Introduction
On Tuesday, June 28, 2022, the webinar "Sustainable Development Impact Assessment Guide: Assessing the environmental, social and economic impacts of policies and actions." of the Climate Action Transparency Initiative (ICAT). This is the fourth event in a series of nine virtual sessions, co-organized between ICAT and the LEDS LAC platform, which aims to present three of the evaluation guides and methodologies that ICAT has developed and that have recently been translated into Spanish.
The webinar was opened with welcoming remarks from Henning Wuester, Director of ICAT and featured presentations by Fatemeh BakhtiariSenior Researcher at the UNEP Copenhagen Climate Center, who showed what the Sustainable Development Impact Assessment Guide is and what it is useful for, while Estefania ArteagaResearcher from Griffith University presented on Bolivia's experience using the guide. The event was attended by 138 participants from 13 countries.
A recording of the event can be found at here while the Spanish translation of the Sustainable Development Impact Assessment Guide and its infographic are available for downloading here.
Key messages
About ICAT and the translation of the impact assessment guidelines
The Transparency in Climate Action Initiative (ICAT) helps developing countries strengthen their climate transparency frameworks. To this end, ICAT has prepared a set of guides to assess the impact of different climate policies both in terms of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and in terms of contributing to sustainable development and assessing the potential for transformational change. The series of 10 guides provides a robust methodological approach to help countries prepare their Paris Agreement Enhanced Transparency Framework. Its scope encompasses not only the assessment of past actions and policies but also provides methodologies that enable forward-looking planning and facilitate the tracking and monitoring of the results of policies and actions included in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). With the guidelines, ICAT seeks to assist countries in the development of domestic transparency systems, in the construction and monitoring of future scenarios, and in the planning and implementation of evidence-based climate policies and actions.
In response to the demand identified, mainly from the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region, ICAT has translated three of its guidelines to contribute to the development of monitoring, reporting and verification systems that enhance climate ambition: the Sustainable Development Impact Assessment Guidancethe Evaluation guide on transformational change and the Non-State and Subnational Action Guide. These three guides play a critical role in the development and implementation of robust NDCs by: (1) understanding the sustainable development impact of moving towards ambitious emission reduction targets; (2) understanding the potential for transformational policy change to achieve the decarbonization goal; and (3) considering and incorporating subnational and non-state actor actions and measures to increase the ambition and strength of NDCs.
Today's guide provides methodological tools for incorporating the SDGs to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda.
About the guide (UNEP Copenhagen Climate Center)
The guide aims to support users, government, funding institutions, civil society, policy makers or even the private sector, to systematically assess the multiple impacts of their actions on Sustainable Development. The actions or policies assessed are given in the framework of the Paris Agreement and its linkage with the NDCs: achieving these objectives requires countries to undergo a transformation towards a low-carbon economy and climate-resilient development in all sectors.
One way to increase the level of ambition is to measure the impact of the SDGs, as they play a critical role in increasing the ambition of the NDCs and becoming more climate transparent. Another strength of the guidance, relative to other standards or methodologies, is that it was developed by a diversity of stakeholders with a bottom-up approach (bottom-up) and also provides a detailed step-by-step.
It is important to note that the Enhanced Climate Transparency Framework will enter its full implementation phase in 2024 and several developing countries still lack the tools, necessary information and human and institutional resources to comprehensively assess the sustainable development impacts of national policies and actions. Failure to address these needs may negatively affect the transparency of future reporting. Assessing sustainable development impacts using the ICAT Guidance identifies not only benefits but also negative impacts. It is necessary to understand the negative impacts and how to address them when improving policies.
On the other hand, recording how stakeholders contribute to the Sustainable Development goals and targets will be fundamental to anticipate their commitment to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda. In summary, the objective of the guide is to help users assess all relevant impacts of Sustainable Development policies and actions, across 3 dimensions: environmental, social and economic. It also helps decision-makers to develop effective strategies and to report transparently and consistently on the sustainable development impacts and effectiveness of the policies assessed.
Experiences using the guide in Bolivia
SASA (Bolivian consultant) used the guide to evaluate the progress of the Cities Footprint Project, which assessed the footprints of different cities in Latin America and generated climate action plans for cities to monitor their progress. The project involved the private sector and civil society and was focused on generating a baseline, adding projects to reduce emissions and improving water management in cities. Although the initial project was carried out in several Latin American cities, the ICAT assessment was conducted in 5 cities in Bolivia. The SDG indicators were adapted and indicators relevant to the context of each city were established. Subsequently, a monitoring mechanism was established together with the subnational governments. The guide helped to identify impacts considering the context and administrative processes of each city.
The results were a matrix for governments to have a Sustainable Development indicator, a methodology to measure it and the sources of information to respond to this indicator. This project had an impact on the cities and has been significant and beneficial for monitoring the SDGs. It has been able to build capacity within governments and also effectively reported to different stakeholders (who then became more familiar with the SDGs).
Materials of interest
- ICAT Toolkit with the series of guides (in English): Policy Assessment Guides
- Guide in Spanish: Sustainable Development Impact Assessment Guidance
- Webinar recording, presentations and materials: https://www.ledslac.org/webinars/guia-evaluacion-impactos-desarrollo-sostenible-evaluacion-impactos-ambientales-sociales-economicos-politicas-acciones/
- Pilot study of Bolivia: https://climateactiontransparency.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Sustainable-Development-Case-Study-Bolivia.pdf