Assessing policy coverage in the nationally determined contributions

Book excerpt: The agriculture and land use sector (crops, livestock, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture) hereafter referred to as the AFOLU (Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use) sector for ease of reference – features prominently amongst the adaptation and mitigation contributions set forth in the nationally determined contribution (NDCs) – up to 96 and 88 percent, respectively (FAO, 2016a). This paper presents a step-by-step methodology for assessing the overall coverage of mitigation and adaptation policies and measures in the NDCs, as compared against major greenhouse gas (GHG) emission “hotspots” and adaptation “hotspots” in the AFOLU sector. It also provides a gap-filling methodology for estimating economy-wide and sector-specific baseline and NDC mitigation scenarios based on regional trends. The overall objective is to support national policy makers in NDC review and revision processes so as to better align or integrate mitigation and adaptation policies to address sectoral GHG and adaptation hotspots. To date, the sector-specific methodology has been adopted by FAO to conduct a series of mitigation and adaptation policy coverage in the NDCs at the regional-level, including Eastern Africa (FAO, 2017), Europe and Central Asia (FAO, 2019), Asia (FAO, 2020b) and the Pacific (FAO, 2020c), Latin America (FAO, 2020d) and the Caribbean (FAO, 2020e).