Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are the core of the Paris Agreement. They refer to the supposed efforts that signatory countries will make to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
The NDCs set each country’s baseline for launching carbon offset schemes worldwide. This will be achieved by the use of Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes (ITMOs), new goods in the climate market.
It works like this: A country from the Global South promises in its NDC that it will reduce its emissions by a certain percentage—but that it can increase that reduction if offered an economic ‘contribution’. This incentivizes countries to inflate their supposed, future unconditional emissions, to increase the difference between these emissions and those that depend on money. This difference is sold in the form of ITMOs, and consequently, as carbon offsets, to other countries with less ambitious reduction plans.
NDCs are a lie disguised as a promise; they are States’ new business portfolios in
climate negotiations.
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