Dates: 3-5 September 2025
Location: Songdo, Republic of Korea

Background

The 2024 milestone of the first Biennial Transparency Reports (BTRs) marked the operationalization of a more robust and accountable climate regime and a pivotal moment for countries to reflect on progress, identify gaps, and generate data-driven insights. The information, lessons, and trends emerging from the BTRs offer a critical evidence base to inform more ambitious, realistic, and implementable climate targets as countries prepare their next  Nationally Determined Contributions.

While, in theory, the BTR and NDC processes are strongly interlinked, in practice, the processes are often not well aligned and are implemented as separate workstreams in many countries. The lessons learned from the implementation and reporting processes of the first NDCs and BTRs present an invaluable opportunity to strengthen the alignment and integration of these processes at the national level. Such linkages are essential for ensuring that countries’ climate action plans are informed by robust, data-driven insights, genuinely national development priorities.

To this end, ICAT is collaborating with CBIT-GSP (funded by GEF, implemented by UNEP and executed by UNEP-CCC), UNDP, FAO, UNFCCC and PATPA to jointly organize the second Global Transparency Forum to provide a space for countries, development partners, and transparency practitioners to exchange experiences, reflect on lessons from the first BTR submissions, and explore how transparency efforts can effectively inform the development of NDCs 3.0. The Forum will convene a dedicated High-level Event, including the incoming and outgoing COP Presidencies, to create momentum around these critical processes for climate ambition and action in the lead up to COP 30 in Brazil.

Building on the success of the first Global Transparency Forum, this year’s Forum aims to deepen the dialogue and collaboration among countries and partners. The Forum is hosted by the Government of the Republic of Korea, through the Ministry of Environment. Participants of the Forum will include both transparency practitioners and staff involved in national NDC processes, as well as support providers, multilateral development banks and GEF implementing agencies. The Forum will include plenaries and break-out sessions to provide ample space for deep-dive discussions in various areas related to the BTR and NDC processes.

Objectives

The overall objective of this Global Transparency Forum is to strengthen the implementation of the Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF) and support the development of more ambitious and actionable Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs 3.0) by fostering peer learning, dialogue, and collaboration among countries, experts, and partners involved in climate transparency.

The specific objectives of the Global Transparency Forum are as follows:

1. Provide a platform for developing country Parties to exchange lessons learned from preparing their first Biennial Transparency Reports (BTRs) and engaging in the Technical Expert Review (TER) process with a view to collectively advance transparency improvement strategies for the timely submission of the second BTRs.
2. Discuss how national transparency efforts can inform NDC updates and help drive the implementation agenda, including mobilizing climate finance, ensuring transparency contributes to enhanced climate action.
3. Explore strategies for transitioning from ad-hoc reporting to institutionalized, government-led transparency systems, with a focus on sustainable data collection, capacity building, and legal frameworks.
4. Strengthen collaboration among government officials, international organizations, and transparency support providers to advance the transparency agenda.

In addition to the above, the key recommendations from the Forum will be summarized in a Policy Recommendations/Roadmap and outlining actionable steps for countries to improve their BTR and NDC processes.