Ministry of Environment and Tourism in cooperation with the NDC Partnership organized the Nationally Determined Contribution Partnership (NDCP) Forum in Ulaanbaatar from 3rd to 4th of October, 2017.
The goal of the two days Forum was to enable a cross-sectorial dialogue to evolve ambitious Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) of Mongolia by reiterating the country’s climate change legal and policy framework, the current status of actions on climate change mitigation and adaptation and financial scheme including the opportunities to create a robust coordination mechanism among ministries and agencies with international development partners and private sector engagement. Moreover, the Forum was the opportunity for all participants to gain a comprehensive understanding of Mongolia’s status of climate change issues and future prospects, and to get acquaintance good practices of financial resources mobilization and transparency frame towards NDC implementation in the other regions and countries.
More than 200 representatives convened from multi-sectoral government ministries, international organizations and private entities interested took part in this milestone forum.
The first day of the Forum is featured in a national context, where representatives of key ministries (6), agencies (1), city municipality and climate change national and international experts presented overall climate change legal and policy issues with the emphasis of sectorial policies and implementation of actions on climate change mitigation and adaptation, progresses and challenges, including co-benefits for tackling air pollution of Ulaanbaatar and environmental degradation issues.
H.E Oyunkhorol D., Member of Parliament and Minister of Environment and Tourism has made the opening remark and highlighted the facts of country’s vulnerability to climate change because of its geographic location and the specific ecosystems and landscapes. Amount of GHG emission is almost negligible compared to the key emitters but one of the highest per GDP. The Minister acknowledges the importance to support collaborative efforts to address common climate change challenges both national and global scale. The expected outcome of the NDCP forum is to outline the concept of “NDC of Mongolia” with the engagement of sectorial ministries and private entities and create opportunities for collaboration with international organizations for NDC implementation said Minister of Environment and Tourism.
Much has been achieved since the inception workshop of “Mongolia’s Intended Nationally Determined Contribution” in 2015. Mongolia has shown its commitment by joining NDCP to reduce negative impact of climate change and foster sustainable development goals. It’s important to ensure cooperation among state agencies and international development partners to solve climate change challenges. The government of Germany fully supports Mongolia’s commitment to fight against climate change said Dr. Christian Glass, First Secretary, Head of Development Cooperation, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Mongolia in his opening remark.
H.E Bulgantuya Kh., Vice Minister of Finance has made a statement on the current status of initiatives for climate finance by specifying the significance of implementing the Development Policy and Planning Law, emerging climate funds initiatives from public institutions and private sectors and greening government procurements.
Representatives of Green Climate Fund (GCF) and NDC Partnership have inaugurated their respective organization’ strategy and highlighted the key points on how to ensure and enhance the financial frameworks for NDC implementation.
As a representative of the citizen, Elbegdorj Ts., the former president of Mongolia made a statement on the topic for “Habitat Initiative for the community and society” to the Forum to reinforce the national climate actions. The initiative will take place with the engagement of citizens to rehabilitate and improve the living environment.
The key points perceived on the first day of the NDCP Forum are summarized below. The roster of presentations and statements for sectorial actions session are listed at the end of the briefing via a table.
- The 14% of mitigation target indicated in the INDC of Mongolia is achievable based on the current progress of energy sector thus new ambitious target needs to be set for the NDC of Mongolia
- To ensure the institutional arrangement in both horizontal and vertical dimensions to support the NDC implementation at the all stage and level of the national government including local authorities and city municipality and also coordination between international partners
- Beside to reinforcing the climate change mitigation actions, it’s important to foster adaptation measures, and needs and gaps in capacity, technology and finance and linkage to SDG goals
- Not only MET but MOF is the key ministry to plan fiscal budget and actions to implement NDC thus need to mandate the participations and responsibilities of these ministries and other ministrie
- Ensure the cost of MRV, transparency, and measurability of the indicators of NDC implementations
The second day of the Forum is featured by the interactive two sets of panel discussions among national and the international partners with an emphasis on the issues of climate finance mobilization, measuring reporting and verification (MRV) systems and transparency under the scheme of Paris Agreement.
The panelists expressed their views on the most prominent and practical challenges in terms of increasing climate finance and enhancing collective impact among varies stakeholders. Discussions revolved around the issues as GCF role, direct access to the funds, coordination enhancement, currency exchange rate, risk-sharing mechanisms and how to manage these with collaborative approaches. Moreover, the panelists referred the issues of national coordination for GHG inventories and report on the progress related to NDC implementation, and verification/reviews.
The specific guests to the Forum were the representatives of Government of Pakistan headed by State Secretary of Climate Ministry of Pakistan to get acquaintance Mongolia’s success on GCF accreditation.
The NDCP Forum was a milestone to go ahead and create new possibilities to scope with climate change on the cooperative way with the consensus of all stakeholders. The Ministry of Environment and Tourism will be the key entity to lead the way.
PARTNERSHIP’S ADVANTAGE-PEOPLE’S BENEFIT MINISTRY OF ENVIRONMENT AND TOURISM
October 2017
Please click on the following link to download forum presentations.