The Gambia

Critically Insufficient4°C+ World

NDCs with this rating fall well outside of a country’s “fair share” range and are not at all consistent with holding warming to below 2°C let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit. If all government NDCs were in this range, warming would exceed 4°C. For sectors, the rating indicates that the target is consistent with warming of greater than 4°C if all other sectors were to follow the same approach.

Highly insufficient< 4°C World

NDCs with this rating fall outside of a country’s “fair share” range and are not at all consistent with holding warming to below 2°C let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit. If all government NDCs were in this range, warming would reach between 3°C and 4°C. For sectors, the rating indicates that the target is consistent with warming between 3°C and 4°C if all other sectors were to follow the same approach.

Insufficient< 3°C World

NDCs with this rating are in the least stringent part of a country’s “fair share” range and not consistent with holding warming below 2°C let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit. If all government NDCs were in this range, warming would reach over 2°C and up to 3°C. For sectors, the rating indicates that the target is consistent with warming over 2°C and up to 3°C if all other sectors were to follow the same approach.

2°C Compatible< 2°C World

NDCs with this rating are consistent with the 2009 Copenhagen 2°C goal and therefore fall within a country’s “fair share” range, but are not fully consistent with the Paris Agreement long term temperature goal. If all government NDCs were in this range, warming could be held below, but not well below, 2°C and still be too high to be consistent with the Paris Agreement 1.5°C limit. For sectors, the rating indicates that the target is consistent with holding warming below, but not well below, 2°C if all other sectors were to follow the same approach.

1.5°C Paris Agreement Compatible< 1.5°C World

This rating indicates that a government’s NDCs in the most stringent part of its “fair share” range: it is consistent with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit. For sectors, the rating indicates that the target is consistent with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit.

Role model<< 1.5°C World

This rating indicates that a government’s NDC is more ambitious than what is considered a “fair” contribution: it is more than consistent with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit. No “role model” rating has been developed for the sectors.

1.5°C Compatible< 1.5°C World

Global Warming Potentials

Previous assessments of the Climate Action Tracker used the global warming potentials (GWPs) from the IPCC’s Second Assessment Report (SAR). For this assessment we have updated all figures and time series to GWPs from the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).

Historical emissions

The Gambia’s historical emissions are taken from the NDC (Government of The Gambia 2016), as it is the most recent governmental source.

The Second National Communication (Government of The Gambia 2012b) and the UNFCCC GHG inventory data portal (UNFCCC 2017) report a high level of emitted F-gases in 2000, equivalent to 17.3 MtCO2e, outweighing by more than four times the NDC projections in 2030. We therefore do not consider the historical dataset provided in the Second National Communication further.

The forestry data point for 2000 is taken from the UNFCCC GHG inventory data portal (UNFCCC 2017).

Pledges and targets

NDC target values are directly taken from The Gambia’s NDC.

Current policy projections

The reference level used to evaluate the current policy projection is the BAU “low” scenario from the NDC submission. This NDC reference scenario was developed based on individual baselines for each sector and assuming GDP growth rates lower than 5.5% till 2016 and 4.5% from 2017 onwards. For population projections, the UN population prospects 2012 medium fertility scenario was used. According to this, The Gambia’s emissions are projected to grow by 3% annually until 2030. Since the NDC projections are the most recent, sector based, governmental projections for The Gambia, we base our reference projections on it.

Our current policy projection is the result of subtracting the reductions related to renewable energy deployment mentioned in the unilateral part of the NDC from the total projected “low” BAU emissions in 2030. Conditionally proposed measures have not been accounted for in the current policy projections due to remaining uncertainty about their implementation conditional on international financial support. Since the Sustainable Energy Action Plan does not provide the shares of the renewable energy capacities that are subject to international finance in 2030, we could not quantify the emissions that could be abated and assumed that the NDC abatement estimation was correct. Similarly, we did not quantify the proposed energy efficiency targets of National Energy Efficiency Action Plan (NEEAP) due to uncertainty about the action plan’s current implementation status.