environment to attract investment is one that has appropriate policy conditions, set out in the NDCs (Unit 3 & 4). The unit will familiarise you with national and international, public and private support frameworks available across different countries that can be used to finance NDCs discussed in the previous units.

Unit 6: Bringing it all together (Case Studies)

This unit will provide real-life case studies that guide participants to dive into how selective NDCs are financed.