THE United Kingdom Government has publicly commended Jamaica for its work on the international stage to curb the impacts of climate change, calling the country “a bastion of climate ambition”.

The commendation came last Thursday during the 4th annual members forum of the NDC Partnership — a coalition of more than 180 countries, major international institutions and non-state actors that leverage resources and expertise to provide countries with the tools needed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Jamaica and the UK were formally named co-chairs of the partnership during the forum, taking the reins from the Netherlands and Costa Rica. The term of the appointment is two years.

“Jamaica remains a bastion of climate ambition in spite of the circumstances of this year,” said Lord Martin Callanan, minister of climate change and corporate responsibility, as he accepted the opportunity to serve alongside Jamaica’s Minister of Housing, Urban Renewal, Environment and Climate Change Pearnel Charles Jr.

Callanan was representing Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Alok Sharma.

“The UK is proud to have the opportunity to build on the success of our predecessors. But we still all need to raise our game; put more ambition on the table, mobilise more finance and investment, and build back from the pandemic and recession by putting climate action at the heart of our development,” Callanan said.

Charles made a similar argument, urging the NDC membership to do more to mobilise resources and to bring climate action into every aspect of national budgets and programmes, despite the challenges of the coronavirus.

“This will be tougher than ever, but as a partnership we have the scope and the will to make it possible,” he argued.

“The partnership has mobilised around a billion dollars for action in our member countries. This is worthy of recognition, but we need to raise this by orders of magnitude if we are really going to build the sustainable future we need. This means bringing in new actors and new sources of finance,” Charles said.

Jamaica joined the NDC Partnership in 2018.

Member countries are those that have committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and would have drafted Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) detailing strategies to that end. They are encouraged to revise or update the NDCs every five years as a means of raising their climate ambition and building resilience against the negative effects of a changing climate.

Jamaica first submitted its NDCs to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2015, with an updated submission this summer which projected deeper emissions cuts in the energy and land use sectors.

“By 2030, [Jamaica] foresees emission reductions covering these two sectors of between 25.4 per cent and 28.5 per cent relative to a business-as-usual scenario (which takes into account policies in place as of 2005),” the updated NDC said.

This implies, the document continued, that emissions in these sectors would be 1.8 to 2.0 MtCO2e lower than they otherwise would be, compared with a range of 1.1 to 1.5 MtCO2e in the previous NDC.

Thursday’s membership forum also served to launch the Partnership in Action Report and the Youth Empowerment Plan.