Entry into force and then? The Paris agreement and state accountability

Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen, S.I.S.E.; Groff, Maja; Tamás, Peter A.; Dahl, Arthur L.; Harder, Marie K.; Hassall, Graham

doi:10.1080/14693062.2017.1331904

Cited by 66 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Indeed, awarded judgements of behaviour can also be positive and lead to praise and positive reputational impacts and some international regimes like the Paris Agreement have chosen for the accountability mechanisms to be solely facilitative. Such facilitative accountability, see Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen et al (2017), also includes the ambition to facilitate learning as another type of impact. Accountability 'forces power-holders to reflect upon their behaviour and this stimulates their learning capacities' (Schillemans, 2008: 180).…”

Section: The Interfaces Of Integration and Accountabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The emerging accountability regimes for the Sustainable Development Goals and policy integration: Friend or foe?

Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen

Dahl

Persson

2018

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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The 17 Sustainable Development Goals and the full Agenda 2030 in which they are embedded are aspirational and intended to be both transformational and integrative in a number of ways. The need for integration across policy domains is stressed throughout the agenda. The Sustainable Development Goals are also accompanied by an emerging system for follow-up and review centered on a long list of indicators that are intended to enable countries to be accountable towards their citizens. There is, however, in the accountability literature indication that some accountability mechanisms can be counterproductive for integrative policies. This paper is centered around the question whether an accountability regime, and if so how, is compatible with a high degree of policy integration both conceptually and in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals. We approach this question through looking both at the literature on integrative governance and some of the central concepts it covers such as (environmental) policy integration and mainstreaming, and the accountability literature. This enables us to provide an analytical framework for evaluating the potential of the emerging accountability regimes for the Sustainable Development Goals to enhance more integrated policy making and action. We conclude that there are little or no strong hierarchical elements of accountability relationships at the global level which can be good news for more integrative policies – but only if there is a strong sense of shared responsibility among actors at all levels, available information on the types of behavioural efforts that support integration, and accountholders that take an active interest in integration. At the national level, there may be hierarchical accountability mechanisms with sanction possibilities that may discourage integration. Here, those who hold actors to account can counteract this if they have deeper understanding of the underlying interlinkages among the goals and targets, and based on this, engage in accountability mechanisms.

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Section: The Interfaces Of Integration and Accountabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The emerging accountability regimes for the Sustainable Development Goals and policy integration: Friend or foe?

Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen

Dahl

Persson

2018

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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“…Transparency has been held up as a key driver for action in the bottom-up governance architecture of the Paris Agreement (see e.g. Ciplet & Roberts, 2017;Ciplet, Adams, Weikmans, & Roberts, 2018;Gupta & Mason, 2016;Jacquet & Jamieson, 2016;Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen et al, 2018;van Asselt, 2016). By revealing information on Parties' efforts towards mitigation, adaptation, and provision of support, the expectation is that transparency stimulates countries to increase the ambition of their NDCs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transparency requirements under the Paris Agreement and their (un)likely impact on strengthening the ambition of nationally determined contributions (NDCs)

2019

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How will the Paris Agreement drive countries to address climate change? One expectation of the Agreement is that transparency will stimulate countries to increase the ambition of their pledges by revealing information on Parties' climate efforts. To this end, the Agreement introduced a new 'enhanced transparency framework' (ETF) to report and review information on Parties' greenhouse gas emissions, progress made in implementing and achieving nationally determined contributions (NDCs), their adaptation actions, and the financial, technological and capacity-building support needed, received and provided to developing country Parties. However, this relationship between transparency and progressive ambition over time remains largely untested. In this article, we first outline several pathways through which increased transparency could potentially lead to increased ambition. These pathways notably depend on the availability of comparable, complete and timely information on the performance of Parties. By reviewing the experience with past and existing transparency arrangements, we identify four types of challenges that will likely pose barriers to the generation of such information by the ETF, and suggest some efforts that might address these challenges to support greater ambition in future rounds of NDCs. Key policy insights. The potential use of the flexibilities offered to developing countries on some dimensions of the ETF may lead to the generation of incomplete and incomparable information.. It will be difficult to assess and compare progress made by Parties towards achieving their NDCs due to heterogenous, qualitative and conditional NDCs; the variety of indicators that Parties will choose to track their progress; and to weaknesses in the reporting guidelines on climate action and support.. Despite ongoing efforts to address this, the information generated by the ETF may be outdated and non-comprehensive due to capacity gaps.. The apolitical design of the ETF means that it will not lead to judgments, for example on the level of ambition of an NDC, or even on whether a country is achieving its NDC. The ETF is also not equipped to deal with cases of political unwillingness to participate in the ETF itself.

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“…While individual countries will not be put into the spotlight in the official process, the GST could still create an echo chamber for the transparency framework that helps to attract the necessary public attention. If collective progress is on the political agenda at the global level, the natural next question at the national level would be to ask what each country contributed to the status quo (for a detailed discussion of pathways towards accountability see Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen et al, 2018).…”

Section: Ensuring Accountabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Catalyzing mitigation ambition under the Paris Agreement: elements for an effective Global Stocktake

Hermwille

Siemons²,

Förster³

et al. 2019

Climate Policy

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The Global Stocktake (GST) takes a central role within the architecture of the Paris Agreement, with many hoping that it will become a catalyst for increased mitigation ambition. This paper outlines four governance functions for an ideal GST: pacemaker, ensurer of accountability, driver of ambition and provider of guidance and signal. The GST can set the pace of progress by stimulating and synchronizing policy processes across governance levels. It can ensure accountability of Parties through transparency and public information sharing. Ambition can be enhanced through benchmarks for action and transformative learning. By reiterating and refining the long term visions, it can echo and amplify the guidance and signal provided by the Paris Agreement. The paper further outlines preconditions for the effective performance of these functions. Process-related conditions include: a public appraisal of inputs; a facilitative format that can develop specific recommendations; high-level endorsement to amplify the message and effectively inform national climate policy agendas; and an appropriate schedule, especially with respect to the transparency framework. Underlying information provided by Parties complemented with other (scientific) sources needs to enable benchmark setting for collective climate action, to allow for transparent assessments of the state of emissions and progress of a low-carbon transformation. The information also needs to be politically relevant and concrete enough to trigger enhancement of ambition. We conclude that meeting these conditions would enable an ideal GST and maximize its catalytic effect. Key policy insights. The functional argument developed in this article may inspire a purposeful design of the GST as its modalities and procedures are currently being negotiated.. The analytical framework provided serves as a benchmark against which to assess the GST's modalities and procedures.. Gaps and blind spots in the official GST can and should be addressed by processes external to the climate regime in academia and civil society.

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Entry into force and then? The Paris agreement and state accountability

Cited by 66 publications

References 26 publications

The emerging accountability regimes for the Sustainable Development Goals and policy integration: Friend or foe?

The emerging accountability regimes for the Sustainable Development Goals and policy integration: Friend or foe?

Transparency requirements under the Paris Agreement and their (un)likely impact on strengthening the ambition of nationally determined contributions (NDCs)

Catalyzing mitigation ambition under the Paris Agreement: elements for an effective Global Stocktake

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