Overseas Development Institute (ODI) study examining and assessing the state of Tanzania's climate change related finance.
Both the Tanzanian government and the international community presently do not have sufficient ways of measuring public flows of finance, nor of promoting effective financial support delivery practice for climate change-related actions. This study aims to address both of these constraints, and provides a first estimate of climate change relevant expenditures that appear in the national budget of Tanzania over the period 2009/10 – 2012/13. The methodology of the study included a qualitative analysis of policy and institutional arrangements, combined with a quantitative review of public spending. This last task required manual compiling as there is no system for identifying and tracking climate change related expenditure. The key messages highlighted by the authors are that:
Climate change relevant expenditure has increased steadily as a proportion of the total budget from 4.2 per cent in 2009/10 to 6.5 per cent in 2012/13. This growth in budget for climate change relevant activities has been driven by an increase in donor funding that is on-budget.
The 2012 National Climate Change Strategy represents a significant milestone, but it needs to be further strengthened to include the identification of priority programmes, their budgeted costs, and the expected sources of funding.
The financing of climate change actions appears to be treated primarily as a budgetary rather than a policy issue.
The composition of climate change relevant expenditure appears to have shifted from projects with a primary focus on either adaptation or mitigation, to projects that appear to combine both objectives.
There is a considerable amount of spending taking place in ministries without the full realisation of the significance of such spending in terms of its relation to climate change.
Tanzania’s capacity to implement such national strategies needs to improve if climate change is to be managed effectively in the future.
Recommendations are presented across four main themes: securing information on climate finance that recognises through specific coding of climate change-related expenditure; strengthening the policy setting for effective climate finance delivery, including a financing plan for the 2012 National Climate Change Strategy and 2013 national REDD+ strategy; securing the institutional capacity for effective climate finance delivery by updating institutional architecture and increasing levels of climate change knowledge; and finally, supporting a public financial management environment for effective climate delivery.