Facilitating Implementation and Readiness for Mitigation (FIRM)

The Facilitating Implementation and Readiness for Mitigation (FIRM) project worked to strengthen national capacities to formulate low carbon development strategies and identify mitigation opportunities.

FIRM worked within the context of national sustainable development priorities and the evolving concept of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs). Towards this end, FIRM provided advice and capacity-building to stakeholders in participating countries.

The project was funded by the Danish International Development Agency, DANIDA, and built on existing UN Environment and UNEP DTU Partnership experience and support to developing countries.
This expertise covers areas such as Technology Needs Assessments (TNAs) and Technology Action Plans (TAPs) as well as other ongoing activities to identify options for climate change mitigation and resource efficiency.

More specifically, the FIRM project provided financial, technical and methodological support to create the necessary conditions to identify low carbon development options and formulate and implement GHG emission reduction activities.

The project contributed to the development of the concept of NAMAs and provided support to national processes for identifying and formulating such actions by enabling institutional arrangements, national MRV systems, and legal structures.

Activities

The FIRM project had three main project components:

• Developing a national low carbon development framework and NAMAs priorities
• Supporting national processes for developing ready-to-implement NAMAs
• Developing analytical material and sharing experiences and analytical results

FIRM strengthened UN Environment’s Green Economy programme by providing analysis, tools and capacity to turn opportunities and potentials within climate change mitigation into actual emission reduction strategies and projects.
This is in line with Green Economy goals of improving human well-being and social equity by fostering more effective environmental management.

Outputs of FIRM:

• A national low-carbon development framework containing a list of priority NAMAs, including Monitoring, Verification and Reporting (MRV) for UNFCCC
• Support for the process of piloting a selected NAMA to remove non-financial barriers to secure funding to scale up deployment of clean technologies and improvement of human well-being and the environment
• Increased South-South and North-South cooperation on climate change mitigation, technology transfer, and NAMA implementation
• Enhanced or expanded regional networks for knowledge and experience sharing
• Use FIRM success stories and lessons learnt to build support for multilateral approaches to climate change mitigation

UN Environment's Division of Technology, Industry and Economics (DTIE) together with the UNEP DTU Partnership implemented FIRM. In-country activities leveraged key involvement of local centres of excellence and national experts.