The submission of revised national climate plans (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement is an important milestone in 2020 in order to further close the large gap between the climate targets and the previous requirements of the governments. Due to COVID-19 situation, conditions for an active CSO engagement are very difficult due to the unlimited attention to COVID-19 and the partial Little attention to climate policy, government restrictions on travels and gatherings, etc.. Awareness of cumulative effects and various solutions for both climate change and COVID-19 among decision-makers in project countries is very low due to the strong COVID emergency approach. Tanzania like many project countries treat climate measures during the COVID19 recovery phase as secondary and see these two as completely decoupled. The project addresses this situation with a focus on the voice and the contributions of civil society organizations in the project countries, especially in Bangladesh, Tanzania and Uganda, for participatory and gender-equitable improved NDCs in the context of the COVID-19 recovery are taken into account when creating the NDC.

Tanzania submitted its first Intended Nationally Determined Contribution to the UNFCCC by 2015. Since 2015, the URT has been revising and updating the NDC and implementation plan to ensure they are ambitious and realistic commitments. The process has been slow that expected due to limited available resources and the arising challenges like COVID-19 which have been changing the wave of focus of the government. Currently the review process of the Tanzania NDC is complete, and the NDC has been submitted to the ministerial cabinet for approval to be submitted to the UNFCCC and effective commencement of the implementation.

Through this project, the second review of the draft NDC was conducted to address the key issues of gender, WASH and blue economy which were missing. This also provided an opportunity for enhancement of CSOs in the technical session of revising the NDC and implementation plan that ensured practical ambitions on both adaptation and mitigation, expected to strengthen monitoring, reporting, engagement, ownership and build country resilience to the impacts of climate change and equally contribute to the global effort of reducing GHGs emission.