NDCs vs the SDGs: The battle playing out at COP28

Last March, I published a manifesto in Nature Water called Climate Policy Is Inundating the SDGs, noting the growing divergence and conflict between the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and national climate commitments in the UNFCCC — the Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs.

The SDGs are a patchwork of UN-designated targets, mostly reflecting top-down UN priorities and traditional sectors. NDCs are country driven bottom-up programs and issues, which can also be revised and updated. They reorganize the priorities we see in the SDGs — and add to them. And through the process of Paris Alignment in the climate finance world, they connect to project level finance.

I repost the article here in advance of COP28 in Dubai simply because the timing is right: now is when we need to see these issues leaping ahead in practice.

I hope you will read the essay and react!