In June 2018, the Government of Canada’s federal Department of Environment and Climate Change (ECCC) engaged NovaSphere to deliver a $1.1M project for “Support to enhance Measurement, Reporting and Verification with the Pacific Alliance” (Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru). The original project was expanded to $4.3M in August 2019 to include 15 countries in West Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, the Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo). The expanded project worked closely with partners to help define regional priorities to address greenhouse gas and SLCP emissions and to pursue opportunities for harmonizing measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) systems. The Canadian government funding supported cooperation within and between the two regions, to facilitate the exchange of best practices that align with regional MRV priorities and help seed opportunities for replication of best practices generated from bilateral projects in the region. The project completed in March 2022.

 

The project established an MRV Programme with the mandate to provide technical and policy support to strengthen climate MRV systems for: climate finance, mitigation actions and emission inventories. The main activities of the MRV Programme included a series of consultations and research, baseline scoping reports, technical training, development of MRV communities of practice, a series of reports and South-South knowledge sharing, and development of a knowledge base. The MRV Programme successfully laid the groundwork for strengthened climate governance within the partner countries. The MRV Programme also facilitated the fundamental connectivity and institutional arrangements necessary for effective and efficient sovereign, domestic climate MRV systems.

 

Partner Country Testimonials:

 

“The Programme helped improve the relevance and effectiveness of the national climate MRV system, especially for members of the national inventory system in the context of projects, programmes, selection of stakeholders, their responsibilities and roles; and the coordination to be put in place in each sector. The WA-MRV activities we conducted in Benin will allow us to improve institutional arrangements. Within the framework of the elaboration of the fourth communication and the second biennial report, it is envisaged to improve the quality of the institutions involved in the development of these reports” - National Coordinator, Benin

 

“The WA-MRV Programme had a very big impact. Almost no one knew about the MRV concept in Cape Verde before this initiative. But now in almost all areas involving the climate sector there are technicians who are familiar with the policies and status of the national MRV system.” - National Coordinator Cabo Verde

 

“The activities carried out have helped to accelerate the process of setting up the National Committee on Climate Change (NCCC): which is the strategic orientation and decision-making body for the implementation of the UNFCCC.” - National Focal Point, Guinee

 

“The WA-MRV Programme served as a learning opportunity to set up an effective MRV system which is direly needed for the updated NDCs of Liberia. It also narrowed the gap that existed in establishing an effective MRV system.” - National Coordinator Liberia

 

“Thanks to the WA-MRV funding, we have been able to produce relevant reports on the state of the art of the MRV system and the MRV of mitigation measures in Mali. These two reports allowed Mali to have a clearer idea of the architecture of the data collection data collection, processing and archiving system at the national level. In this regard, the comparative table of MRV systems in West African countries has given us us to develop strategies and plans that will allow us to fill in some of the gaps that will allow us to fill in some of the gaps observed.” - National Focal Point, Mali

 

“The activities of the WA-MRV Program have helped improve the relevance and effectiveness of our national climate MRV system. Indeed, through this program, the country has been able to map the MRV potential of mitigation measures and diagnose the gaps, constraints and needs for technical, human and systematic capacity building, etc.” - National Focal Point, Togo

 

“Truly the programme has had important impact, the relevance and effectiveness of MRV is being demonstrated and is being incorporated into the recent data improvements in the latest validation work for the second BUR inventory studies." - National Focal Point, Togo.

 

More information is available in the online knowledge base www.climate-mrv.com