7 November 2013: The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Risø Centre has released a working paper titled ‘Sustainable Development Impacts of NAMAs: An integrated approach to assessment of co-benefits based on experience with the CDM.’ The paper assesses the sustainable development impacts of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) by developing countries, and is part of UNEP Risø’s ‘Low Carbon Development’ series.

The paper, written by Karen Holm Olsen, UNEP Risø, proposes a new integrated approach to assess the impact of NAMAs in achieving sustainable development impacts, including indicators, procedures for stakeholder engagement and safeguards against negative NAMA impacts. The proposed approach is based on a revision of the Clean Development Mechanism’s (CDM) experiences in contributing to achieving sustainable development and comparing similarities and differences between NAMAs and the CDM.

For assessment of NAMAs co-benefits for local sustainable development, the study applied the CDM sustainable development tool taxonomy to analyze eight NAMAs submitted for recognition and support for implementation to the UNFCCC Registry. Thus, the NAMA impacts were categorised based on the three dimensions of sustainable development. The results of the analysis show that NAMAs will have a significant impact at national level for institutional development and towards national goals for low-carbon and sustainable development. It also indicates that the transformational benefits from NAMAs go beyond the sustainable development co-benefits known from CDM, primarily observed at the local level, because NAMAs are designed to have a higher level impact at national level. [Publication: Sustainable Development Impacts of NAMAs: An integrated approach to assessment of co-benefits based on experience with the CDM] [UNEP Risø’s Low Carbon Development Series]