Mainstreaming Climate Policy: Best Practices for Government Coordination
To implement ambitious climate action, climate must be mainstreamed as a cross-cutting policy issue across all sectors and levels. Sustained and effective coordination mechanisms across governments, partners and civil society are needed to deliver the transformative change needed by ambitious climate plans. Coordination mechanisms help governments deliver climate targets by integrating climate policy throughout government and society in a consultative and accountable manner.
As countries prepare for NDC enhancements and updates in the upcoming year, building sustained coordination across all sectors and levels plays a key role in achieving ambitious climate policy goals. To coincide with NDC updates, the Partnership has prepared a new Best Practice Brief on effective coordination mechanisms, accompanying our recently published Best Practice Brief on how to apply a whole-of-society approach to effectively engage stakeholders.
The new brief on coordination mechanisms offers country examples and characteristics of the enabling environment needed to deliver transformative change needed for ambitious climate action.
An effective coordination mechanism can vary according to a country’s institutional context — with factors such as strength of political backing, in-house technical expertise on NDC issues and distribution of roles and responsibilities within governments affecting the efficacy of coordination mechanisms. For instance, the Climate Change Commission (CCC) of the Philippines established under the Office of the President provides an example of an effective coordination mechanism. The CCC serves as the Secretariat to an interministerial NDC technical Working Group, which is responsible for the direction and implementation of NDC processes. As the CCC is responsible for monitoring, reporting and verification efforts, the centralized role of the CCC provides synergistic interministerial coordination across the government.
Effective coordination between governments and implementing and development partners is also crucial for NDC processes. Ownership, policy alignment, harmonization and a shift in focus to attaining development results are key principles for effective government-partner coordination. For example, development partners in Tanzania established a Development Partners Group with a working group on environmen, which provides an avenue for structured dialogue and engagement between development partners and governments, streamlining action and reducing transaction costs.
To facilitate a truly ambitious climate action plan, coordination with non-state actors is crucial to this effort. Effective coordination includes conversations with non-state stakeholders such as youth and women’s groups, civil society organizations, private sector and trade associations, unions, academia, indigenous people’s organizations, and local communities, among others. In Ecuador, for instance, an inter-institutional network called the Technical Committee on Gender and Climate Change was created by the Ministry of Environment, Water and Ecological Transition and the National Council for Gender Equality. The technical committee, established in a bottom-up fashion, involved participation from public sector entities, private sector firms, academic institutions and NGOs, connecting climate implementation from all sectors.
The Best Practice Brief shares examples of effective interministerial coordination, implementing and developing partner coordination and whole-of-society coordination. Mainstreaming climate action should build upon existing coordination mechanisms and sustained cross-sectoral linkages are crucial components to incorporating climate action systematically. Climate mainstreaming occurs when relevant line ministries and agencies within each sector have points of contact and teams to coordinate technical assistance and funding with the leading NDC agencies, implementing and development partners, and non-state actors.
Meaningful and inclusive stakeholder engagement processes can spur governments to establish new coordination mechanisms that create space for discussion and collaboration around how to collectively achieve targets set out in the NDC.
Through direct support from the NDC Partnership — specifically the NDC 3.0 Navigator and the Global Call for NDCs 3.0 & LT-LEDS — governments can already begin integrating these best practices into their work. This paves the way for a stronger collective revision of NDCs in 2025 in line with the outcomes of the Global Stocktake.