The Time is Now: Building Circularity into NDCs - WCEF2024 Accelerator Session

On 18 April 2024 at the World Circular Economy Forum (WCEF) in Brussels, the UNEP’s One Planet Network, UNDP and the UNFCCC secretariat co-organized the Accelerator Session ‘The Time is Now: Building Circularity into Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)’  hosted at the Permanent Representation of the Netherlands to the EU. Stakeholders including governments and UN agencies highlighted:

• Circular economy as a critical approach for raising climate ambition in the current NDC revision cycle; 
  
  
• The UN toolbox for building circularity into NDCs and its potential to support countries to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through circularity in national climate plans; 
  
  
• Preliminary results and opportunities detailed by the three countries piloting toolbox – Ecuador, Viet Nam, and Zimbabwe - and learned from countries around the world on their challenges and plans for integrating circular economy interventions in their NDCs. 

‘The Time is Now’ refers to the urgency to raise ambition in the next round of countries’ national climate plans, or NDCs, due in 2025. Countries have an historic opportunity to stay on a 1.5° pathway and revise their NDCs – raising ambition, accelerating action, and ensuring inclusivity.  

The session highlighted the potential of circular economy as a means to complement existing GHG emission reduction efforts such as renewable energy and energy efficient strategies, to raise ambition and strengthen NDC targets, especially in hard-to-abate and industrial sectors. Yet only 28% of governments currently mention circular economy as a way to reduce GHG emissions in their NDCs.  

Even if the current NDCs are fully implemented, the GHG emissions will be reduced by only 2% by 2030 from 2019 levels.  

Member States welcomed the joint UN toolbox as supporting practical and much needed action on circular economy and climate. Germany, Viet Nam, the Netherlands, Argentina, Ecuador, Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund, and Zimbabwe pinpointed how circularity can reduce emissions in high impact sectors. Actions were highlighted in buildings and construction, food and agriculture, chemicals and waste, textiles and others. The session underscored opportunities and challenges faced at the national level from data availability to the need for increased finance and technical capacity building, among others. 

All stakeholders agreed on the strong potential of integrating circular economy into climate action planning to raise NDC ambition and reap benefits for adaptation and a just transition. 

To learn more about our work, we invite you to deep dive into the digital toolbox platform ‘Building Circularity into NDCs – A Practical Toolbox’ to access a diversity of tools, case studies and checklists, enabling you to assess, integrate, implement and measure circular economy interventions in the context of NDCs.