Governing Climate Change Adaptation in the EU and China:An Analysis of Formal Institutions

Both the European Union （EU） and China are culturally, economically, climatologically and environmentally diverse polities. The EU is a multi-state grouping of economically developed democratic countries, while China is a unitary sovereign state and a developing economy with a strong government bureaucracy. Our hypothesis is that given their diverse political systems, the EU and China would develop different kinds of systems for the governance of adaptation to climate change. We test this hypothesis through a comparative analysis of policy documents from the two study areas, in which we examine framework policies, programmatic actions and specific actions that have been adopted to date in order to address climate change, with a specific focus on the water sector. We find that climate change adaptation began to be addressed through formal policy on a similar timeline in the two regions. The EU and China are also similar in that they use framework laws and existing sectoral policy, such as for the water sector. We find that the EU has primarily relied on integration of climate change adaptation concerns through legal instruments which set a framework for implementation of adaptation policy. In China, specific actions to be incorporated in socio-economic development plans under the existing legislation on adaptation have been the main mode for integrating adaptation into sectoral actions, though the future trend may be to develop more regulations.

Establishing a measurement,reporting,and verification system for climate finance in post-Paris agreement period

The measurement,reporting,and verification(MRV) of climate finance was originated from discussions under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC).It has been one of the key issues of global climate negotiations since 2009 and will continue to be of significant importance in addressing climate change and strengthening international trust.This paper analyses the concept,the objective,and the progress of the MRV of climate finance based on reviews of the latest literature and think-tank reports regarding climate finance regime and MRV.Following the analysis,challenges faced with the MRV of climate finance are illustrated.This paper presents that the comparability of climate finance data needs to be improved due to the variety of methodologies used for disaggregating climate finance.In addition,the integrality of the MRV system of climate finance has been impaired by the lack of feedback mechanism from the recipients to the contributors in reporting system.Furthermore,although accounting system of climate finance has been developing and improving,it remains incapacity in providing accurate data on disbursed climate finance.Responding to the above challenges,this paper proposes the key tasks in establishing a comprehensive MRV system for climate finance at international level.The tasks involve developing a measurement system with consistent data basis and accounting basis,a reporting system with more detailed guidance and standardized formats,as well as a verification mechanism balancing top-down and bottom-up review processes.In the last section,this paper concludes that the establishment of an improved MRV of climate finance requires concerted cooperation and negotiations between developed and developing country Parties under the UNFCCC.As one of the few developing country donors to the Global Environmental Facility(GEF),China is suggested to clarify its propositions as a developing country in aspects such as concept,coverage,and architecture of climate finance and MRV system,and gain bargaining power in improving operating and technical rules of international climate finance regime.