A road map for establishing information systems for climate action and support

At the Paris climate conference (COP-21) in December 2015, the Conference of the Parties decided to adopt the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This was the first time that 195 Parties had agreed on a universal, legally binding climate instrument. During COP-21, the Parties agreed that each Party is to communicate a nationally determined contribution (NDC) every five years.

Also, a Party may at any time modify its existing NDC with a view to enhancing its level of ambition. A country’s NDC sets out its efforts to combat climate change, including its mitigation goal, corresponding to its national contribution to global mitigation efforts. At the national level, NDCs will be implemented through individual policies and measures.

All these policies and measures will undergo a measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) process nationally. The information collected from the individual policies and measures can be used nationally to monitor the level of achievement of the mitigation goals stated in the NDC and thus contribute to the reporting of progress in implementing NDCs to UNFCCC.

In this context, the implementation of measurement, reporting, and verification systems at the national and international levels becomes an important tool for tracking individual countries’ implementation of their NDCs.