Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are a central concept and a set of national climate action plans that embody each country's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change. The concept originated with the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty adopted in 2015 by all 196 Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The NDCs were created to solve the problem of achieving the Agreement's long-term goal of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
The mechanism is governed by Article 4, paragraph 2 of the Paris Agreement, which requires every Party to prepare, communicate, and maintain successive NDCs. Countries submit these plans to the UNFCCC secretariat every five years. A key provision is the "ratcheting up" mechanism, which mandates that each successive NDC must represent a progression and reflect the country's highest possible ambition. NDCs connect directly to the Global Stocktake (GST), a five-yearly assessment of the collective progress toward the Paris Agreement's goals, which in turn informs the preparation of the next round of NDCs. Furthermore, Article 6 of the Paris Agreement allows for the cooperative implementation of NDCs.
India's NDC has been recently updated, demonstrating the progression principle. India's original NDC was submitted in 2016. The Union Cabinet approved an updated NDC on March 25, 2026, setting targets for the period 2031-2035. This update replaced the 2022 NDC's 2030 targets. The new targets include increasing the share of non-fossil fuel-based installed electric capacity to 60% by 2035 (up from 50% in the 2022 NDC) and reducing the emissions intensity of GDP by 47% from 2005 levels (up from 45%). The target for creating a carbon sink was also raised from 2.5–3 billion tonnes CO₂ equivalent to 3.5–4 billion tonnes CO₂ equivalent.