The Caribbean Virtual Exchange Series on NDC development The sixth and final webinar

The Caribbean Virtual Exchange Series on NDC development

The sixth and final webinar

On 22 October 2020, the UNFCCC Regional Collaboration Centre St. George’s and the Caribbean Cooperative Monitoring, Reporting & Verification Hub (CCMRVH), hosted the sixth Caribbean NDC Support Virtual Exchange Platform, under the topic “Costing and Financing of NDCs and Tracking of Climate Finance,” in partnership with the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), the NDC Partnership, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IaDB).

The sixth and final exchange was aimed at providing a platform for supporting nationally determined contribution (NDC) revision and implementation, with target audiences encompassing government representatives together with international and regional organizations and their consultants and technical specialists.

The following were the specific topics covered in this Virtual Exchange:

Costing of NDCs and how to report in NDC;
Finance strategy/plan for NDCs and its implementation/support for accessing climate finance;
Tracking of climate finance flows and reporting; and
Country experiences from Suriname and Chile.

The session was led by Gerard Alleng, Climate Change Senior Specialist with the Climate Change and Sustainability (CCS) Division of the IaDB. It also included live presentations from Raul Delgado, also from IaDB; Green Finance Advisor Trinidad Lecaros, from the Ministry of Finance, Chile; Lluis Vilardell Torrent from the Consulting and Technical Advisory Division of OCA Global Group; and Senior Legal Advisor Ivette Patterzon from the National Coordination Environment office of the President of Suriname.

During the live session, Raul Delgado presented an overview of the key elements of finance strategy plans for NDCs. In Delgado’s presentation, he disclosed that the overall aim of a finance strategy is to enable countries to plan with specific short, medium, and long-term climate change goals. Another emphasis he made is on having a comprehensive and robust financial strategy, which places each country in a better position to achieve its NDC goals, and avoid investments in those assets which may eventually be stranded and result in loss for the country due to its carbon emissions.

He also mentioned that translating broad and ambitious climate goals into practical and tangible roadmaps is a major challenge that most countries face while delivering their NDCs. With regards to this, he stated that having financial strategies and investment plans that provide a framework for prioritizing investment areas, articulation of roles of the different decision makers and stakeholder engagement process are all helpful in defining and outlining the country’s goals in their NDC.

From the Ministry of Finance in Chile, Trinidad Lecaros shared experiences on how the Chilean NDC finance strategy aligns with their Climate Change framework bill. According to her, the strategy was developed to promote economic and financial instruments and market development as well as strengthen green finance in the financial sector. The strategy was developed under 3 main axes, all of which play an important role ensuring an effective and efficient strategy over time. These were:

Information, data generation and analysis under a coherent framework;
Promotion of economic and financial instruments and market development; and
Strengthening green finance in the financial sector.

Further, Lluis Vilardell Torrent from the OCA Global Group presenting on NDC enhancement and the country experience of Suriname. He underscored that a core objective of the NDC enhancement process is to have international impact, stronger analytics and to be strategically smart, with full engagement of all relevant stakeholders.

Torrent noted that stakeholder engagement is a very crucial aspect of the NDC enhancement process, as the contributions of stakeholders’ aid in the identification of gaps and areas for improvement, help to ensure that NDCs are prioritized and aligned with current national priorities, and help identify recent and upcoming developments in sectorial policies. He went on to explain that stakeholder engagement also provides information for clarity, transparency, and understanding of the final document, and encourages greater ownership and effective “buy-in” of proposed measures by all parties.

Torrent stated that, in the process of enhancing NDCs in Suriname, the involvement of international and development partners in generating an investment portfolio attracted potential investors and increased climate finance opportunities.

Ivette Patterzon, Senior Legal Advisor from the National Coordination Environment office of the President of Suriname, presented on the country experience of Suriname highlighting the need to prioritize climate actions for the generation of investment plans.

The final session was closed by Vintura Silva, Team Lead of RCC St. George's, who thanked all the International and Regional Organizations and partners as well as Governments that collaborated with UNFCCC/RCC St. George’s, as part of its capacity building support to the Caribbean countries who are in the process of revising or updating their NDCs.

In addition to the live webinars, participants were also provided with pre-recorded material. For this session, the pre-recordings were prepared by the Commonwealth Secretariat, OECS: NDC Financial Institution, Vivid Economics and GCF Readiness. The recordings covered a range of topics including “Support available for Climate Finance Accessing”, “Engaging Private Sector or Sub-Regional Frameworks to support NDCs”, “Project Preparation for Climate Finance” and “Costing of NDCs” (The pre-recording of the sixth session can be found at this link)