A Climate Change Lens was organised by the Parliamentary Centre of Asia in collaboration with the external expert Mr. Asif Shah, a Public Finance and Governance Advisor, Governance for Resilience Development in the Pacific Project, UNDP. This special lecture is part of the training course on climate change budgeting designed by the Environment and Climate Change program and the Fiscal Analysis Capacity Training program teams with the purpose of mainstreaming climate change into the capacity building and training programs of PCAsia for parliamentary staff in the region.
The specific objective of this special lecture is to provide knowledge and understanding on the process of legislative scrutiny and how climate change perspectives can be integrated into the budget oversight of parliaments. Besides delivering the content, this special lecture was designed to provide the opportunity for participants to engage with the external expert to exchange information and experiences on climate change budgeting and also connecting parliamentary staff to scientific experts for addressing climate change concerns in the region. 17 trainees (9 female and 8 male) – 16 from the Senate and the National Assembly of Cambodia and 1 from the National Assembly of Lao PDR– attended the training. During the session, all trainees learned about a wide range of subjects including the framework for assessing public financial management, the budget cycle and where climate change fits in the cycle, climate budget tagging and its benefits, approaches in mainstreaming climate change into budget scrutiny and country experiences. Questions and answers were incorporated throughout the session. At the end, the participants were given the chance to do a small group exercise on testing the effectiveness of the accountability framework on climate change at parliaments. The session ended with all participants showing their interest and participation in the exercise and expressed their appreciation of the knowledge gained from the session.
