1. Guide for developing the Climate Balance

The Climate Balance is the monitoring system developed by the LAKS project is order to yearly evaluate the state of implementation of policies included in the Mitigation and Adaptation Plan and consequent results obtained. You can compile the Climate Balance every year in order to make it a continuous accountability process and integrate the Mitigation and Adaptation Plan in the decision making process of your Municipality.

In order to develop and structure your first Climate Balance you can follow the instructions included in this document and use the attached tools.

A key aspect in developing this monitoring process is embedding it in the already existing environmental monitoring or reporting tools in your Municipality. The first step is therefore to clearly map all the tools and processes that are already active in your public administration in order not to duplicate documents and data collecting if they can be integrated in already existing reporting tools.

One of the main objectives of the LAKS process is to develop an accountability cycle in order to integrate climate policies in the decision making and reporting processes of your municipality. For this reason is fundamental to link the climate balance with the most relevant financial documents (e.g. financial budget, balance, etc), environmental management tools (e.g. EMAS environmental declaration, environmental action plan, etc.) and accounting/reporting tools (e.g. environmental or sustainability reports, environmental balance, etc.).

In this way all sector and the different decision makers of the Municipality can be informed on the results of the Mitigation and Adaptation Plan and can continuously compare actual local emissions with the baseline year.