The overall financial architecture of a global climate agreement can help to ensure that national and international systems for tracking and matching climate support are efficient and effective. Recent OECD work focuses on tracking financial flows – both public and private – to support climate action.
Comparing Definitions and Methods to Estimate Mobilised Climate Finance (May 2013)
By Randy Caruso and Jane Ellis (OECD)
At the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP) in 2010, developed countries formalised a collective climate finance commitment made previously in Copenhagen of "mobilising jointly USD 100 billion per year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries...from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources" (UNFCCC, 2010). However, there is currently no definition of which "climate" activities, flows, or other interventions could count towards the USD 100 billion; what "mobilising" means; or even which countries are covered by this commitment. The paper examines different definitions used by 24 key actors in climate finance to quantify the level of private climate finance mobilised by their interventions, as well as the methods used to track such private climate finance. Key findings are that i) methodologies to assess and estimate mobilisation vary widely, and ii) considerable risk of double-counting exists.
Tracking Climate Finance: What and How? (May 2012)
By Christa Clapp, Jane Ellis, Julia Benn, Jan Corfee-Morlot (OECD)
Developed countries have committed under the international negotiations to jointly mobilising $100 billion per year by 2020 for climate change mitigation and adaptation in developing countries. Yet consistent and comprehensive data to track this commitment and climate finance effectiveness are currently lacking. This paper considers what data are currently available to track climate finance, and demonstrates the complex nature of financial flows through examples across international and domestic as well as public and private flows. The examples highlight both technical and political questions.
Expert Workshop on Tracking Climate Finance Flows from the Private Sector and Multilateral Development Banks
On November 10, 2011, OECD/IEA held a workshop to share experiences of existing methodologies to track private sector flows for climate change and how they could be reinforced. The event also explored the integration of climate change flows from multilateral development banks into the OECD DAC Creditor Reporting System. The discussions highlighted the complexity of climate finance flows and the difficulty of separating the political and technical aspects of measuring them. Ongoing OECD/IEA work will examine the progress that can be made in the absence of political decisions.
Monitoring and Tracking Long-Term Finance to Support Climate Action (2011)
This OECD/IEA paper highlights the relevant information that needs to be tracked in order to build a comprehensive MRV system for climate finance, proposing both improvements to current reporting and tracking systems as well as new reporting approaches for a more robust and inclusive MRV system. It proposes two concrete “strawman” options to build an integrated framework for MRV of climate finance covering both public and private flows of climate finance. This builds on a 2009 study, "Financing Climate Change Mitigation: Towards a Framework for Measurement, Reporting and Verification", see below.
Source: "Monitoring and tracking long-term finance to support climate action" (authors, see above)
Defining and Measuring Green FDI: An Exploratory Review of Existing Work and Evidence (2011)
Little is known about the magnitude of FDI‘s contribution to green growth at a time when strategies for achieving greener growth are high on the policy agenda in many countries. This working paper documents efforts to define and measure green FDI, investigates the feasibility of different definitions, and identifies investment policy restrictions to green FDI.
Financing Climate Change Mitigation: Towards a Framework for Measurement, Reporting and Verification (2009)
This OECD/IEA paper explores the goals and objectives of current financial support for climate action and the amounts that are flowing through various channels. It also sets out first principles for how to track relevant streams of public finance and monitor/assess progress in a transparent and accurate manner, focusing initially on mitigation.
The OECD Development Co-operation Directorate has statistics on bilateral Official Development Assistance (ODA) with the aim of assisting developing countries in the implementation of the three Rio Conventions. The web page Focus on Aid Targeting the Objectives of the Rio Conventions includes the latest studies on tracking aid through the Rio markers in support of climate change mitigation and adaptation in developing countries. (See flyer on Tracking Climate Aid).
Other work within the OECD/IEA Climate Change Expert Group (CCXG) focuses on Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV), assessing current experience relevant to possible post-2012 MRV provisions (including for improved reporting of climate support), and exploring design options for matching support with countries’ climate actions.
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