Palestine’s climate action planning

Challenge

Despite facing many challenges, Palestine has been among those countries at the forefront of climate action planning since the lead up to COP21 in Paris. Palestine identified a need to identify policy options and implementation action plans for priority adaptation and mitigation measures set out in the country’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC). This included the preparation of policy briefs for each priority sector. Following a tender process, Ricardo was selected to facilitate delivery of a package of work that would address the country's climate action planning needs.

Approach

This work included development of Palestine’s National Greenhouse Gas Inventory, climate mitigation scenarios and the National Adaptation Plan, as well as the country’s first National Determined Contribution (NDC), informed by the preceding documents.

Following this work, Palestine became a member of the NDC Partnership in September 2019. Further work funded under the Partnership’s Climate Action Enhancement Package (CAEP) and facilitated by Ricardo has led to development of fourteen gender-responsive NDC implementation plans across six sectors (agriculture, energy, health, solid waste, transport, water) and the country’s NDC Partnership Plan, which sets out all its needs in relation to climate change.

Results

Ricardo’s continuity in facilitating Palestine’s climate action planning over the past seven years has been highly beneficial, as it has:

•    Encouraged the development of trusting relationships that have enabled bottom-up approaches within and across sectors, at times involving hundreds of stakeholders
•    Ensured that each new document has built upon those that precede it
•    Enhanced hands-on-training and capacity building
•    Led to a high degree of consistency and coherence across the documents.

Ricardo has undertaken several climate action planning projects in Palestine, funded by various international financial institutions (UNDP, Islamic Development Bank, World Bank) and the Federal Government. The relationship began with support for the preparation of the State of Palestine’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), followed by the implementation of Palestine’s NDC, then development of Palestine’s National Adaptation Plan, and most recently updating Palestine’s NDC, as well as providing monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) support.