The Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT) is pleased to announce that it has officially started working with six new partner countries – Antigua and Barbuda, Chad, Chile, Fiji, Liberia, and Nigeria – to support them in enhancing their domestic capacity for mitigation and adaptation action transparency.

Founded to respond to the critical need of improved transparency and capacity building for evidence-based policymaking under the Paris Agreement, ICAT works closely with each country to define their specific needs and priorities and jointly develop a workplan that is custom built to help achieve that country’s national climate and sustainable development goals. Considering this country-centric approach, ICAT partner countries are able to choose from a variety of crucial activities. These include:

1. Building or enhancing the transparency systems for mitigation actions in one or several sectors, including: institutional capacity; GHG inventories; reporting protocols and processes; data systems; and drafting of legal and regulatory documents;
2. Building a monitoring approach for adaptation actions in one or several sectors, including: stakeholder consultations; institutional capacity; reporting schemes and processes; and data systems and tools;
3. Implementing and further developing NDCs, including: baseline; qualitative or quantitative indicators; tracking framework; and sustainable development impacts and transformational change potentials;
4. Assessing the impacts of policies (ex-ante or ex-post, in one or several sectors), using ICAT methodologies for: GHGs; sustainable development impacts; and transformational change potential;
5. Integrating and/or aggregating transparency at the subnational level and for non-state actors;
6. Identifying and furthering domestic benefits and synergies from enhanced climate action transparency, including using data and information to mobilize finance and to stimulate economic recovery during exceptional crises.

To support the work with these new countries, the GHG Management Institute has joined ICAT as an Implementing Partner. WIth an impressive track-record in the MRV of climate policies, GHGMI and its consortium partners International Expert Centre on Air Pollution and Climate Change (Citepa) and the Öko-Institut will support the countries through technical support and capacity building.

ICAT now works with 40 countries across four regions

After the submission of Expressions of Interest in late 2019, the six countries were selected based on a variety of selection criteria. These include the diversity of ICAT countries (e.g. geography, size, economic development, significance of GHG emissions and main GHG emitting sectors); their ongoing efforts on MRV; their support needs; maximum ICAT impact (countries where ICAT can best apply its tools and methodologies); and workability (e.g. political stability, existing in-country partnerships and connections with the implementing entities, existence of functioning institutions/procedures).

ICAT is currently in the process of developing the individually tailored work plans with each of the six countries, with work set to begin by mid-year.

For more information on the types of activities or the support provided by ICAT to partner countries, please contact the ICAT Secretariat.