The paper discusses and proposes a method for beginning to overcome shortcomings of current monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) of climate finance under the UNFCCC.
It contains sections on current knowledge and knowledge gaps on climate financing, a review of existing information systems and reporting mechanisms, and options for an integrated and robust MRV system.
May 2011: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and International Energy Agency (IEA) have published a working paper titled “Monitoring and Tracking Long-Term Finance to Support Climate Action,” which discusses and proposes a method for beginning to overcome shortcomings of current monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) of climate finance under the UNFCCC.
The paper, authored by by Barbara Buchner, Jessica Brown and Jan Corfee-Morlot, contains sections on current knowledge and knowledge gaps on climate financing, a review of existing information systems and reporting mechanisms, and options for an integrated and robust MRV system.
The paper identifies the lack of an internationally-agreed definition of what constitutes climate finance (public and private), and the associated missing basis for its measurement, as major technological challenges to be overcome. The authors highlight relevant finance information to be tracked by a comprehensive MRV system and propose improvements to current systems as well as two new multidimensional reporting approaches. The first option focuses on enhancing national communications and biennial reports, and stresses direct party reporting via a standardized format that could be woven into the existing system. The second option would attempt to ease the reporting burden by limiting direct party reporting and instead work towards collaboration among various international institutions. [Publication: Monitoring and Tracking Long-Term Finance to Support Climate Action]