There are two key challenges in the international climate negotiations in Paris. Firstly, the international community needs to develop and implement a meaningful transparency-and-review mechanism to verify countries are meeting their voluntary pledges. The second challenge facing US negotiators in Paris lies with the goal of limiting warming to no more than 2C.
President Obama personally negotiated language on transparency during the 2009 Copenhagen negotiations, reflecting the importance of this issue to the US. The US advocated a more sophisticated approach to transparency, in part, because of the poor track record of review and policy surveillance under the existing UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Obama personally negotiated terms for verification of countries’ emissions reductions in Copenhagen in 2009.
A country’s pledge to be transparent publicly signals seriousness in taking on climate change and enhances the credibility of its commitment. Progressive political leaders who advance ambitious domestic emission mitigation policies would benefit from this transparency – it would highlight their leadership.
Such transparency also increases the costs to political leaders who fail to deliver on commitments. It can publicly subject this failure to domestic stakeholder pressure and peer pressure from other leaders.
The ability to review the outcomes for a mitigation program can demonstrate whether a country undertook a good-faith effort to deliver on its pledged commitment and build trust among those participating in an agreement. An effective system to collect, analyse and disseminate information about countries’ pledges can also facilitate subsequent negotiations.
Some countries oppose a robust system of review on the grounds that such efforts would violate their sovereignty. Yet, these countries willingly participate in regular policy surveillance conducted through the International Monetary Fund’s Article 4 consultations and the World Trade Organisation’s Trade Policy Review Mechanism.
Indeed, these two institutions undertake expert review – through the collection and analysis of data and public policies – that feeds into a peer-review process that is substantially more rigorous, informative and credible than the status quo climate policy surveillance.
Countering competitiveness concerns
Transparency is critical to the emerging “pledge and review” approach to international climate policy architecture that relates to the 2C goal.
Put simply, the current approach to climate policy asks countries to take a step forward in cutting their emissions. As countries do so, they will look among their peers, their trade partners and their regional neighbours, to see if they are all moving forward together. Once they see that all are making progress in lowering their emissions, they will be more confident in taking on more ambitious subsequent efforts in tackling climate change and will be able to build domestic support for these efforts.
This is especially important in countries such as the US, where domestic concerns about adverse competitiveness pressures – for example, if US manufacturing faces a carbon price but their foreign competitors do not – have served to block progress on climate policy. A well-functioning emissions reporting and verification regime can serve to counter concerns over competitiveness.
Transparency can also build trust for international climate finance. Donor industrialised countries and developing countries have expressed different opinions about the extent to which the former have delivered on their financial commitments to the latter. Country reporting and independent surveillance of climate finance can resolve the debate over the amount of money flowing among countries and direct the discussion to the effectiveness of climate finance.
Laying a foundation
Some stakeholders have claimed that the current round of pledges are insufficient to meet this goal. Underlying such claims are a number of assumptions, some of which are very strong while others are more opaque, including post-2030 emissions and related mitigation policies, climate sensitivity, risk attitudes and other factors.
Regardless, there is a real risk that pressuring countries to do more to mitigate emissions in this round of talks will distract from the necessary work of building a durable framework for reporting, monitoring and verifying pledges.
Countries have committed to lowering domestic emissions in light of their own national circumstances. Launching contentious debates about who can do what additional mitigation efforts ignores the real constraints of domestic politics. Moreover, it could crowd out time and effort on the important task of building the institutional infrastructure for pledge and review, and especially transparency.
As a result, success in Paris should not reflect some “counting the tonnes” exercise motivated by the 2C goal. Success should be measured by the extent to which the international community can agree on a robust institutional infrastructure for pledging and transparency with review that can enable learning and build trust among countries.
This would provide the durable foundation for the long-term climate policy necessary to limit warming and mitigate the risks posed by climate change.
This is a shortened version of an article first published by the conversation.com and can be found here.
