Designing a Data-Driven Regional Approach to Climate Action in the Caribbean

As climate change impacts grow more severe, countries need to be smarter, more ambitious and more resource efficient in their response. The Caribbean’s regional approach to track progress on climate action is an innovative example of this. To date, country climate action plans - known as Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs - cumulatively fall well short of the Paris Agreement’s 1.5-2⁰C targets. This article presents a new way of thinking on how to improve NDC implementation efficiency across national boundaries based on regional cooperation to track implementation.

The Caribbean Cooperative Monitoring, Reporting and Verification Hub (the MRV Hub), based in Grenada, was established to remedy this problem. The MRV Hub works with ten independent island nations and two independent mainland countries - all members of the Commonwealth of Nations and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). These Caribbean nations have pledged to work individually and collectively to track NDC indicators, share data and raise climate ambition.

At the core of the MRV Hub’s approach is the recognition that all Parties to the Paris Agreement must establish MRV systems to accurately track the progress (or lack of progress) their climate actions contribute towards the Paris Agreement goals. All MRV Hub members are in the process of enhancing their MRV Systems, therefore, revisions to their greenhouse gas (GHG) emission estimates are expected as data quality and availability increases.

The unique regional approach of the MRV Hub

The MRV Hub’s cooperative model, taken across 12 sovereign nations, provides a first attempt to pioneer a regional approach for tackling climate change in groups of countries with much in common. This project’s central innovation is the MRV Hub Model of regionally pooling institutional arrangements and human expertise in a multi-country cooperative endeavor to enhance climate change MRV or transparency systems. As such, the model manages to achieve economies of scale for expertise, climate data systems, reporting processes, and management approaches.

Some of the preliminary success factors for establishing the Regional MRV Hub include the following:

• Experts from the MRV Hub reviewed country national communications and biennial update reports, and consulted with the members who then established a national focal point to coordinate the work;
• Technical MRV System Status Assessments were developed to map each country’s needs and priorities;
• A regional Roster of Experts was developed who now work alongside MRV Hub experts;
• The MRV Hub balances support to partner countries based on their current capacity and prioritized needs, and tailors training and technical services to individual circumstances; and
• The MRV Hub provides a clearinghouse for regional activities and highlights upcoming MRV training opportunities.

Next steps

The level of buy-in from country partners remains strong, with the member countries reconfirming their support for the MRV Hub as a regional institution. The Steering Committee is in the process of evaluating business models to ensure the sustainability of the MRV Hub beyond the initial round of funding.

Here the full article: https://www.ndcs.undp.org/content/ndc-support-programme/en/home/impact-and-learning/ideas-and-insights/2020/designing-a-data-driven-regional-approach-to-climate-action.html .