Climate Budget tagging with focus on policies, risks and gender-based beneficiaries

1. Regional Dialogue on the Role of Climate Proofing Growth and Development to achieve the SDGs 4th – 6th March 2019, Bangkok, Thailand Climate Budget tagging with focus on policies, risks and gender-based beneficiaries Madhukar upadhya Regional Climate Change Policy and Institutional Expert

2. Background • The earlier method of budget tagging was done after the development programmes were already formulated to meet particular sectoral objective. • Tagging was done at the programme level and hence, by default, many activities, which were not quite related to climate change, were also tagged as climate-related. • It was important to consider climate risks while formulating programmes and also improve budget accuracy. • The GoN in its CCFF categorically identified refining coding method to include climate prior to planning as an important reform. The improvements have been initiated in agriculture sector – the most vulnerable and important sector.

3. Background • Improvements have been made in two key areas. • Unpacking the existing criteria to group development programmes under various climate change related typologies to define climate-related programmes and their climate functions to reduce subjectivity in defining them, and; • Assessing level of relevance based on climate vulnerability and gender-based beneficiaries of the programmes.

4. Methodology • Development of typologies. • The tagging system in Nepal used a set of broad 11 criteria to define climate related programmes across development sectors • In order to capture the sector specific nuances in agriculture, 7 different typologies have been developed to classify climate related works in agriculture, which correspond with the 11 criteria used currently • Each typology is further categorized into number of broad climate related works to facilitate planners to see which of their proposed programmes would fall under a specific typology. The climate function such as adaptation, mitigation or both is also specified for each sub-category

5. Major typologies

6. Programme identification • Climate-relevant programmes and activities that fall under each typology are listed under each of them as applicable. • Classifying programmes and activities according to the typology helps reduce chances of inadvertently tagging non- climate relevant programme and activities. • The process helps focus on only those activities that are climate relevant. • Programmes that do not fall under any of the typology are considered as not-related to climate and will be categorized as ‘climate neutral’ – a term used in the LMBIS data base.

7. Major typologies

8. Level of relevance • The weighting of relevance is based on three non-budgetary factors reflecting: • Availability of information about climate risks and vulnerability • Information about the gender-based beneficiary (who does it help) • The degree to which a climate activity links to polices and national commitments.

9. Screening for beneficiries and level of relevance

10. Level of relevance • If 2 or more than 2 of the above three factors are positive (answer being ‘Yes’) for an activity, it will be considered ‘highly relevant’ and if 2 of the factors are negative (answer being ‘No’), the activity will be considered ‘relevant’. • The budget for each of the activity is already specified in the LMBIS.

11. Benefits • Only activity level budget is tagged, which helps improve accuracy of climate budget, • The planners need to consider climate risks that the activity will address, the gender-based target beneficiaries who will benefit, and the policy links of the activity to help meet national commitments before tagging. This helps integrating climate change in the thinking process of planners while planning every activity within the sector, and • It encourages planners to use available climate information, place demand for it from relevant agencies. Connects information generating agencies with the agencies using the information. The need to consider climate vulnerability while tagging will begin a cycle of demand and supply of climate information across sectors in the long run.

12. Thank You Asia-Pacific Regional Forum on Climate Finance and Sustainable Development, 1-3 September 2015, Jakarta