The United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) is an operational arm of the United Nations, supporting the successful implementation of its partners' peacebuilding, humanitarian and development projects around the world. UNOPS supports partners to build a better future by providing services that increase the efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability of peace building, humanitarian and development projects. Mandated as a central resource of the United Nations, UNOPS provides sustainable project management, procurement and infrastructure services to a wide range of governments, donors and United Nations organizations.
Background information: Water and Energy Cluster (WEC)
UNOPS Water and Energy Cluster (WEC) supports the design and management of multi-stakeholder initiatives by providing services in financial and grant management, procurement, human resources, and project management.
The cluster has supported projects in the areas of water resource management, climate change adaptation, mitigation and transparency, energy access and distribution and environmental conservation under the Paris Agreement. The WEC has also supported operations and financial management services, in Vienna, the rest of the ECR region and beyond.
The main partners include UN agencies, bilateral agreements (with the Nordics, Germany, and Italy), the Green Climate Fund and several philanthropic organizations (such as CIFF and CWF).
Initiative for Climate Action Transparency
The Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT) is an initiative under WEC.
ICAT helps countries better assess the impacts of their climate policies and actions, and fulfill their transparency commitments under the Paris Agreement. It does this by increasing the overall transparency capacities of countries, including the capacity to assess the contribution of climate policies and actions on countries’ development objectives, and providing appropriate methodological information and tools to support evidence-based policy-making. ICAT’s innovative approach is to integrate these two aspects.
ICAT currently works with 40 developing countries worldwide to support their work on transparency, including NDCs, tracking of implementation, further policy development and related Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV). Work covers sectoral policies (renewables, energy efficiency, transport, etc.) and cross-cutting aspects such as the link to sustainable development benefits, transformational change, and integration of subnational and non-state actors.
ICAT is funded by the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), the German Federal Foreign Office, the Italian Ministry of the Ecological Transition (IMET) and the ClimateWorks Foundation (CWF).