High upfront costs for renewable energy technologies further compound the problem. Failure to account for externalities, such as health or the environment, coupled with fossil fuels subsidies, distort the market to the detriment of renewable energy. Knowledge and capacity among potential renewable energy financiers are often limited, resulting in increased risks and elevated costs.

Mitigation and adaptation climate change policy cuts across all sectors of the economy and broader national priorities, such as poverty alleviation, sustainable development and economic growth. This paper outlines the evolution of the low-emission development strategies (LEDS) concept in the climate policy discourse and explores the existing strategies, action plans and documents.

In the absence of specific guidelines from the UNFCCC on how to develop NAMAs, implementing organizations, donors, and host countries have been formulating NAMAs in a trial-and-error basis. By extracting lessons from these experiences, the previous version of this guidebook introduced basic elements of NAMAs and also different approaches for NAMA-related decisions.