Political leadership and cooperation

Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC)s are national climate action plans to cut emissions and adapt to climate impacts. Each Party to the Paris Agreement is required to establish an NDC and update it every five years. Updated NDCs are expected to increase ambition through steeper emissions cuts and more expansive adaptation measures.  

The CCAC encourages and supports countries to include short-lived climate pollutant actions in their updated NDCs to expand their actions toward achieving the Paris Agreement temperature target. 

In 2020, the number of NDCs that explicitly mention short-lived climate pollutants and air pollution more than doubled since the last round of NDCs, demonstrating an increasing awareness and commitment to action on these potent climate forcers.

In 2021, the United States, the European Union, and partners launched the Global Methane Pledge (GMP), an initiative to reduce global methane emissions to keep the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (1.5⁰C) within reach. The GMP is a voluntary framework supporting nations to act to collectively reduce methane emissions by 30% from 2020 levels by 2030.  

Participants in the pledge also commit to moving towards using the highest tier IPCC good practice inventory methodologies, as well as working to continuously improve the accuracy, transparency, consistency, comparability, and completeness of national greenhouse gas inventory reporting under the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement, and to provide greater transparency in key sectors. 

To support the GMP, the CCAC works with participating countries to identify resources to support methane mitigation. 

Several countries attending the G7 meeting in Biarritz, France, pledged to take immediate steps to improve energy efficiency in the cooling sector while phasing down hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)— commonly used refrigerants that have a global warming potential thousands of times that of carbon dioxide. 

The Biarritz Pledge calls on countries to support the CCAC's Efficient Cooling iniative, a multi-stakeholder initiative led by France, Japan, Rwanda and Nigeria, as well as UN Environment Programme, UN Development Programme, the World Bank, and the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development. 

The initiative aim is to build high level leadership and to facilitate collaboration among stakeholders, through a series of roundtable discussions, promotional activities and information exchange opportunities, and to foster enhanced energy efficiency in the cooling sector while countries implement the phasedown of hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants under the Montreal Protocol’s Kigali Amendment.

The 2018 G7 Environment Ministers meeting in Halifax, Canada, singled out short-lived climate pollutants as an area for urgent action and reduction opportunities to protect against climate change and called for urgent action on climate.

According to the Chair’s Summary: “Many Ministers emphasized that targeted efforts focused on air pollutants and short-lived climate pollutants will have multiple benefits to climate, human health, the economy, and to ecosystems” and recognized that “air quality is one of the biggest health and environmental risks”. Ministers committed to tackling air quality including though sharing best practices and lessons learned.

The Ministers also stated that “Collaboration in fora such as the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC), World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is essential as is continuing to work with our respective bilateral and regional partners.”

The CCAC was crucial in gathering momentum towards the passing of the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol. We achieved this success by following the same logic and approach that we apply to all our work – proving the science, demonstrating the alternatives, and then pushing for larger scale adoption.

The first step in the road to the Kigali Agreement was the CCAC’s launch of HFC-alternative demonstration projects and funds the development of 14 HFC inventories in 2012. Three years later, in 2015 the first ministerial support for an amendment to the Montreal Protocol emerged – led by ministers from CCAC member states – and by the end of 2016, 200 countries had signed the Amendment.  

The CCAC has been a key supporter of the United Nations Environment Programme and International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) Global Sulfur Strategy. The strategy was developed in late 2016 in coordination with the CCAC Heavy-Duty Vehicles Initiative. 

At the CCAC December 2016 High Level Assembly, 36 countries recognized and fully endorsed the Global Sulfur Strategy’s approach and targets.  The Marrakech Communique countries pledged to reduce black carbon emissions through cleaner diesel fuels and vehicles “by: adopting, maintaining, and enforcing world-class diesel fuel quality and tailpipe emissions standards for on road light and heavy-duty vehicles in our markets.” 

The strategy provides specific recommendations for action country-by-country based on market analysis, a refinery analysis, a health benefits analysis and several case studies, aiming for ultra low-sulfur fuel (10 ppm) in the majority of global on-road fuel supply by 2030. The cost-benefit ratio of desulfurization and vehicle emission controls against the avoided mortalities from air pollution alone have been calculated as benefits outweighing costs by over 16:1.  

In 2015, the 68th World Health Assembly passed a resolution that marks the most high-level health action on air pollution to date. The resolution recognized air pollution as one of the leading avoidable causes of disease and death globally with 7 million deaths occurring each year from exposure to household (indoor) and ambient (outdoor) air pollution. 

Several countries stressed the intersection between air pollution, health, and climate change, which was reflected in the text of the resolution: “promoting air quality is a priority to protect health and provide co-benefits for the climate, ecosystem services, biodiversity, and food security.” 

The resolution paralleled momentum for the CCAC and WHO to begin a global campaign called ‘Breathe Life’ that aims to reduce short-lived climate pollutants that are a significant component of air pollution and harm both health and the climate. The campaign was kicked off with an art exhibition at the World Meteorological Organization that took place on the fringes of the 68th World Health Assembly. 

The 2015 CCAC-supported Global Green Freight Global Action Plan aims to expand, harmonize and scale up freight programs that reduce black carbon, particulate matter, CO₂ and other emissions from global freight transportation. The Plan brings together more than 20 committed governments and dozens of NGOs and companies work together towards three key objectives: 

1. Align and enhance existing green freight efforts. 
2. Develop and support new green freight programs globally. 
3. Incorporate black carbon reductions into green freight programs. 

In 2014, the CCAC created the voluntary Oil and Gas Methane Partnership (OGMP) to support companies in reducing methane emissions from the oil and gas sector. The OGMP was launched at the 2014 UN Secretary General’s Climate Summit.

By 2020 the OGMP had grown and was relaunched with a more ambitious and comprehensive reporting framework in partnership with over 100 oil and gas companies, UNEP, and other partners. The framework is designed to focus on approaches to reductions, technology advancement, and policy development to support the oil and gas industry in realizing deep reductions in mineral methane emissions over the next decade.