As Rwanda plans to submit its revised climate pledges, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, experts have made the case for considering youth-led environmental initiatives in the implementation process.

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NDCs, established under the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degree Celsius, embody efforts by each country to reduce its emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

However, NDCs to date fall well short of what’s needed to avert increasingly dangerous climate impacts and hold global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. Countries have to update their NDCs by February 2025, and some announced their targets at 29th UN Climate change conference (COP29) in Azerbaijan in November.

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Rwanda seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 38 per cent by 2030.

"Rwanda needs $11 billion to implement these climate pledges up to 2030, having started in 2020. And 60 per cent of the needed money must come from external sources of finance while the rest will come from domestic resource mobilization,” Fred Sabiti, the National Technical Advisor on Environment and Climate Change Mainstreaming in the Ministry of Financing and Economic Planning (MINECOFIN) told The New Times.

"The climate finance strategy should be considered in the new version of NDCs known as NDCs 3.0. We currently have a financing gap of $6.2 billion,” Sabiti said.

Current levels of climate finance aren’t enough to implement even a subset of NDCs, according to officials.

Rwanda&039;s NDCs have to be implemented within 10 years and out of $11 billion finance needed, $5.7 billion will allocated for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and $5.3 billion for adaptation and building resilience to climate change effects.

Having started in 2020, the NCDs must be revised after five years.

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The revision of the climate pledges to be implemented comes at the time the government has launched the second National Strategy for Transformation (NST2), a development plan to be implemented until 2029.

Youth-led environmental initiatives

Sabiti said that youth-led environmental initiatives in the implementation process of NDCs have to be considered among other special groups.

"We have to include the private sector, youth, NGOs and others in the implementation. Youth are also on top since they have different initiatives. Some have cooperatives, others have formed non-governmental organizations and we need their interventions,” he said.

"We have youth protecting rivers and lakes, those planting trees. Some youth attend UN climate conferences.”

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Faustin Vuningoma, the Coordinator of Rwanda Climate Change and Development Network, told The New Times that they are reaching out to students in schools and youth in different districts to raise awareness about the NDCs as possible solutions to climate change.

"The students pledged to mobilize fellow youth and community at large more about implementation of NDCs and how to actively participate in the implementation,” Vuningoma said.

"The role of the youth will be fully integrated in the new version of NDCs," he said.

He urged youth with environmental initiatives to design bankable projects to attract climate finance to be able to contribute to NDCs implementation.

Concorde Kubwimana, the Executive Director of the Save Environment Initiative of university graduates, said they have mobilised efforts to plant trees as their contribution to the fight against climate change.

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He said 10,000 trees will be planted in Bugesera to improve air quality, and enhance biodiversity.

"We are aligning our efforts with UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Nationally Determined Contributions,” he noted.

Reducing emissions by five times

The World Resources Institute (WRI) demands that countries reduce emissions by at least 5 times in order for the current pledges to align with the global goal to reduce global warming to 1.5 degrees.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that global emissions must fall by at least 43 per cent from 2019 levels by 2030 to align with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5-degree goal.

However, current NDCs could only reduce global emissions by about 8 per cent from 2019 levels.

With the current NDCs, more countries have set higher greenhouse gas reduction targets than in the initial round, and some have expanded their targets to cover more sectors and more types of greenhouse gases.

Around 40 per cent of countries include loss and damage in NDCs plans. Compared to the initial NDCs, more countries now include information on loss and damage-related topics.

Rwanda is also pushing for finance from the Loss and Damage Fund to help those affected by climate change effects recover.