One Size Doesn’t Fit All

Looking at the Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions being undertaken by developing countries with the UNFCCC.

WHO: Xander van Tilburg, Sophy Bristow, Frauke Röser, Donovan Escalante , Hanna Fekete, MitigationMomentum Project, Energy research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN)

WHAT: An update on the progress of the NAMA projects under the UNFCCC process

WHEN: June 2013

WHERE: Published on their website

TITLE: Status Report on Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) (open access)

This week, the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) is meeting in Bonn to try and make some more progress towards action on climate change (yay!). One of the papers that was released to time with the negotiations is this one and I thought it would be interesting to look at what actually happens on the ground in relation to the high level negotiations. There will be lots of acronyms, so bear with me and I’ll try and get us there in English.

What is a NAMA?

NAMAs are not this guy (photo: Tamboko the Jaguar, flickr)


Did you say Llama? No, NAMA… In true bureaucratic style, the UN came up with the really forgettable name of NAMA for Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions, which can also be called ‘correctly fitting climate jeans’ or even ‘different places are different’. I want to keep calling them llamas (because I lack that maturity) but I promise not to make any bad llama jokes. The main thing you need to remember is that climate mitigation in Alaska is obviously going to be different to climate mitigation in Indonesia because they’re very different locations and economies.

The idea with NAMA is for a bottom up approach to the UNFCCC negotiations and the ideas that come out of the negotiations (they’re not just talk-fests – they have program and policy ideas too!).

Because the wealthy industrialised countries (also called the First World, Global North or Annex 1 in UN speak) are mostly responsible for the emissions causing climate change, we are also then more responsible for the cleanup. So in 2007 at the Conference of the Parties (COP 13) in Bali, it was decided that NAMA projects should be created by developing countries for mitigation projects they’d like to do which would be funded by industrialised countries.

The projects need to be related to sustainable development and are supported through technology, financing and capacity building (training local people). The people running the projects also report back to the UNFCCC so that progress can be monitored (like any project). The first group of NAMAs were submitted to the UNFCCC Secretariat at the Copenhagen COP 15 in 2009.

NAMA projects are only conducted in developing countries because the idea is that it’s going to be easier for those countries to change the way they’re developing towards a low carbon economy, rather than just following in the full carbon burning footsteps of the industrialised world and then having to retrofit low carbon alternatives.

So if they’re going to try and build it right the first time round, what do they do? First, the country comes up with a feasibility study – what do they want to do and is it possible? If it is possible, then they develop the concept to present to the UNFCCC for funding. The concept has to have a mitigation objective and be clear about who is running the project as well as support from the government of the country.

Once they’ve worked out what they’re doing, they start the preparation phase where they work out the costs, the specific support they need to pull off the project and an estimate of how much carbon emissions will be reduced through the project.

Finally, they start the implementation of the project, which is my favourite bit – getting on the ground and getting it done.

NAMA projects by stage (left) and location (right) (from paper)


So far, €100million has been provided to NAMA projects, and a NAMA facility was launched to help the projects with financial and technical support in December 2012. Most of the projects are related to energy supply and the majority of them (56%) are based in Latin America.

The funding agreed to was from 2010 until 2012, so a long term financing arrangement will need to be made at this year’s talks, but I think it’s really exciting to see the tangible reality of what the UNFCCC is trying to do.

The first two NAMA projects submitted were from Mali and Ethiopia looking at shifting freight to electric rail in Ethiopia and energy efficiency and renewable energy supply in Mali.

So far, five projects have advanced far enough to receive funding. The projects are between 3-5 years in length, need between €5 – €15million in funding and should be able to start quickly (within 3-12 months) after applying.

The five projects are:

  1. Small scale renewable energy projects in Northern Sumatra, Indonesia with a feed-in tariff for independent power producers (IPPs)
  2. A project to stimulate investment in renewable energy systems in Chile
  3. Waste to energy systems using agricultural waste in Peru (with different approaches tailored to different geographic locations)
  4. Energy conservation and efficiency standards for the building sector in Tunisia
  5. A geothermal energy project in Kenya

There are still details and processes that need to be worked out as the NAMA program progresses, given that one size never fits all for climate mitigation and renewable energy generation. But I really like the idea of locally developed projects that suit the challenges different countries face being implemented on the ground, supported at a high level from the UNFCCC.