Supporting global climate efforts through online, independent assessment frameworks

The Paris Agreement signals a shift towards a more flexible approach to unite global efforts to address the climate change challenge – a hybrid between the top-down mechanisms to ensure the integrity of actions and bottom-up Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to accommodate countries’ reality and priorities. At the same time, Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which enables countries to achieve their NDC targets by transferring “mitigation outcomes” internationally, could potentially open the door for the next generation of climate markets and expand the scope of international cooperation at a much larger scale.
However, without an established way to design, assess and compare increasingly diverse climate actions – it is difficult to implement effective programs, track progress towards NDC targets or ensure the environmental integrity of linking heterogeneous, bottom-up climate markets.

What is the MAAP?

The MAAP was developed by the World Bank’s Networked Carbon Markets (NCM) initiative to help solve this problem. 
Through a user-friendly and secure online platform, the MAAP establishes a transparent and independent framework to help governments, project developers, investors and other relevant stakeholders to design mitigation efforts across the globe. The platform also allows them to compare the relative risks and performance of the projects.

Currently, the MAAP offers four modules (Figure 1). Each module consists of a range of assessment areas and indicators that reflect what experts consider as key components of any robust climate action. Each module’s final score is based on the score and/or weight the user assigns to the assessment areas and key indicators (Figure 2). The modularity of the platform gives users the flexibility to tailor the assessment to their needs.

By connecting the international community to a central source of assessment scores and data, the MAAP provides insight to support effective design and implementation; drives meaningful comparability and benchmarking to facilitate prioritization of programs; and supports transparency to increase investor confidence in viability and risk management. Ultimately, the MAAP aims to provide information about the environmental integrity of carbon assets and facilitate more efficient and transparent linkages of bottom-up climate markets, with scale and long-term, stable pricing.

Case study

The MAAP has already been used by a range of governments and climate expert groups such as Gold Standard and Perspectives, to advance 180+ mitigation efforts in approximately 50 countries.

Take one of the assessments done by the UNEP DTU Partnership as an example: a user could benchmark the scores of Costa Rica’s Eco-competitive Livestock Farms called NAMA with the average score among all assessments existing in the MAAP database (Figure 4). In this case, possible observations could include that the NAMA is performing above average in aligning its objectives with jurisdictional priories on climate change, but could improve when it comes to setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound targets. Other than comparing the assessment to average scores, the user can also benchmark against the highest scores among all assessments (MAX Score), or among assessments created by the user (MY Best Score).
 

Figure 3: Independent MAAP assessment by the UNEP DTU Partnership
 

Figure 4: Compare and benchmark results in table format

Similar comparisons can also be made between assessments, which could facilitate the screening and prioritization of various mitigation actions, inform investment decisions, and provide inputs for considerations around linking of climate markets and trading of mitigation outcomes.

Users are required to justify the score they give and/or the weight they override and are asked to upload attachments to support the assessments. In this context, the MAAP aims to provide a centralized and secure platform to gather relevant information and documents about the climate action and serve as an “information provider” to ensure that actions are accountable concerning environmental integrity and other parameters of importance to stakeholders. This becomes especially valuable when considering the transfer of mitigation outcomes across or within jurisdictions.

Use the MAAP to help you design, assess, and compare effective mitigation actions as you work to help countries meet NDC commitments. Share your results with others to grow the community, encourage more robust climate markets and ratchet up climate efforts.

To learn more and sign up, visit the MAAP online – today.