This guidance document provides a practical framework that can be used to identify, prioritise, and include mitigation measures that can increase a country’s climate change mitigation ambition through actions that improve local air quality. It also outlines how this can be reflected in updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and accompanying information.
This framework emphasises that the path taken to achieving the Paris temperature targets matters because reducing temperature increases in the near-term (e.g. the next 25 years) can: (i) reduce climate impacts and feedbacks such as snow and ice melt, sea-level rise, and biodiversity loss, (ii) reduce the cost of meeting long-term temperature targets, and (iii) contribute to achieving multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through implementation of key short-lived climate pollutant (SLCP) mitigation measures. The framework was developed to highlight that action needs to be taken immediately and that there are strategies that can significantly reduce climate change and air pollution impacts in the near term which are synergistic with strategies to safeguard the climate over the longer term (i.e. end of the century).