Efforts to track climate finance flows in Latin America have produced incomplete and sometimes conflicting estimates.
This brief is the first in a series summarizing research carried out for the 2017 AdaptationWatch Report. It presents recent work by the Climate Finance Group for Latin America and the Caribbean, and calls for robust climate finance reporting systems across Latin America based on common principles in order to harmonize climate finance information.
To be successful, the authors argue, these reporting systems will need to be based on agreed definitions of climate finance, and should include effectiveness indicators. Additionally, capacity must be built to collect and interpret climate finance information and to use it for decision-making.
The research shows that while several countries have begun to make progress, guidance is needed on what information should be reported and how it should be presented. In particular, the authors propose that mutually-agreed definitions of climate finance that can be applied in multiple contexts are critical for the accurate comparison of data. They also assert the need to develop indicators that capture the extent to which climate finance is effective in building resilience or achieving emissions reductions, and that capacity must be built within national governments in order to collect and interpret climate finance information, and this data should be combined with assessments of climate risk to inform decisions on how to allocate these scarce and critically important resources.
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