Report to Plenary on behalf of South Asia Group (including Nepal, Bangladesh and India) Why would you want to do a CPEIR and how might you benefit? As an emerging agenda: Climate Change is a new and emerging policy theme for many countries (e.g Nepal, Bangladesh). CPEIR is seen as part of the process to assess and analyse climate change public expenditure. CPEIR as a Tool: can assist in seeing if climate change expenditure matches up with national priorities. It makes governments accountable for coordination for such activities across planning, finance and environment institutions? Assists mainstreaming. CPEIR can also complement local level activities in the country. Nepal gave the example of the LAPA (Local Adaptation Plans of Action) and how these plans can be linked to government plans and budgeting. It acknowledged that there are financial resource constraints and that donor support for climate change is needed much more. CPEIR has also been a way for countries to acknowledge and measure the insight that they are already spending considerable resources on climate. CPEIR has encouraged countries to look at innovative ways to include and track climate change in national budgeting and monitoring and evaluation systems. CPEIR as an innovative process - aids in defining what a country sees as climate related expenditure, including what are the key questions in disaggregating environmental issues and climate change issues or if this even needs to be done. It asks what is climate relevant expenditure to you? Is there a focus on the financial additionality of climate change?

Next Steps The process function of a CPEIR has been important. Nepal outlined the need for further research and analysis to strengthen decision making on climate finance and for delivery execution. There may be a revision of various aspects of climate change programming (e.g policies). There was consensus that presently countries are only begining to develop a monitoring framework, but it will essential in the future. Creating minimum performance tool for local bodies and strengthening existing systems is imperative. Nepal gave the example of the National Planning Commission which is trying to create overarching monitoring systems as it believes isolated M&E is not sufficient. Nepal gave the very specific next step of fully implementing the budget code and know that there is a need to acquire much more expertise in its execution India outlined that it has 8 priority areas for climate change and will continue to pursue their implementation across the country.

Priorities Continued advocacy for political leaders was also emphasized and sensitize all stakeholders (including citizens) How can we keep citizens informed, promote their participation and develop climate change programmes based on consensus Rationalize the allocation of resources for matching the people’s preference on climate change. Aligning the activities of different development actors at local level on Climate Change actions. How can we improve transparency and accountability? How can we use climate finance as part of the larger dialogue on effective use of government resources? Are some areas more vulnerable? Bangladesh gave the example of Transparency International’s analysis of how they use climate change finance in country. All agreed that global guidance on indicators should be developed and this would be a great contribution at the national level. There was a clear need to address capacity gaps, for policy, localization and much more expertise (including in carrying out CPEIR studies).