Checklists and guidance

This methodological guide provides a framework for assessing, developing, and implementing integrative land-biodiversity-climate actions through ecosystem restoration. It focuses on leveraging synergies to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of restoration activities. It aims to help policymakers and practitioners identify strategies that strengthen policy coherence, streamline processes, and optimize investments to achieve multiple sustainability goals.

The Guidance is a collaborative achievement: more than 80 experts from national authorities, academia, non-governmental and international organizations contributed to its preparation. Building on the principles of the Convention and on the experience gained in its implementation, the Guidance places special emphasis on the specific problems and requirements of transboundary basins, with the objectives of preventing, controlling and reducing transboundary impacts of national adaptation measures and thereby preventing and resolving possible conflict. The Guidance also underlines the benefits of cooperation in adapting to climate change in transboundary basins: sharing the costs and benefits of adaptation measures, better managing uncertainty through the exchange of information, broadening the knowledge base, and enlarging the range of measures available for prevention, preparedness and recovery, thus allowing us to find better and more cost-effective solutions.

This guide assists national policymakers and technical experts in integrating nature-based solutions into the 2025 NDCs. It includes 15 recommendations, additional resources, and case studies to effectively enhance the inclusion of nature in climate commitments.

This methodological guidance document aims to help in assessing, identifying, developing, and implementing integrative land-biodiversity-climate actions through ecosystem restoration that leverage synergies by enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of land restoration activities.

These guidelines are designed for audiences working on nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and other climate strategies. They offer diverse entry points for employing blue foods in climate solutions and are intended to be a starting point for setting targets and developing policies related to blue foods in climate action, offering a framework rather than an exhaustive list of actions. Policymakers can adapt these policy options to NDCs as well as consider their relevance in other areas of climate planning, including water and waste management, energy, nutrition, and economic development.

This resource has been updated from the 2020 publication, incorporating additional case studies and recommendations from the 2020 NDC update cycle. The document recommends a tiered approach for various motivations and starting points, including coastal blue carbon ecosystems in NDCs.

This resource was made for the last round of NDCs (2020-2021) but will soon be updated for the 2025 NDC moment. This guide is part of a larger series exploring NDC enhancement in various sectors. It is intended to inform future rounds of NDC revision and any implementation planning that follows. The guidance presented here can also assist in the development of long-term strategies, National Adaptation Plans, and domestic and local water policymaking that will effectuate the NDCs. Audiences for this guide include stakeholders responsible for enhancing and updating NDCs, as well as domestic, local, and international actors whose activities have substantial implications for water resources and services.

Through a crowdsourcing effort including national, sectoral, and civil society partners from more than 100 countries, AGWA has created a new guidance and planning document for integrating water into our climate responses. Watering the NDCs provides guiding principles and recommendations for national climate planners and decision-makers to help ensure they meet their goals set out in National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). The report is designed to help Parties consider the reality of their water management across sectors, while working towards robust and flexible solutions able to withstand the effects of climate change.

The IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based solutions has eight criteria and associated indicators that allow users to assess the aptness, scale, economic, environmental, and social viability of a nature-based intervention; consider its possible trade-offs; ensure transparency and adaptive project management; and explore possible linkages to international targets and commitments. It consists of a user guide and self-assessment tool that identifies areas for improvement and learning.

The guide presents six steps to identify opportunities and options to strengthen NDC policies and measures in the forest sector.This is a supplemental guide to the "Enhancing NDCs: A Guide to Strengthening National Climate Plans by 2020", and will assist countries in enhancing their NDCs with clearer and more tangible forest sector content.

This guide incorporates blue-carbon ecosystems like mangroves, seagrasses, and salt marshes into NDCs. It underscores the significance of these ecosystems in carbon sequestration and encourages countries to recognize and enhance blue carbon initiatives for climate mitigation efforts.

This document provides a comprehensive guide for integrating nature-based solutions (NbS) into NDCs to enhance climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. It outlines a seven-step approach that includes understanding national GHG accounting, identifying existing NbS actions, developing rapid analysis for mitigation and adaptation potential, crosswalking NbS pathways with existing actions, and improving enabling conditions for NbS integration into NDCs.

This checklist provides national policymakers with guidance on enhancing synergies between Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), and National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs). It offers practical recommendations to ensure integrated and effective implementation of climate and biodiversity commitments.

The recommendations in this guidance are organized in a series of five “building blocks.” The key elements of each building block are presented in the Checklist below. The guidance helps policymakers identify which common roadblocks or challenges to effective implementation apply, and then provides a number of short-term recommendations to address each roadblock.

This document comprises a series of sectoral checklists, developed to help climate change professionals and decision-makers identify water-related issues to address within climate plans and policies. In particular, it aims to assist in the process of enhancing the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement.