At COP26 Side Event, JICA Ogata Research Institute's Adachi Discusses Developing Countries' Challenges on Climate Policies

Adachi introduced the approach taken by the project to adopt a series of case analyses to examine various countries' efforts and identify practical challenges in implementing environmental and climate change policies and measures on the ground. He underscored that while implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement relies on self-efforts of developing countries, there are observed operational challenges and difficulties. Given the diverse nature of challenges facing developing countries, the importance of tailoring design of assistance to fit with individual circumstances and shape activities to best support nurturing such inherent capacities are highlighted. Adachi emphasized this flexibility approach is applicable to supporting developing nationally determined contributions (NDCs), which are national plans on climate actions, and conducting monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) of climate change mitigation.

Kawanishi Masato, senior advisor at JICA, shared lessons from JICA's technical cooperation on national greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories. Analyzing how and under what conditions technical cooperation can catalyze endogenous capacity development in developing countries, he took up the case of Indonesia. In this technical cooperation, outsourced external experts initially undertook the task of producing the inventories but eventually the Ministry of Environment and Forestry took over the task, with JICA's cooperation serving as a catalyst for longer-term capacity development. He illustrated a pilot activity where a methodological improvement in GHG inventories led to a noticeable reduction of the reported emissions in the waste sector, which convinced the Ministry officials of the urgent need for capacity development.

Fukuda Koji, chief advisor of JICA’s technical cooperation project to support the NDC implementation in Vietnam, currently spearheading JICA's technical cooperation to support the NDC implementation in Vietnam, shared the key findings from his analysis, which selected Hai Phong city and Ho Chi Minh city as case studies to examine key factors influencing the implementation of city-level climate change action plans (CCAPs) and their deviations. He shared the findings of divergence in both implementation rate of CCAPs, and the maturity of CCAP at the time of approval expressed in budgetary certainty. Among the six indicators examined, Fukuda also stated that the types/nature of proposed measure subscribed in the CCAP (investment budget vs environment budget), local leaders' commitment, and the capacity of local officials to localize the CCAP by connecting the plan with the local priority development agenda were identified as factors influencing implementation. Based on the findings, he further tapped on potential avenues by which international support could help close the observed implementation gaps.