Work of the CGE in supporting developing countries prepare their national communications and biennial update reports
The Consultative
Group of Experts organized a side-event to present its achievements, impact
and lessons learned from supporting developing country Parties to prepare their
national communications (NCs) and biennial update reports (BURs) on Monday 10
December 2018 at COP24 in Katowice, Poland. In addition, Kenya and Lebanon shared
key findings and the process they followed to prepare their national reports.
The CGE outlined its accomplishments
between 2014 – 2018 including: training over 2,000 experts through regional
hands-on training workshops and webinars on different themes of NC and BURs and
training another 385 experts for the technical analysis of BURs, and developing
and disseminating online technical resources and other guidance toolkits. The CGE highlighted
two important roles that it could play: act as a bridge between the
intergovernmental process and the practitioner on the ground, and actively
engage with experts from developing countries in the implementation of the
existing measurement, reporting and verification arrangements. The CGE noted
that there is a continued need and demand, with greater emphasis on putting in
place sustainable institutional arrangements, to enhance the national
capacities of developing country Parties to prepare their NCs and BURs.
Lebanon shared the key findings from their
greenhouse gas inventory and their mitigation assessment. It also shared some of
the key challenges in preparing its BUR – mostly resulting from a lack of
proper institutional arrangements in place for data collection such as underdeveloped
arrangements for monitoring and collection of data for the preparation of the
national GHG inventory, and limited data on the progress of policy
implementation. In addition, it was also noted there were challenges in
reporting needs and support received due to different definitions and
methodologies. Lessons learned from Lebanon included: (i) maintaining a continuous
process for preparing such national reports; (ii) defining clear roles and responsibilities
amongst teams; (iii) setting clear expectations of the end product; and (iv)
developing a systematic data collection process. Lebanon encouraged the CGE to continue
providing tools to capture support received for climate change and track impact
of policies and strategies.
Kenya shared key findings from their second
NCs and also the process of preparing their initial and second NCs. It was noted
that institutional arrangements for reporting and data collection were a challenge,
mainly due to the lack of awareness amongst the data providers. However, through
Kenya’s national law on climate change, awareness has been raised in various
ministries on climate change issues, which in turn has facilitated in the development
of a system for reporting. Through this process, institutional arrangements for
reporting are now becoming more permanent and various sectoral ministries are
starting to provide information for the next NC and first BUR. This has resulted in a mainstreamed approach
for developing climate change action plans amongst various ministries.
One of the key takeaway messages from the event
was that with every cycle of the preparation of NCs and BURs can contribute
towards a country’s effort to develop and maintain a long-term institutional
arrangement for reporting. This can
result in a high-quality data and analytical assessments on climate action,
which in turn could feed into national planning processes with a data-backed and
science-informed policies and plans.