As in business and politics, it’s essential when dealing with climate action to follow the money. Acknowledging the benefits of more and better information about climate finance, Colombia worked with WRI and its partners on a new system that helps measure, report and verify (MRV) how much funding goes towards climate change projects.

Unlike previous climate finance tracking initiatives, Colombia’s system covers financial sources for both adaptation and mitigation and will make the data publicly available through an online platform (access the platform here). This government-led effort, launched online on November 27, registered over 15,000 climate change actions, totaling approximately $6 billion from public sources (both domestic and international) for the period 2011-2015. This fits into a broader climate change information system that will cross-reference climate finance data and data about greenhouse gases emissions in Colombia and could have implications for other developing countries.

The system's online platform presents aggregate data and project-level information in infographics and maps, allowing users to employ various filters to see climate finance data by sector, state, municipality, financial source and financial instrument, among other variables (see images below). Users can also download the databases directly from the platform. This will help give government officials, citizens and other users a more complete picture of climate finance flows, which could lead to improved decision-making and accountability.

It will also strengthen international reporting on finance, which is important in the context of the historic Paris Agreement.

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