The 2015 Paris Agreement of the UNFCCC acknowledges that responding to climate change and its impacts will involve new expenditure in all countries, including public spending in developing countries. With the expectation of additional public spending comes an interest to monitor and track such finance so as to ensure the transparency and accountability of public spending systems and decision making.

Addressing climate change requires investments delivered by government programmes across a range of ministries and departments. Departmental spending by the leading ministry responsible for national climate change policies – often the Ministry of Environment – is an insufficient measure of all relevant climate change public spending, as adaptation and mitigation measures involve many sectors, such as water, energy, infrastructure and agriculture.

This paper describes the opportunities and costs associated with the development of monitoring approaches for national climate change public finance. It describes a
leading example of climate change budget tracking, summarises five tools that can support climate change financial monitoring, and identifies key enabling conditions
for its effective application.

The paper concludes by emphasising that the prioritisation, sequencing and frequency of monitoring efforts will influence the overall effectiveness of monitoring climate change public finance.