Building a comprehensive national MRV framework
Mexico has shown international leadership in developing legislation, policy and programmes to support its transition to a low carbon economy. A general law on climate change was recently approved and a long term climate change strategy is under implementation, together with a multi-stakeholder approach to develop an institutional MRV framework to support NAMAs and LEDS.
The institutional MRV framework being implemented aims to go beyond simply tracking emission reductions and includes a set of measures, systems and registries to perform policy evaluation, institutional strengthening and ultimately support decision-making. Currently the MRV framework in Mexico consists of several mechanisms, including laws, reporting rules, estimation methodologies, and coordination among different institutions of the public and private sector.
These mechanisms continue to be developed and continuously improved and currently serve as a good example of progress towards a comprehensive national MRV framework.
- Enhanced institutional capacity: The main impact of developing an MRV institutional framework is that decision-making is being backed up by data that confirms policy effectiveness. In turn, this has attracted resources from international donors, as they can better track impact and progress. These additional resources have resulted in the enhancement of institutional capacity, within and outside the government.
- Reduced burden to regulated entities: An MRV system is a key component of climate policy, and as such, Mexico, particularly working together with the private sector, has introduced MRV right from the beginning of policy design, with the aim of reducing negative impacts and burdens to regulated entities.
- Low-carbon supply chain: Nowadays, several participants in the GHG Programme, according to their internal voluntary commitments, use the MRV institutional framework to reduce emissions and extend this voluntary participation to their supply chain, using the GHG Programme guidelines. The GHG Programme is now advocating simplified reporting, to include GHG emissions and other environmental and social responsibility commitments, so to minimise compliance costs and burdens, as well as the need to file multiple reports, including those associated with financing low carbon and clean energy projects.
- Long-term framework: MRV is developing broader utility not only for tracking emissions, but also helping inform policy design and evaluation across the board. It is being used as a tool to evaluate the Climate Change Special Programme (PECC), and to better define measures and methodologies to assess the impact of emission reductions and policy development.
- Inter-Ministerial Commission on Climate Change (CICC)
- Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT)
- National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change (INECC)
- Commission on Private Sector Studies for Sustainable Development (CESPEDES)