Adopting the Enhanced Transparency Framework is quite a task. ECO sees NDC guidelines, including features and accounting; cooperation and transfers of mitigation outcomes; and the transparency framework as all being intricately connected. Just as your headphones get tangled when thrown haphazardly into your backpack, before you can really use them again, it is important to take the time to untangle the wires.
We understand that it can be dizzying trying to keep up with where the transparency conversation is at, but transparency is necessary to understand financial flows and to track progress on mitigation action.
Focusing on accounting for NDCs, for example, requires clear rules about how this is done.
Rules on how this should be done are necessary to ensure that this accounting framework truly works.
First, we need a clear understanding of what is included in a country’s climate plan and what is not. NDC guidance can provide clarity on many things: mitigation, adaptation, provision of support, and how the NDC contributes to a country’s sustainable development and trajectory to 1.5°C.
Second, including a centralized accounting registry in the guidance would provide an overview of global action all housed in one place, thereby ensuring (and supporting our favourite acronym) Clarity, Transparency and Understanding (CTU) in tracking progress towards achieving NDCs.
Third, ECO thinks we can all agree here, we can’t cook the books. Parties must agree to detailed guidance measures on how to avoid double counting when transfers of quantified emissions reductions are made between Parties, and when Parties transfer to the ICAO Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA). These rules from these schemes need to be linked to the Paris Agreement Transparency Framework, as the transfer and use of these emissions reductions need to be reported on and verified.
ECO thinks that strong accounting will support improved domestic monitoring, reporting, and verification, for informed decision making at national level. This will make the consolidation of efforts simpler and more efficient. Don’t worry, we’ll be sure to flag these issues and inter-linkages to the transparency framework as they pop up in various discussions, but ECO suggests viewing these accounting elements as part of a whole, so that we have a coherent set of rules to accurately and comprehensively report all of our efforts to achieve the Paris goals. ECO believes that, with diligence, we can neatly un-tangle these headphones, and rock out to the sweet tunes of an effective Enhanced Transparency Framework.