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Lessons learned from climate transparency

One of the key issues at COP 22 in Marrakech was how to implement the transparency provisions of the Paris Agreement through which countries can hold one another accountable for their promises.

The agreement requires that this “enhanced transparency framework” build on parties’ experiences with existing transparency processes under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). A new C2ES brief highlights some of the key lessons countries are drawing from their experiences – lessons underscored by many parties in Marrakech.

The Paris Agreement requires all countries to report regularly on their greenhouse gas emissions and their efforts to reduce them. Their reports will be subject to two levels of international review – first, a review by technical experts, then a “multilateral consideration of progress” where countries put questions to one another. The new system is to provide “built-in flexibility” for developing countries with limited capacity.

Under the existing system, which sets different requirements for developed and developing countries, the latter have only recently begun to undergo any form of international review. While many initially approached that prospect with trepidation, they’ve discovered more to be gained than feared.

One of the most important lessons shared by both developed and developing countries is that fulfilling their international transparency requirements has produced significant domestic benefits. Collecting the information needed for reporting starts important conversations across sectors and actors, between different levels of government, and among relevant stakeholders. Transparency as a government-wide effort can help identify mitigation opportunities and challenges as well as track and inform domestic policy implementation.

Another lesson is that the processes’ facilitative approach has helped parties overcome apprehensions about reporting and review. The process is more of a technical dialogue than an interrogation where experts judge or criticize parties. This friendly exchange helps parties learn and improve each time they go through technical analysis, since mistakes actually lead to identifying obstacles and areas for improvement as well as capacity-building needs.

Parties also have stressed that building stronger in-country capacity is crucial to effective developing country participation in transparency. Episodic project funding for the preparation and submission of greenhouse gas inventories makes it hard for developing countries to continuously collect data or provide regular training to their inventory experts. In-country capacity helps incentivize key players and institutions and establish a sense of ownership at the national and institutional level.

In Marrakech, seven developing countries went through their first Facilitative Sharing of Views (FSV) workshop under the existing International Consultation and Analysis (ICA) process. FSV is essentially a Q&A between the party or parties being assessed and other parties on the basis of their biennial update reports.

At a side event, several parties, a technical expert and the secretariat reflected on further lessons from the ICA process. Namibia and Tunisia both said the process helps them improve the quality of their reports and promotes the institutional arrangements needed to form the basis for a national measurement, reporting and verification system. The secretariat noted that even it has capacity issues: with its supplementary budget depleted, its ability to undertake technical analysis is limited.

Like the FSV, the multilateral assessment is another peer review forum where parties are free to ask questions of a party on its biennial report. At COP 22, 24 developed countries went through a second round of Multilateral Assessment based on their second biennial reports under the International Assessment and Review process.

The Paris Agreement established a Capacity-building Initiative for Transparency (CBIT), which will strengthen the institutional and technical capacities of developing countries to meet the enhanced transparency requirements and to improve over time. The CBIT just approved its first set of projects in Costa Rica, Kenya, South Africa, and 11 donors announced pledges totaling nearly $55.3 million. Other countries like Japan have declared their intention to support the fund.

Although no final decisions on transparency were taken in Marrakech, parties have made initial progress in negotiating the details of the Paris transparency framework. If all goes as planned, parties will wrap up their work on these decisions in 2018, to be adopted by the first meeting of the parties to the Paris Agreement.

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