Enhancing India’s Readiness to Climate Finance

4.2 Readiness Framework overview
Enhancing India’s readiness to access and deliver international climate finance
One of the main goals of this report is to understand how countries can improve their readiness to
access and deliver climate finance. The UNDP definition of readiness provides a good conceptual
overview of climate finance readiness, but the next step – translating the concept of readiness into a
set of metrics that can be evaluated – is much more difficult.
As a first step to evaluating readiness in individual countries, the project team has developed a
climate finance Readiness Framework, which frames national climate finance readiness in a way that
can be evaluated across a number of important categories. The Framework itself is not entirely new.
Rather, it builds heavily on several readiness frameworks that have been developed in recent years,
borrowing the strongest elements of each and amalgamating them into a cohesive whole. Importantly
though, it adds the next step that has been missing until very recently – the evaluation criteria used to
determine a country’s level of climate finance readiness.
The following two sections outline the Readiness Framework that will be used for evaluating India’s
climate finance readiness in this report. First, the Framework itself is outlined in Section 4.3, with a
brief explanation of how the Framework was developed and the models that it was based on. Section
4.4 then outlines how the Readiness Framework can be applied in practice, detailing the evaluation
criteria that are used to assess readiness at the national level.
4.3 The climate finance Readiness Framework
The climate finance Readiness Framework that has been developed for this report is based on the
following three frameworks:
UNDP’s Readiness Framework 35 , which highlights four process-oriented components of
readiness: financial planning; accessing finance; delivering finance; MRV of financial flows.
ODI’s ‘3R’ Framework 36 , which takes a softer approach, outlining three core competencies
that a country must exhibit: planning; aptitude; and access. These three competencies must
be contextualised within a process that is relative to a country’s socio-economic and
geopolitical characteristics, responsive to national needs and challenges, and reasonable in
proposing practical solutions.
The Nature Conservancy (TNC)’s ‘Functional’ Framework 37 , which outlines four functions
of readiness that a country’s institutions must perform: political; strategic; financial; and MRV –
all of which are performed by specialised executing agencies
The three frameworks highlighted above provide valuable reference points for understanding climate
finance readiness. Importantly, they all have substantial overlapping features. For example, all three
frameworks recognise the importance of planning and financial management as key components of
readiness. Yet they all have slight differences, with the UNDP focusing on financial processes, ODI
focusing on capacities and skills, and the TNC focusing on broader institutional functions.
Borrowing from the strengths of each of these frameworks, this report proposes a new Readiness
Framework – one that can provide a holistic look into the functional, institutional, and capacity-based
elements of a country’s readiness. It also allows for a more practical evaluation of readiness
capabilities in a given country, drawing on GIZ’s Clif Reflect tool to provide a list of evaluation criteria
used to test the framework and to provide recommendations for improving climate finance readiness.
Figure 4.1 outlines this new Framework.
35 Vandeweerd, V., Glemarec, Y., & Billet, S. (2012). Readiness for Climate Finance: A framework for
understanding what it means to be ready to use climate finance
36 Nakhooda, S., & Watson, C. (2013). Climate Finance Readiness: Understanding readiness to access
and use climate finance effectively
37 The Nature Conservancy (2012). Climate finance readiness: lessons learned in developing countries.
Ref: Ricardo-AEA/R/ED59216/Final Report
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