What constitutes “institutional arrangements” for Member State reporting within the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement?

All Member States are expected to put in place sustainable institutional arrangements for implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement, and to describe these in their reporting transparency obligations. Institutional arrangements provide the mechanism by which work gets visioned, planned, coordinated, implemented, monitored and reported on and are therefore fundamental to implementing the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement. Without sustainable institutional arrangements, implementation of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) will be jeopardised. Consequently, it is important to clearly identify what constitutes institutional arrangement, both from the perspective of reporting of what is in place and what is optimal for just transitions to achieve UNFCCC and Paris Agreement goals. The Consultative Group of Experts (CGE) and UNFCCC recommend five separate components for describing institutional arrangements for Member States to support their measurement, verification and reporting (MRV), as well as for climate action transparency and support. These components are: i) organization mandates; (ii) expertise; (iii) data flows; (iv) systems and tools; and (v) stakeholder engagement. In this study, we propose that describing institutional arrangements is akin to describing the components of an organisation (e.g. a government, ministry or agency). The Star Organisational Model, with its five inter-linked components of strategy, structure, processes, people and rewards is a useful additional approach for defining what constitutes institutional arrangements. Establishing sustainable institutional arrangements is challenging for developing countries, and yet critical for implementing the UNFCCC-Paris Agreement at country level. By applying the Star model to six developing countries to ascertain its usefulness for reporting on institutional arrangements related to MRV, we conclude that the Star Model offers a valuable additional method for more effectively delineating and documenting institutional arrangements, including describing existing organisational arrangements and envisioning ideal setups, in the context of the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement agendas.