20 December 2012: The European Commission (EC) and the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) have each announced a €5 million contribution to the UN Development Programme’s (UNDP) Low Emission Capacity Building (LECB) Programme.

The funding will help 25 developing countries to reduce and mitigate their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by developing low-emission development strategies (LEDS) and Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs), and designing systems to measure, report and verify their results.

Helen Clark, UNDP Administrator, welcomed the contributions as a commitment to addressing the global climate crisis. She stressed “an urgent need to act now to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change” and cautioned that “without effective responses,” there is a risk of undoing decades of progress towards poverty eradication.

The EC contribution will support the creation of “NAMA-Net,” a network of Centres of Excellence that will assist countries in developing more financially mature NAMA proposals that meet investors’ funding and implementation requirements. The German funding will support increased private sector engagement in the design and pre-implementation phases of LEDS and NAMAs, and improved public and private reporting on climate finance. These activities aim to enhance national development goals while scaling up country mitigation ambitions.

UNDP launched the LECB Programme in 2011 as a joint collaboration between the EC and UNDP, with EC and BMU support. It aims to strengthen national institutional and technical capacity to address climate change, and is part of UNDP’s Green, Low-Emission Climate Resilient Development Strategy. The Programme now has a budget of over €32 million. The Government of Australia’s Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency and AusAID have also contributed financially to the Programme. [UNDP Press Release] [LECB Programme Website]