What We Do

The Climate Promise is UNDP’s response to climate change.

Tackling the climate crisis requires all countries to make bold pledges under the Paris Agreement, or NDCs, to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming and strengthen adaptation to its impacts. The Climate Promise is our commitment to ensure that any country wishing to increase the ambition of their national climate pledge is able to do so.

UNDP is now scaling up its support for countries to turn their NDC targets into concrete action – while continuing to push for greater ambition.

Leveraging the NDCs as an umbrella, UNDP is bringing together its extensive infrastructure, networks and breadth of substantive offers to provide comprehensive support on NDC implementation. This effort is underpinned by strong support to green COVID-19 recovery measures, as well as leveraging UNDP's strength through measures that align UNDP’s broader portfolio with the Paris Agreement and NDCs.

Read more about Climate Promise with our two-page explainer.

Our Areas of Work

Women and children smiling in Indonesia
Photo: Nataliya Vasylyeva

UNDP provides support to help countries take bold action to reduce their emissions, increase their resilience to climate impacts and support sustainable development priorities.

This support covers a range of key technical areas, including enhancing political will and ownership across society, strengthening targets and aligning with key national policies, assessing costs and investment opportunities, as well as setting up the systems for monitoring and reporting on progress.

Where We Work

Photo: Hasan Hüseyin BİRLİK / UNDP
Photo: Hasan Hüseyin Birlik / UNDP

UNDP has been supporting over 120 countries and territories with revising and enhancing their NDCs – covering 80% of developing countries globally and becoming the world’s largest offer of support on NDC enhancement.

Flagship Initiatives

Flagship Initiatives
Photo: Ayumi Kimura / UNDP Timor-Leste

Under the Climate Promise, UNDP delivers the UN system’s largest portfolio of support on climate action in more than 140 countries. This portfolio is worth over US$2 billion in grant financing and draws on UNDP’s expertise on gender equality and inclusion, energy, poverty, health, climate security, nature and biodiversity, among others.

Explore some of our flagship initiatives to see how they are driving progress and fostering sustainable development across the globe.

Our Team

Photovoltaic technician at Henrietta PV plant in Mauritius
Photo: Stéphane Bellerose / UNDP

Our Climate Promise team draws on a diverse group of specialists in governance and policy, finance, climate change, energy and development. Together, we work with countries on strengthening local capacities to meet the national climate and development targets as outlined in the NDCs.

Our Donors and Partners

Two women rest by a tree
Photo: Andrea Egan / UNDP Mexico

The Climate Promise is possible thanks to generous support from Germany, Japan, the European Union, United Kingdom, Sweden, Spain, Belgium, Iceland, Italy, Portugal, and other core donors, and underpins UNDP’s contribution to the NDC Partnership.

Campaigns

Peoples' Climate Vote

UNDP has created a number of advocacy campaigns to raise awareness and push for action on climate change.