Side event at COP23 – 13 November – National roadmaps towards the global objective of 1.5 and 2°C

The German Development Institute/Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) will be hosting a CD-LINKS side-event at the Interconnections Zone during the 23rd Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 23, 6-17 November 2017).

The Interconnections Zone will facilitate dialogue towards more integrated and balanced development, which would both deliver on the 2030 Agenda (including the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and the Financing for Development Process) and the Paris Climate Agreement. As a transdisciplinary space, it welcomes civil society, researchers, policy-makers and other stakeholders to explore interconnections, and possible synergies, between climate change and sustainable development.

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The title of the CD-LINKS side event is: Ratcheting up nationally determined contributions (NDCs): Consistent national roadmaps towards the global objective of 1.5 and 2°C. The event will be co-organised with 4 of the 19 CD-LINKS partners:

The event will take place on Monday 13 November from 14:00-16:00 and a short description of the side-event is below. For more information, contact: cd-links.secretariat(@)iiasa.ac.at.

The agenda of the side event is available from here.

Two significant agreements were formulated in 2015: the Paris Agreement within the UNFCCC and the establishment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted at the UN Sustainable Development Summit.

The transformation towards low carbon pathways is expected to have notable impacts on the development goals. The goals that could be affected either positively or negatively include, poverty reduction and reducing inequalities (SDGs 1, 10, 5), food security (SDG 2), health issues (SDG 3), water availability (SDG 6), energy access and energy poverty (SDG 7), economic growth and employment (SDG 8), industry, innovation and infrastructure (SDG 9) and climate action (SDG 13).

To maximize synergies between the two agreements and to support national policy making within climate and development issues, interactions between climate policies and the SDGs need to be better understood. The research project ‘Linking Climate and Development Policies – Leveraging International Networks and Knowledge Sharing’ (CD-LINKS) brings together a consortium of 19 leading international research organizations to explore national and global climate transformation strategies and their linkages to a range of SDGs. The project is financed by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme.

This side event will introduce the most recent outcomes of the CD-LINKS project. The strategies required to reach the 1.5 and 2°C targets will be presented along with a comparison of the current ambition level of the Nationally Determined Contributions. The implications of the low carbon transformation pathways for the SDGs will be assessed and presented, such as for poverty, food security, water, biodiversity, air pollution and health. Representatives of the Indian and Brazilian partners of the project will also present country-level strategies for climate transformation pathways that support the global target of staying well below 2°C, together with initial results on their impact on SDGs.