What does transparency mean when it comes to climate change?

What does transparency mean when it comes to climate change?

In the context of climate change, transparency refers to the reliable measurement, accessible reporting, and expert review of the progress made by countries towards achieving their national climate goals and pledges.

Transparency helps build trust and confidence that everyone is doing their part to keep global warming to well below 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels, while striving for 1.5°C, the critical goal of the Paris Agreement. It is also key to unlocking climate finance by offering donors clear and reliable information regarding the work that has already happened and the support that is still required.

To uphold transparency commitments, countries need to track and report their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as well as the progress made towards the climate mitigation and adaptation targets in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). They are also required to monitor which measures they have applied and how effective they were as well as the types of support received or still needed, such as capacity building, technical assistance, technology transfer, and financial resources.

How does transparency help countries improve their climate action?

Globally, transparent reporting is the only way to collectively demonstrate progress on climate goals, and measure how close or far we are from the goal of limiting global warming to well-below 2°C, while striving for 1.5°C. It is also crucial to helping countries make evidence-based decisions for their climate policies and actions.

The Paris Agreement has introduced the Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF) that helps countries transition to a single universal transparency system. By December 2024, as part of the reporting requirements under the ETF, most countries are expected to submit their first Biennial Transparency Report (BTR). Least developed countries and small island developing states are granted flexibility with the deadline for this submission.

BTRs can be thought of as progress reports that provide crucial information on national GHG emissions levels and mitigation efforts, climate change impacts and adaptation measures, and the overall progress in implementing and achieving NDC targets. They also capture the support mobilized and provided by developed countries to developing countries, and how much support each developing country received and still requires. In this sense, transparency is crucial for assessing the financial and technical support needed by each country.

Once submitted, the BTRs are reviewed by teams of experts who determine whether the reporting is in line with the modalities, procedures, and guidelines (MPGs) of the ETF and make recommendations for improvement if needed.

The data in the BTRs is also meant to contribute to Global Stocktake exercises, the first of which is scheduled to conclude at COP28 in December 2023, and which are the best way to assess humanity’s progress towards addressing climate change and its root causes.

What are the challenges?

The main challenge of transparent reporting revolves around the difficulty of obtaining good-quality, long-term data. In some cases, the data can be incomplete or unreliable. In others, it may be difficult to access. Furthermore, over the years, inconsistent approaches and standards for collecting data have emerged, making data aggregation difficult.

Many countries also struggle with insufficient capacity and resources within public institutions to collect and compile the necessary data. This is further complicated by the new requirements under the ETF which place additional demands on countries in terms of the frequency, scope, and depth of reporting.

Capacity-building initiatives, particularly in developing countries lacking adequate institutional frameworks and sustainable and robust measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) systems, are crucial in making the ETF function successfully.

What is UNDP doing to help countries be more transparent?

UNDP is a key partner supporting developing nations to strengthen their existing reporting and review processes to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

We work with countries to intensify their data and transparency initiatives, particularly on fulfilling their obligations under the ETF and monitoring the progress on the implementation of their NDCs.

Over the course of several decades, UNDP has supported more than 115 countries comply with their reporting obligations to the UNFCCC and enhance their transparency frameworks. This work was possible to a large extent thanks to funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), and, more recently, through UNDP’s multi-donor flagship initiative Climate Promise, the world’s largest offer of support to countries on national climate pledges under the Paris Agreement.

UNDP’s Climate Promise is providing technical support on the new ETF reporting and review requirements to countries of the Lusophone and Francophone networks, with support from Belgium and in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The type of support offered to countries includes enhancing the accuracy of their greenhouse gases inventories, improving their measurement, reporting, and verification systems, incorporating gender-disaggregated data and data related to Indigenous Peoples into their reporting, and building national capacities on compiling and reviewing the first generation of BTRs.