UNFCCC and CEEW: Enhanced Transparency Framework Capacity Building Tool

Aiming to enhance countries capacity to report on climate change

Transparency reports are central to enhancing mutual trust and confidence among countries, as they provide crucial information on national inventories, progress toward NDCs, policies, climate change impacts, adaptation actions, financial, technological and capacity-building needs and areas for improvement. To ensure consistency and comparability, the Paris Agreement established the Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF), marking a transition from a differential reporting obligation to a common reporting framework in which all countries are required to submit a Biennial Transparency Report, with the first report due by 31 December 2024. This framework has introduced enhanced reporting and review requirements as compared to the requirements under the previous MRV arrangements.

However, countries (mostly developing) are at different starting points concerning their domestic capacity to adhere to the reporting obligations under the MRV and the ETF arrangements. Some do not have formal/long-term arrangements and depend on external consultants. Further, there is no comprehensive mechanism which could enable developing countries to undertake a needs and support assessment, establish current capacity, and monitor progress in capacity development related to transparency.

To address this gap, the UNFCCC and CEEW have developed the Enhanced Transparency Framework Capacity Building Tool (ETF-CBT) to identify capacity constraints, gaps, and needs at the country level associated with implementing existing MRV arrangements under the Convention and the ETF under the Paris Agreement.

“The tool outcomes will support countries in building reporting capacities that would help understand the implementation of domestic climate actions and thereby inform the formulation of national policies.”

Benefits of using the tool

It helps countries identify gaps and mismatches between capacity-building needs within national contexts and the support received. This will inform inputs to the Biennial Transparency Report (BTR) as it highlights the country's capacity-building efforts regarding transparency.
Offer inputs to the Capacity-building Initiative for Transparency (CBIT) proposals for the country and support their capacity-building programs for climate change reporting.
Provide a rationale for applying flexibility provisions under the BTR, support the formulation of improvement plans, as well as discuss the capacity challenges during the BTR review process.

Framework of the tool

The core of the tool is the indicators, which are defined for areas of climate reporting, such as greenhouse gas inventories, nationally determined contributions (NDCs), means of implementation, mitigation, adaptation and vulnerability assessments. All indicators are termed capacity indicators and are broadly divided into three capacity aspects, as depicted in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Capacity indicators associated with climate reporting

For each indicator, different assessment criteria are adopted, which are carefully chosen to capture and represent the nuanced aspects of each area of reporting accurately. This variation in assessment criteria occurs across different capacity aspects and within indicators.

Capacity assessment: Establishes the baseline capacity for the indicators.
Need assessment: Associate capacity indicators with the needs identified by the Government in their reports – Biennial Transparency Reports and technical analysis.
Support assessment: Associate capacity indicators with the support received by the Government. This is done by mapping the activities/outcomes of the climate reporting projects for the country under GEF with the capacity indicators.

Figure 2: Building blocks of ETF-CBT

Lastly, the outcome of the three assessments is integrated to determine the areas for which:

Capacity has been built, or capacity already exists
Capacity challenges exist despite support being received (retention issues)
Capacity needs have not been addressed or identified

The Council is available to extend support to countries in identifying capacity constraints and undertaking domestic research using our Capacity-Building Tool.

For more information and support - please reach out to: Simran Sukhija Sumit Prasad

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