Technical support to increase the overall transparency capacities in developing countries under the Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT)

ICAT Background

The Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT) was created at the time of adoption of the Paris Agreement to help developing countries build transparency frameworks for effective, evidence-based climate policies and actions that can contribute to the global transformation required, and help mobilize the financing and support to enable implementation. The Initiative works with over 50 developing countries ranging from large countries, like Nigeria, to small islands, such as Fiji.

ICAT provides countries with tailored support and practical tools and methodologies to build robust transparency frameworks needed for effective climate action in sync with national development priorities. Through regional hubs and direct country engagement, the projects  ICAT supports relate to: 

1. Develop NDC tracking frameworks; 

2. Assess greenhouse gas and/or sustainable development impacts of sectoral policies;

3. Build frameworks to analyze projections of greenhouse gas emissions and removals; 

4. Develop monitoring frameworks for just transitions; 

5. Develop the M&E of adaptation actions;

6. Build climate finance transparency frameworks; and/or

7. Aggregate or integrate greenhouse gas impacts of subnational and non-State actions.

To support these areas, ICAT offers a suite of practical, open-source tools and methodologies to provide effective support to the transparency efforts of countries around the world.

ICAT is an unincorporated multi-stakeholder partnership steered by the Donor Steering Committee (DSC), conformed by its donors, Austria; Canada; the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF); Germany; and Italy; and includes the UNFCCC Secretariat as the dedicated UN body with a climate change policy mandate, and UNOPS as an ex-officio member. The Initiative is hosted by UNOPS on behalf of the DSC. Within UNOPS, the ICAT Secretariat manages ICAT’s day-to-day activities, coordinating and guiding the work of the implementing partners.

The ICAT 2.1 Strategic Approach 

In 2025, the ICAT donors agreed to extend the initiative through 2030. The extension is grounded in insights from an independent external evaluation conducted between May and October 2024, which confirmed ICAT’s substantial contributions to supporting over 70 countries in strengthening their climate transparency frameworks over time. The ICAT 2.1 Strategy aims to refine ICAT’s core strengths: enabling transformational climate action through data-driven policy design and evaluation, providing agile and flexible support tailored to country-specific contexts, fostering local ownership through capacity building, and encouraging peer-to-peer learning. These approaches are intended to help countries mainstream climate action into development planning, apply just transition principles, and effectively use the ICAT toolbox of methodologies to design, track, and improve their national climate strategies.

Country support

Under ICAT 2.1 and subject to the availability of funding, ICAT plans to continue to support some 25 countries that ICAT is already engaged with, and open collaboration with some 20 additional countries. Each country's support project will have several phases to achieve one or several of the outcomes that are aligned with ICAT’s Strategy 2.1 (ref also section 1.3 Targeted impact of the grant/funding).

ICAT offers partner countries support through focused and time-bound (12 to 18 months) projects with resources provided for: (a) international expert advice and support through one of ICAT’s Implementing Partners; (b) work by national experts or a national expert institution, local training activities, stakeholder workshops and related activities. 

ICAT collaborates with partner countries to design the project workplan or to build it from the menu of seven project components listed in the background section above. The project components are based on already implemented ICAT country projects and foresee the application of one or several of ICAT’ tools or methodologies where feasible. Each component is targeting different aspects of climate action transparency, and it is expected that after successful implementation countries will be equipped with frameworks, methodologies and tools for effective, evidence-based climate policies and actions. The components can be combined and/or tailored to address a country's needs and priorities. 

ICAT is open to engaging with countries with different readiness levels to implement transparency frameworks. All the components would enable countries to develop effective and realistic NDC updates, support NDC implementation plans and report to UNFCCC. The components one to three can be combined within the framework of one ICAT project to develop the integrated sectoral MRV. Implementation of the ICAT projects involving components four to seven is more resource-intensive and would require a standalone project to implement each of them. If a country already has clearly defined requirements for support within the scope of ICAT’s mandate, the project can be tailored to meet those needs.

Knowledge development and sharing

Distilling the lessons learned from the country and regional activities, feeding them back into ongoing activities and sharing them widely, is one of the central features of ICAT’s approach in order to maximize the impact and reach beyond the limited set of countries directly supported. This includes further enhancing the ICAT toolbox based on lessons learnt and developing tools and methodologies in response to needs identified. Results of toolbox applications are published and actively disseminated to encourage the application of tools in other countries.

By establishing partnerships with other relevant programmes and initiatives, ICAT aims to strengthen a global community of practice on climate action transparency. This includes: hosting an annual partner forum, hosting webinars, the development and delivery of a range of training and capacity building programmes, and coordinating communities of practice.   

Particular focus is placed on peer-to-peer learning among national experts by:

• Organizing together with partner initiatives regional, sub-regional or thematic workshops to facilitate exchange among country transparency experts and policymakers; and

• Facilitating direct peer-to-peer collaboration among ICAT partner countries facing similar challenges and interested in using similar tools and approaches, through pairing arrangements to exchange practical insights and solutions.

Objective

To enable countries to be better positioned to both strengthen and effectively implement their NDCs by providing international expert advice and support, i.e. technical support, training and capacity building, to developing countries for their transparency efforts related to climate actions and policies based on country priorities and needs.

Specific objectives

The specific objectives of the grant are to support countries in:

• Building modelling frameworks and tools to design strong NDCs and related strategies, collecting data for such analysis, and refining inventories focusing on policy-relevant sectors. 
• Applying the ICAT toolbox to analyze policy impacts, covering both greenhouse gas and sustainable development impacts, to put in place credible just transition monitoring processes, and/or climate finance transparency frameworks.