Negotiators say transparency central to Paris deal success

Countries were required to submit emissions reduction pledges along with a national plan on how to achieve their targets. Their progress will be reviewed every five years at which point they would have to submit new, more ambitious pledges. The challenge at COP22 in Marrakesh now is designing a rule book for reviewing countries’ progress. This 'stocktake' will be part of the Transparency Framework, and will be crucial in preventing further climate change. “The Transparency Framework is about building mutual trust and confidence with an approach,” said Giacomo Grass, scientific officer, Institute for Environment and Sustainability, at an experts panel on climate change Monitoring, Reporting and Verification yesterday. The rulebook for the stocktake will give a “better understanding of the real numbers of emissions,” added Harry Vreul, who reviews greenhouse gas inventories for the UN climate body. But a looming challenge remains on how to design a review that allows countries to compare progress, and at the same time acknowledges that not all countries have the same resources to monitor their emissions. “Many developing countries do not have access to reliable data required for international reviews,” explains Grassi. “This is why the Transparency Framework has to be flexible.” While most parties to the talks agree that flexibility is required in the framework, questions remain as to exactly what this will look like. So far negotiating parties have put forward two potential proposals from the global stocktake: The G77+China negotiating group is pushing for nationally determined reporting methods, whereby each country would design its own accounting structure. This is in contrast with a tiered approach, where rules for reporting would be set for countries categorised by their ability to monitor and report their progress. Given the urgency of climate change, parties now only have two years to design the Transparency Framework, for the first global stocktake intended in 2018. This does not give countries much time to either design the rulebook or carry out the review. But as Prof Jim Penman, a pioneer in greenhouse gas inventory reporting who sadly passed away earlier this year, used to say: “To roll down, a snow ball does not need to be perfectly round.”