The Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT) held its Strategy Workshop in Rome, Italy, on 7 February 2019 to develop ICAT’s strategic goals and priorities for the next 3 years. The workshop brought together almost 50 participants, including ICAT’s donors, representatives from partner countries, technical experts and advisors, and ICAT’s implementing partners.
The meeting opened with a video message from Ms. Patricia Espinosa, the UNFCCC Executive Secretary, who highlighted the necessity to raise ambition in climate action and accelerate implementation to keep the global mean temperature increase at no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. Ms. Espinosa emphasized the important role of ICAT in accelerating the implementation and further strengthening of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement through enhanced transparency, building capacity, improving the availability and quality of data, and providing platforms for countries to share lessons learnt.
During the strategic planning meeting, participants agreed that ICAT would continue its efforts at the country level to help contextualize and operationalize its methodologies and reference materials while also promoting peer learning and South-South cooperation. Since climate negotiators in Katowice, Poland, had confirmed transparency as a central pillar of the Paris Agreement architecture, ICAT will include the following areas of work going forward:
“This workshop has confirmed the commitment by countries around the world to enhance their climate action and engage ICAT to support them in building a transparency framework that can raise the effectiveness of their policies both in terms of delivering domestic development benefits and in meeting global climate objectives,” Mr. Wuester, ICAT Director, noted at the conclusion of the workshop.
For further information on ICAT, please email its Secretariat at ICAT@unops.org.
