A new report from finance think-tank Investor Watch analyses the risks but also the opportunities in financing the country plans for climate actions after the Paris COP.  Known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions or INDCs, these plans have been submitted by almost every country in the lead-up to Paris.  Viewed as a major step forward – but also a radical departure from previous “top down” attempts to direct climate change actions – the INDCs now put the responsibility for developing, financing and implementing “contributions” to combatting climate change on nation states.

The report, written by former investment banker and development finance expert Ian Callaghan, samples a range of INDCs and presents a pragmatic approach to their future use as a basis for creating climate finance deal-flow.

To enable this deal-flow arising from the INDCs, the key conclusions of the report are that:

• The significant dataset in the INDCs represent a one-off opportunity to create a uniform categorisation of practical climate actions, both mitigation and adaptation.  Such a categorisation will radically improve the collection, analysis and use of climate finance data, which currently suffers from significant gaps that prevent progress
• The INDCs themselves should be worked on further to create “Climate Investment Plans” (CIPs) at a country level.  The outputs of these CIPs should be investable financial transactions, whether based on concessional or commercial finance, or a mixture of the two.

The report underlies a “Call to Action” on climate finance by eight highly respected organisations in the field.  The Call to Action can be found at www.calltoactiononclimatefinance.net .  As well as reflecting the conclusions of the report, the Call to Action proposes the creation of a transaction-oriented network designed to strengthen the infrastructure of the climate finance sector.