Bonn, 28 March 2015 - Mexico has submitted its new climate action plan to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the first developing country to do so.
Mexico's Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) comes well in advance of a new universal climate change agreement which will be reached at the UN climate conference in Paris in December this year.
Its INDC also includes plans in respect to adaptation and a target to cut black carbon or soot. Mexico is a founding member of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition which was among the many inspiring international cooperative initiatives taken forward at the UN Secretary-General's Climate Summit in 2014.
All submitted INDCs are available on the UNFCCC website here. Including the Mexico submission, 32 parties to the UNFCCC have formally submitted their INDCs.
This also includes all the countries under the European Union plus the European Commission, Norway and Switzerland.
The Paris agreement will come into effect in 2020, empowering all countries to act to prevent average global temperatures rising above 2 degrees Celsius and to reap the many opportunities that arise from a necessary global transformation to clean and sustainable development.
Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC is encouraging countries to come forward with their INDCs as soon as they are able, underlining their commitment and support towards this successful outcome in Paris. Governments agreed to submit their INDCs in advance of Paris.
Developed countries are expected to do so as soon as possible and more bigger developing countries are also likely to submit their INDCs well in advance.
Countries have agreed that there will be no back-tracking in these national climate plans, meaning that the level of ambition to reduce emissions will increase over time. Countries under the UNFCCC have already finalized the negotiating text for the Paris agreement.
The next round of formal negotiations will take place at UNFCCC headquarters in Bonn, Germany, in June.
All information such as documentation on designing and preparing INDCs as well as on sources of support for INDC preparation, is available here.
About the UNFCCC
With 196 Parties, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has near universal membership and is the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
The Kyoto Protocol has been ratified by 192 of the UNFCCC Parties. For the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, 37 States, consisting of highly industrialized countries and countries undergoing the process of transition to a market economy, have legally binding emission limitation and reduction commitments. In Doha in 2012, the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol adopted an amendment to the Kyoto Protocol, which establishes the second commitment period under the Protocol.
The ultimate objective of both treaties is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.
