The time is now: Building circularity into Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) - a WCEF2024 accelerator session

This event highlights opportunities and discusses the challenges and best practices to integrate circular economy interventions into NDCs for increased climate ambition and implementation.

“The time is now” refers to leveraging the current NDC revision cycle 2024-2025 to raise NDC ambition through circular economy.

It will highlight the why, including socio-economic and resilience co-benefits, and how for integrating circular economy interventions into NDCs with a view to informing preparation of next NDCs due in 2025.

The event is co-organised by UNDP, UNEP’s One Planet Network, and UNFCCC secretariat in the context of their joint project “Building Circularity into NDCs” which aims to support countries both in the Global North and Global South to assess, integrate, implement, and measure circular economy interventions to strengthen ambition and implementation of their NDCs, while supporting a just, inclusive, and resilient transition.

The event is an accelerator session at the World Circular Economy Forum 2024 (www.WCEF2024.com). WCEF2024 is guided by the latest scientific evidence on the most impactful circular solutions and explores how to turn them from theory to action.

Under phase one (2021-2023) of this joint project, a digital toolbox platform “Building Circularity into NDCs – A Practical Toolbox” was developed and piloted in three countries (Ecuador, Viet Nam, and Zimbabwe) under UNDP’s Climate Promise with technical support provided by the partners, and three targeted regional capacity-building workshops for Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia and the Pacific were organised as part of the UNFCCC Regional Climate Weeks.

Phase one of the project was supported by the Kingdom of the Netherlands and Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund. Phase two (2024-2028) will be launched in Q3/Q4 2024.