Towards Climate Finance Transparency
This paper maps the broad landscape of funding to enable adaptation and mitigation of climate change, and the systems for monitoring it. These include systems which label the money as ‘aid’ as well as those that have been developed to assess climate finance specifically.
This paper seeks to provide a background and framework on transparency and reporting that makes sense to both those focused on tracking climate finance and improving aid transparency. It proposes a set of recommendations which would offer a pathway towards appropriate convergence around a more coherent set of tools for publishing and sharing data, while maintaining the proper role of the Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in agreeing definitions and setting the terms for Monitoring, Reporting and Verification of action against international climate finance commitments.
A key lesson from aid transparency is that while high quality statistics are crucial, so too is detailed, accessible and timely information to meet the needs of different information users. The International Aid Transparency Initiative is a key innovation which seeks to demonstrate that this does not have to be a choice. Internet based data standards provide a bridge between different systems and users, unlocking data from being presented in multiple, inconsistent individual databases and reports and providing for both flexibility and standardisation.
Ultimately however, the question is not how to build the most elegant system to track volumes of finance, but how to use transparency to enhance and demonstrate the effectiveness of international collaboration in creating both environmental and economic benefits. We hope this paper provides a useful basis to bring together those working on different areas of this question to explore synergies and gaps and to work together towards this common aim.