Climate change (mitigation)

Increasingly frequent extreme weather events such as heatwaves, droughts and floods, as well as rising sea levels, are symptoms that tell us the world is on the verge of reaching certain tipping points in the planetary climate system. The overexploitation of natural resources and the decline in biodiversity have increased dramatically in recent decades and are also contributing to climate change.

Climate change is wreaking damage worldwide on a devastating scale and threatening people’s lives, health and food security. We are a long way from limiting the global temperature rise to below 1.5°C, as stipulated in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Based on 1990 levels, countries must reduce their combined greenhouse gas emissions by 30 gigatonnes per year by 2030.

GIZ supports the efforts of its partners to formulate and implement their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and to develop long-term strategies (LTSs). GIZ’s experience of implementation shows that activities are particularly successful when they are planned and implemented in a cross-sectoral and participatory manner, actively involving stakeholders from local to international level in the national coordination process. Integrating climate into medium- and long-term development planning and into national planning and legal systems is just as much a part of GIZ’s advisory work as improving the coherence of often competing sectoral policies. In the area of climate change mitigation, the starting point for GIZ’s advisory work is that a successful transformation towards a decarbonised economy and society requires appropriate financing. That includes innovative, climate-friendly financing instruments and market mechanisms that provide suitable incentives for climate-friendly business models. GIZ also recognises that appropriate monitoring and evaluation systems are needed to measure the success of the climate-friendly development paths on which countries have embarked.

Against this background, GIZ supports the development of carbon markets and emissions trading systems and advises on fiscal or financial policy reforms with the aim of removing misdirected incentives and generating additional public and private-sector funding. It follows that options for mobilising capital market funds and leveraging private climate finance are factored in right from the start when designing all NDC-related projects.

The success of climate change mitigation projects in GIZ’s partner countries depends on not only financial but also human resources. GIZ’s capacity development work in partner countries is designed to promote local innovation and increase climate knowledge among policymakers responsible for shaping the national framework, local communities that implement climate action measures on the ground and both public and private-sector funding providers involved in developing suitable financing mechanisms. Change processes are successful only if they are supported by a majority. Based on its experience of working with around 120 countries, GIZ has built up a wealth of technical and methodological expertise on which it can draw when advising partners in the area of climate change mitigation.