Long-term Strategies

Context of the action

Long-term strategies (LTS) are a key instrument in the fight against climate change: they can guide short-term climate policy and climate finance regulations, and can be used to mobilise private capital and provide a basis for international cooperation on transformation pathways.

The European Commission set out its vision for a climate-neutral EU in November 2018, looking at all key sectors and exploring pathways for their transition. The European Commission’s vision covers nearly all EU policies and is in line with the Paris Agreement to keep the global temperature increase to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and pursue efforts to keep it to 1.5°C.

As part of the European Green Deal, the EU has adopted the first European Climate Law to enshrine its target of achieving climate neutrality by 2050 into law. As the EU experience has shown, long-term scenario analysis on greenhouse gas emission pathways can provide a theoretical underpinning to inform a long-term climate vision. Therefore, SPIPA has focused on two key areas of engagement with partners: strengthening their domestic modelling capacity and building consensus across a diverse group of stakeholders in partner countries around a common climate vision.

SPIPA action

Since 2018, SPIPA’s LTS activities have been aimed at encouraging the development of long-term strategies that are consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

SPIPA supported the development of scenario models tailored to the partner countries’ most relevant greenhouse gas-emitting sectors, notably agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) in Argentina and Russia^[1], as well as power and coal sectors in South Africa and Republic of Korea.

The models can also be used to perform analyses to evaluate and improve the understanding of successful long-term development and transformation strategies. Through close cooperation with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), SPIPA provided dedicated capacity building on climate modelling in Argentina, China, India and Russia.

Activities under the Programme have helped to identify important lessons learned and best practices that benefit long-term climate modelling in partner countries. Exchanges with EU modelling experts have also solidified professional networks on which future collaboration can be built. They also contribute to an overall impact of SPIPA and increase the Programme’s sustainability, ensuring that it will have a long-lasting effect beyond its duration.

Overall, SPIPA has continued its fruitful collaboration on LTS with the 2050 Pathways Platform and has worked to expand exchanges among members of the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) Partnership. The collaboration with the NDC Partnership has been encouraging the development of LTS, notably in Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and South Africa, particularly at the subnational level.

[1] The activities presented in the following text took place ahead of Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine starting on 24 February 2022.