There is a long-standing problem with the international negotiations, which should have delivered a response to the climate challenge many years ago. While the changing climate will affect us all eventually, we tend to tackle it as a political problem primarily, rather than a practical challenge that needs practical solutions from practical people. The negotiations are elitarian, strategic and non-inclusive, existing in their own sphere, leaving all other stakeholders – and we are, in essence, all stakeholders – in separate parallel spheres. These spheres only occasionally collide or interact. When they do, negotiators realize that they do not speak the same language; the interaction is fruitless. The results, in practice, are few and far between – and certainly have not yielded any useful answers yet. Or have they?

Over the 20 years that climate change negotiations have been ongoing, the developing countries as a group have become by far the largest emitter, while greenhouse gas emissions in developed countries are falling, albeit so far marginally. The Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Action (NAMA) is the new kid on the block in the battle against climate change, which is supposed to bring the emissions in developing countries under control. Without it, any attempt to reverse global emission trends will be in vain. Building on 10 years of experience with the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), NAMAs are about to find their own identity and, most importantly, find a new financial basis without addressing an international carbon market and without thriving on a carbon credit. This book gives the first no-nonsense, hands-on account of the financing principles and prospects for NAMAs, unravelling the nature of the NAMA, which to most remain mysterious. The mystery, however, is not a result of convoluted formulations or complicated rule-sets, but due to the absence of such formulations. As such, the NAMA is in a regulatory vacuum in stark contrast to what has led the CDM to become a regulatory nightmare.

Nevertheless, while the NAMA may be the right instrument at the right time, the challenge is that it is spawned from the negotiation sphere, deployed without much interaction with other spheres. Therefore, there is a barrier between concept and action – the realization of which is growing by the day.