The Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT) has announced the release of the final version of the ICAT series of Policy Assessment Guides in a statement recently.
This series of Assessment Guides will enable “countries to assess the impacts of their climate policies and actions, leading to greater transparency, effectiveness, ambition and trust in climate policies. One component of this work is to provide the methodologies and tools needed to assess the impacts of those policies and actions that aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, achieve sustainable development outcomes and drive transformational change”, the statement says.
Speaking on this development, Dr Eugene Itua, CEO Natural Eco Capital explained that it is a very good development because of the ease, standard and structured approach created through this means by ICAT.
“ICAT has done well and we are happy with this latest development and approach.” Says Itua.
The Guides will allow policymakers and technical experts to assess climate action impacts and ultimately, improve policy design and implementation, inform goal setting for example in the National Determined Contributions (NDCs), track progress towards these goals, provide information for reporting domestically or internationally, and attract finance by demonstrating the results of effective policies.
According to ICAT, the final version of the Guides resulted from an extensive three-year process implementing the Guides in over 20 countries. The Guides were developed by technical experts and working groups and went through two thorough public consultations to ensure that they could be practically and easily implemented by countries and non-state actors. The series of Guides now also includes templates and real examples from partner countries to facilitate their application.
As part of their ongoing capacity building, ICAT has also expressed their desire to work with partners to apply the Assessment Guides to specific policies and actions.
The series of ICAT Assessment Guides includes an introduction to the ten guides which is made up of eight impact assessment methodologies and two process guides as shown in the schema below:
