Supporting Ecuador to advance their NAP process

Ecuador is an Andean country in the northwest of South America, with a total area of 256,370 km, including the Galapagos Islands, and 16.3 million habitants as of 2015. The Southern Andes mountain range divides the continental territory of Ecuador into three different regions: Coast, Andes and Amazon. There is great variety in the Ecuadorian climate, largely determined by altitude and terrain. In the medium- to long-term, climate change is expected to have some major impacts in Ecuador: the intensification of extreme climatic events (e.g. El Niño); sea level rise; increased retreat of the glaciers; decrease in annual runoff and increased vulnerability of water resources; increased vulnerability to floods and prolonged droughts; increased transmission of dengue and other tropical diseases; the expansion of invasive species populations in the Galapagos and other sensitive ecosystems of continental Ecuador; and the extinction of certain species. Some of these impacts are already being perceived. These impacts are expected to negatively affect the Ecuadorian population, infrastructure and crop production, particularly as agriculture is already vulnerable to current fluctuations in climate. Estimates indicate that by 2025 the country could lose approximately US$5.6 billion due to extreme weather events intensified by climate change.

Adopted in 2012, the National Climate Change Strategy (NCCS) provides a vision until 2025, and seeks to establish a long-term objective for the management of climate change in the country. It has strategic work areas proposed for both adaptation and mitigation to climate change. For adaptation, the strategy defined key priority sectors or areas of work, taking into account the priority development objectives defined in the National Development Plan. Ecuador has already developed the NDC and has submitted its first NDC to the UNFCCC on March 2019 to fulfill its commitments under the Paris Agreement. The NDC includes adaptation under the sectors prioritized in the National Climate Change Strategy. The country’s adaptation goals are outlined in the NDC and aim to enable the integration of adaptation in development planning at national, sectoral and local levels.

The key actors for the NAP process are the members of the Inter-institutional Climate Change Committee (ICCC), established in 2010, as the governmental organ for the coordination and integral execution of national policies related to climate change, including the NCCS. The cross-sectoral ICCC is led by the Ministry of Environment (MAE), through its Under-Secretariat for Climate Change, which acts as Technical Secretariat for the Committee. The Under-Secretariat for Climate Change oversees the coordination of policies, strategies and regulations for climate change, awareness on climate change, climate change planning at national level, information management, overseeing compliance with national and international climate change agreements and regulations, and coordination with international technical assistance. Ecuador is working on a combination of policy advice, technical assistance, finance, and programs to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG1, SDG5, SDG6, SDG13, SDG16).