Since the 19th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, parties have been developing their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (or INDCs) to comprise their individual commitments for post-­-2020 under the new protocol or other legally binding instrument to be agreed at COP21 in Paris in December 2015. This article provides a brief insight into what an INDC is intended to be, and analyses those of four important, but very different, players, in the international climate change negotiations – the USA, the EU, Russia and Mexico.

What is an INDC? -

INDCs were conceived in 2013 at COP19 in Warsaw as a way of lessening the largely top-­-down approach to climate change mitigation under the Kyoto Protocol, and rebalancing it with more of a bottom-­-up approach that marries parties’ national circumstances and capabilities with the collective objective of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. As they are “intended” contributions, INDCs should not contain final numbers and parties retain the liberty to make changes after publication. The importance of the contributions being “nationally determined” is that it enables each party to define what it considers to be a fair and ambitious contribution, a way to commit that reflects the principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR&RC). Importantly, INDCs are made without prejudice to the legal form of the Paris Agreement, and therefore of the legal force of national contributions at international level, depending also on whether they are housed inside or left outside, for example in a National Schedule. In other words, by submitting an INDC, parties are not automatically accepting for the commitments therein to be legally binding. The binding force of the parties’ commitments and the nature of the legal instrument, which contains them are two key issues which will be fought over in Paris.