Becoming a climate-resilient green economy: Planning for climate compatible development in Ethiopia

This working paper documents Ethiopia’s lessons from the study ‘Lesson learning from national climate compatible development planning’, which captured and shared institutional experiences of climate compatible development. This publication highlights results from this study in three thematic areas: building a knowledge and evidence base; governance and institutional arrangements; and planning, budgeting and financing.

Other decision-makers and development practitioners can learn from the Ethiopian experience, which includes the following lessons (p. 8-9):

• Financing from international climate funds should be available to countries that pursue a holistic, ambitious and nationally driven development agenda that includes climate-related goals, such as zero growth in net carbon emissions or enhancing the adaptive capacity of communities.
• Engagement by political champions enhances the development and implementation of the governance and institutional arrangements, strategies and frameworks needed for climate compatible development.
• Robust governance and institutional structures form a strong basis for establishing effective cross-government working relations.
• Collaboration between the ministries responsible for finance and the environment creates a solid platform for the coordinated implementation and mainstreaming of climate compatible development into national development plans.
• Commitment, ownership, nationally driven investments and the demonstration of results on the ground are critical for unlocking additional finance to implement climate compatible development programmes and projects.
• In planning and mainstreaming climate compatible development, decision-makers should give consideration to long-term technical and institutional capacity development, particularly in terms of the ongoing need to prepare fundable project and programme proposals and subsequently to implement these.