Belize is a Party to the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement and is taking measures to implement relevant decisions and address the causes and impacts of climate change to promote resilience to its impacts.

Belize has submitted its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) which makes reference to both mitigation and adaptation contributions consisting of different measures and policies. The NDC includes both an unconditional and conditional contribution. The unconditional contribution will be given by enabling existing policies, laws and projects, the provision of staff and the integration of development and climate change activities. The conditional contribution assumes that international support will be needed for implementation of the actions identified.

As a means to catalyse the implementation of NDCs, in 2015 the Paris Agreement established an enhanced transparency framework (ETF), with the goal of building mutual trust and confidence amongst countries, and to promote its effective implementation (Art. 13). This is considered to be the backbone of the Paris Agreement, and essentially the central mechanism to catalyse and track progress of the implementation of countries’ NDCs. Reporting through the ETF will contribute to increase ambition, and ultimately achieve the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping the increase in temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels while pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C.

For all applications, measuring, reporting and verification (MRV) systems are key elements to guarantee transparency, precision and comparability on climate change information. In response to the needed actions presented by the Paris Agreement, Belize requires a robust MRV system for national policy decisions through the tracking of national GHG emission levels, the tracking of climate finance flows received and the impact of mitigation actions. MRV facilitates sharing information and lessons learnt and allows assessing whether set targets have been achieved. Transparency is a key element of MRV systems, and shows the continuity of a country's actions, indicates progress towards national and global emission targets, and enhances trust for sound climate finance and investment.

Building upon these MRV needs and strengthening national arrangements to meet the enhanced transparency requirements of the Paris Agreement, Belize is engaging with the Initiative for Climate Action and Transparency (ICAT) through its international implementing partners, UNEP DTU Partnership (UNEP DTU) and the Italian National Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA). Through this collaboration, it is expected that current national MRV arrangements are enhanced to improve the quality and access to relevant climate change information and data, leading to informed assessment of climate policies and improved decision making and enhanced ambition.

The overall purpose of the consultancy is to establish a platform that will incorporate the relevant climate change related policies and actions and linking them into one national MRV system for climate change.