Southeast Asian countries have reaffirmed their commitment to achieving goals set in their current nationally determined contributions (NDCs) — climate plans — at the UN Cop 29 summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, but indicated the challenges they face in providing updated 2035 targets.
Indonesia intends to submit its updated NDC ahead of the deadline in February 2025, said Laksmi Dhewanthi, director general of climate change at Indonesia's ministry of environment. The country's NDC will be updated and also cover greenhouse gases (GHGs) other than CO2, including hydrofluorocarbons. It will expand to new sectors, including the oil and gas sector. Indonesia's energy sector emissions are expected to peak in 2035, and all other sectors in 2030, Laksmi said.
Indonesia's current NDC has a conditional — dependent on international support — GHG emissions reduction target of 43.2pc by 2030 against a business-as-usual scenario (BAU). Based on the country's GHG inventory data, it achieved a 41.6pc reduction in 2023, Laksmi said.
But measuring against BAU scenarios — where GHG would continue to rise unlimited — leaves space for emissions to increase under climate plans.
And for its new target, the country will not indicate an emissions reduction percentage, but instead put in place a ceiling for emissions. Approval from the president is still pending, said Laksmi, but the country aims to submit it before the deadline, in line with the push by the Troika — the partnership between Cop presidencies of the UAE, Azerbaijan and Brazil — to be one of the early movers in submitting updated goals.
Different models are used for different sectors and these need to be calibrated to ensure every single ministry involved accepts new targets, said Laksmi, adding that the challenge is therefore how to get robust data to establish the baseline.
Symmetry in data is necessary in effectively formulating new NDC targets, echoed Ahmad Zaiemaddien, head of Brunei's climate change secretariat under the prime minister's office. But collaboration also poses a challenge as different agencies have different goals, he said.
Financing is also an issue. Brunei has an agreement with a local bank for $2bn in climate financing, said Ahmad. But the country still needs to work with central banks and with local banks, as well as get support from partners to bring the cost of capital down, he added.
Under its current NDC, Brunei aims to reduce 20pc of its GHG emissions relative to business-as-usual levels by 2030. When updating the NDC, it needs to be taken into account that the country's economy is still growing, and is still recovering post-Covid, Ahmad said.
Over 60pc of Brunei's GDP comes from oil and gas, and the sector is still very highly subsidised, Ahmad said. The country intends to be more ambitious when updating its NDC metrics, but in view of the fact most of the emissions come from the energy industry, the country also wants to avoid any restrictive policies that could impact economic growth.
The UN's synthesis report on updated NDCs shows that revisions to countries' commitments to halting climate change have shown only "fractional progress" over the last year.
The next round of NDC updates will have to show a "dramatic step up in climate action and ambition," said UN climate change executive secretary Simon Stiell.
Host country Azerbaijan faces similar challenges, with Cop 29 president Mukhtar Babayev pointing to the "difficulties of developing ambitious NDCs," as its economy is still heavily reliant on fossil fuels.
The IEA earlier this year also indicated that ahead of the next round of NDCs, it had received "several requests" from countries asking for help on data, analysis and policy advice, and that the agency would provide some support.
