The world has limited time to address climate change and will require a dramatic shift in public and private investments from fossil fuels to more sustainable climate-friendly alternatives by regional and local governments. This Primer introduces a set of approaches to help sub-national authorities through the process of designing their Integrated Territorial Climate Plan (ITCP), from setting objectives and participatory arrangements for the preparation of the Plan, to financing priority activities. It discusses scaling up efforts to address climate change and preparing an ITCP.The Primer describes possible approaches to developing ITCPs and serves as an introduction to the following methodological handbooks:
Developing an ITCP: A Partnership Policy Framework
Climate Change Impact Scenarios and Vulnerability Mapping
The Technology Needs Assessment Handbook
The Climate Change Policy and Investment Handbook.
The publication reports that key institutional players are confronted with the following constraints that limit their interventions:
the lack of the necessary data, methodologies and technical assistance to assess the potential physical and economic impact of climate change at the regional and local levels
limited technical and financial capacities
knowledge sharing is hindered by the varying roles and responsibilities of regions.
To break the above institutional barriers, integrated climate plans must be cross-sectoral in nature, covering adaptation and mitigation activities, and considering both synergies and trade-offs. A huge array of public policy and financial instruments are available to regional authorities to achieve priority mitigation and adaptation measures in the different sectors. There is a need to:
sequence financial instruments as a pre-condition to capitalise on new market-based financing opportunities
combine different financial instruments
find an optimal mix of policy measures to identify a possible mix appropriate for the unique requirements of a given region
translate policy measures into a coherent set of projects (to carry out required policy change, institutional strengthening and investments)
share experiences with innovative instruments to reduce the pressure of climate change action on public budgets.
The Primer concludes that a key challenge for decision-makers will be to identify the most appropriate set of public policy and financing instruments to implement their territorial climate strategy.