Exploring long-term mitigation pathways for a net zero Tajikistan

The Paris Agreement encourages Parties to prepare and submit long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategies (LT-LEDS) to the United Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). LT-LEDS are national strategies that identify pathways or scenarios for low-emission development to reach a long-term vision and/or target, while considering broader socio-economic goals. The development of a LT-LEDS is a national process, driven by national priorities and goals, with each country facing different obstacles, and requiring distinctive approaches, priorities, and actions for the required transformation. In this work, a novel five-step back-casting approach is developed to assess alternative mitigation pathways for Tajikistan in order to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, presenting an initial assessment and mapping, and providing the country with a starting point for LT-LEDS development. The approach is based around a set of variables of policy interest, which are areas in which climate mitigation policies, actions, or programmes of incentives can be designed and implemented. Major strengths of the approach are the consistency with the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) and the national greenhouse gas (GHG) emission inventory. Four mitigation pathways are defined for Tajikistan, each incorporating different policy intensity levels for the variables of policy interest. It is found that although each of the four mitigation pathways provides a significant GHG emission reduction potential, only one reaches carbon neutrality by 2050, namely, the pathway that focusses on considerable policy efforts in all sectors of the economy and incorporates intensive policy efforts for both nature-based and technological carbon dioxide (CO2) removal.