The Gambia

The Gambia’s historical emissions are based on the Third National Communication (Government of The Gambia 2020), as it is the most recent governmental source available. We have extended this series from 2011-2017 using PRIMAP data based on country reporting (Gütschow et al. 2019).

NDC target values are calculated based on the conditional and unconditional mitigation actions and their estimated impact in The Gambia’s NDC (Government of The Gambia 2016). Our approach is described in detail in the Targets section of the country assessment.

The lower bound of our pre-COVID-19 current policy projection is based on a combination of the Stated Policies Scenario from IEA’s Africa Energy Outlook 2019 for CO₂ emissions from fuel combustion and non-CO₂ emissions from the US EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 2019). Neither the IEA Africa Energy Outlook 2019 nor its annexes specify which of the policies have been included in the stated policies scenario. For non-energy CO₂, we assume the same share compared to energy CO₂ as in the last available data (2010) from the Third National Communication.

The upper-bound of our pre-COVID-19 current policy projection assumes that GHG emissions will grow according to the trend of the business as usual (BAU) projections provided in The Gambia’s NDC. We have harmonised the series to the last historical year (2017). From that series we have subtracted the emissions reductions related to renewable energy mentioned in the unconditional part of the NDC from 2021 onwards. 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. 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.

We have adjusted these projections to take into consideration the impact of the pandemic (see below).

We applied a novel method to estimate the COVID-19 related dip in greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 and the deployment through to 2030. The severity and length of the pandemic creates a new level of uncertainty for current and future greenhouse gas emissions. First, we updated the current policy projections using most recent projections. We then distilled the emission intensity (GHG emissions/GDP) from this pre-pandemic scenario and applied it to the most recent GDP projections that take into account the effect of the pandemic. We use the World Economic Outlook (IMF 2020), the African Economic Outlook (AFDB 2020) as well as an estimate given by the President in the State of the Nation Address in September 2020 (Darboe 2020) for these post-pandemic estimates. As these GDP estimates only covered the next few years, we completed the series using the growth estimates from The Gambia’s NDC (Government of The Gambia 2016).

The CAT uses Global Warming Potential (GWP) values from the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) for all its figures and time series. Assessments completed prior to December 2018 (COP24) used GWP values from the Second Assessment Report (SAR).