Early September Latin American national experts responsible of measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) (national communications, biennial update reports and, national greenhouse inventories, etc) participated in the 3 day long Regional virtual training workshop on institutional arrangements for the existing MRV arrangements and the enhanced transparency framework, including data management for national GHG inventories.

The hands-on training workshop, organized by the Consultative Group of Experts (CGE), with the assistance of the UNFCCC secretariat and RCC Panama, was opened by Mr. Jigme, Team lead of Transparency division, he highlighted the huge potential of the ETF to serve as a tool for enhanced ambition for climate action and as platform to engage larger spectrum of stakeholders.

Aimed at enhancing the technical capacity of experts from developing country Parties in establishing or building upon and strengthening their institutional arrangements to facilitate the implementation of existing measurements, reporting and verification (MRV) arrangements under the Convention and prepare for the implementation of the enhanced transparency framework (ETF), including data management for national greenhouse gases (GHG) inventories, the interactive workshop was conducted in three parts.

Initiating with a self-study session with training materials in Spanish, including the handbook on institutional arrangements to support MRV/transparency of climate action and support, CGE technical handbook for developing country Parties on preparing for implementation on the ETF under the Paris Agreement. The participants, the majority of them sectorial experts responsible for preparing or collecting information in either national GHG inventory, means of mitigation or cross-sectorial information, were then concluding the training post-workshop evaluation.

Focus areas on the agenda included the countries’ institutional mandates, with lessons learnt of collaboration agreements and how coordination between experts and organizations is set up, as well as the jurisdictional frameworks. Another important topic discussed in the MRV/ETF arrangement was the stakeholder engagement, of existing consultation processes and which tools and techniques for stakeholders’ participation are included.  

During the second day of the workshop the RCC host partner UNEP Latin America and Caribbean office, represented by Billy Holness, presented the projects and action available for supporting the countries, under the Climate Ambition and Transparency team. He covered learnings from implementation of regional Capacity-building Initiative for Transparency (CBIT) projects, created at the request of Parties to help strengthen the institutional and technical capacities of non-Annex I countries to meet the enhanced transparency requirement defined in Article 13 of the Paris Agreement. Conclusions mentioned included priorities and recommendations for the transition to the ETF included the cross-sectoral analysis resulting in the highlighting of the importance of gender mainstreaming, in creating synergies with GEF guidelines and also considering the coordination between the Paris Agreement and the SDGs.

Representatives from Argentina, the Dominican Republic and Panama, provided experiences about their national platforms, shared the structure of their institutional arrangements and the linkages with the UNFCCC. This also included their challenges of gaps and capacity-building needs to establish and reporting on institutional arrangements for the transition to the ETF they face. In working groups, the national experts from all countries were ideating of how these challenges were best solved. RCC Panama would like to express gratitude for all national experts sharing their experiences to collectively learn from best practices and advance on the strengthening the institutional arrangements in the region.

For more details on CGE regional training workshops, see here and the 2021 workshop report.

For more details on institutional arrangements to support MRV/ETF, please have a look into the “CGE toolbox on institutional arrangements”, where you would find:

• A technical handbook on how institutional arrangements can support MRV and ETF;
• Case studies and video interviews on experiences and lessons learned; and
• A compilation of references to technical resources.

For more information on CGE and its work plan for 2021, see unfccc.int/CGE and here.