The Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT) is pleased to announce the addition of two new Implementing Partners – the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute and NewClimate Institute – to an already dynamic collaboration of organizations.

With both new partner institutes being very well established with excellent track-records in work related to the monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) of climate policies and actions, they will help scale the invaluable support offered by ICAT in developing the capacity of countries for enhanced transparency as a basis for evidence-based policymaking and implementation of commitments under the Paris Agreement.

Building stronger transparency frameworks through tailor-made country support

As an ICAT Implementing Partner, the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute (GHGMI) and its consortium partners, International Expert Centre on Air Pollution and Climate Change (Citepa) and the Öko-Institut, will provide technical support and capacity building to six new ICAT partner countries – Antigua and Barbuda, Chad, Chile, Fiji, Liberia, and Nigeria. At the core of ICAT’s approach is to work closely with each country to identify their priorities and needs. In this manner, GHGMI will develop with the countries a suitable work programme to develop their capacity to effectively assess the impacts of their climate policies and actions and fulfil their transparency commitments under the Paris Agreement’s Enhanced Transparency Framework.

Depending on the customized work plan agreed, GHGMI will jointly carry out a number of activities with the countries. These activities might include assessing the GHG impacts of climate change policies and actions, along with their sustainable development outcomes and transformational change potential, providing technical support to develop or enhance their domestic MRV/transparency systems, tracking the implementation of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and assessing the impact of other national climate change policies and actions.

Complex policy assessment calls for innovative tools

Tracking the implementation and achievement of NDCs is an important aspect of the support provided by ICAT. While the ICAT Assessment Guides were developed to assist countries in tracking the impact of individual climate policies and actions, some ICAT partner countries have identified the need to be able to assess the portfolio of policies to implement NDCs rather than only individual policies in isolation.

Given the current economic crisis, work to support the use of transparency to mobilize finance from public and private sources, identify linkages with existing and emerging funding mechanisms and facilitate the establishment of public-private partnerships with the aim of ensuring more effective and transformational policy design with greater sustainable development benefits will be very timely.

This is especially important during the present global pandemic when countries are considering including climate action within economic stimulus packages and they need to understand the wider socio-economic impacts of such policies.

As another new ICAT Implementing Partner, the NewClimate Institute will also support this agenda by work to advance the innovative PROSPECTS+ tool to address certain gaps and support its application in a number of ICAT countries.

PROSPECTS+ is an economy-wide, bottom-up Excel tool which uses decarbonisation-relevant activity and intensity indicators to track and project sectoral and national total GHG emission trends. Countries can use it to develop their own emission scenarios up to 2050 by adjusting policy relevant indicators in this open-source, user-friendly tool. Focus of the tool is to allow the use of specific add-ons to assess sustainable development impacts of emission scenarios. Such impacts include, for instance, the estimation of job creation potential of energy strategies increasing the use of renewable energy and health-related benefits of climate policies in transport.

If you would like to stay up to date with the latest developments and unique insights into either project, please subscribe below. For any questions about how to become an ICAT Implementing Partner, please get in touch with the ICAT Secretariat.

About the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute

The Greenhouse Gas Management Institute was founded in response to the current and future need for qualified greenhouse gas (GHG) professionals. GHG emissions management requires a highly competent and ethical professional class to undertake measurement, reporting, verification, and mitigation activities. The Institute has developed a technically rigorous training curriculum delivered globally via e-learning and onsite workshops as well as the world’s first accredited personnel certification for GHG professionals.

Their mission is to build and support a global community of experts with the highest standards of professional practice in measuring, accounting, auditing, and managing GHG emissions. This effort is critical to ensuring that market mechanisms and policy responses to climate change are effective and credible.

About NewClimate Institute

NewClimate Institute supports research and implementation of action against climate change around the globe. They generate and share knowledge on international climate negotiations, tracking climate action, climate and development, climate finance and carbon market mechanisms. They connect up-to-date research with the real world decision making processes, making it possible to increase ambition in acting against climate change and contribute to finding sustainable and equitable solutions.

Their flagship projects such as the Climate Action Tracker and ACT2015 are internationally recognised and followed. These and other projects put them at the forefront of the climate change forum, where they seek to achieve maximum impact for the international climate change mitigation effort.