A central feature of the Paris Agreement is a stronger transparency system requiring countries to regularly report on their emissions and their national climate efforts.
At the international level, this provides a critical means of accountability by letting countries see whether others are sticking to their commitments.
But one of the key messages that emerged at last month’s U.N. climate negotiations in Bonn, Germany — including at a side event organized by C2ES — is that greater transparency has important benefits back at home, too.
The May climate meeting, the first since negotiators adopted the Paris Agreement, featured a first-ever facilitative sharing of views (FSV) for developing countries. Thirteen developing country parties gave presentations on their first biennial reports on their efforts to reduce emissions, required under the 2010 Cancún Agreements, and responded to questions from other parties.
These countries, were applauded for their efforts and their achievements. Most of them focused on the challenges they faced in fulfilling their reporting obligations, the lessons learned in addressing or overcoming these obstacles, and what they might need to do more.
Many of these lessons were echoed in a C2ES side event, “Learning from UNFCCC Transparency Experience: Perspectives of Parties and Expert Reviewers.” The event featured negotiators and technical experts from Canada, the European Commission, New Zealand, South Africa and Brazil, with the latter two countries just having completed the FSV.
Both developed and developing countries said compiling their reports benefited them domestically by stimulating regular conversations among various levels of government and with nongovernment stakeholders. The process also helped institutionalize measurement, reporting and verification (MRV), and identified opportunities to strengthen domestic climate policies.
In two other side events hosted by the UNFCCC secretariat, Uruguay, Vietnam, Ghana and Peru reflected on their experiences under the existing transparency framework. Regular reporting and review is a significant undertaking, and they learned how much time and coordination is required. Even so, their initial experiences proved to be interactive and facilitative. Countries were provided assistance in their own language, and could communicate easily with experts and staff through technology like Skype.
The co-chairs of a new working group that will develop detailed decisions implementing the Paris Agreement also took up these themes, asking parties to share their experiences and lessons learned from the existing MRV arrangements. These lessons will also inform the next session of FSV, which will take place in Marrakech, Morocco, during COP 22.
Parties hope these lessons will inform the new rulebook that must be developed for the “enhanced transparency framework” called for in the Paris Agreement. One of the key takeaways is that by learning as they go, countries significantly improve the quality of their reporting, and their own policymaking becomes more effective as a result.
