The goals of the Paris Agreement (PA) on collectively managing climate change can only be reached if all parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) commit to actions supporting their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Developing-economy nations play a crucial role in reaching the PA targets, particularly in the Agriculture, Forest, and Other Land Uses (AFOLU) sector. However, developing country Parties also face several constraints in tracking and communicating progress towards their climate policy targets and implementation of their NDCs. The operationalization of Biennial Transparency Report (BTR) and Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF) under the PA will bring stricter reporting timeframes and advanced transparency for all parties. With these requirements rapidly coming into force, addressing reporting gaps is now a pressing priority. The present study analyzes the NDCs, and Biennial Update Reports (BURs) submitted by developing country Parties under the UNFCCC. In an illustrative exercise, our in-depth analysis concentrates on reporting on the AFOLU sector and identifies issues impeding a comprehensive and comparable Global Stock Take (GST): (i) issues of consistency in reporting timeframes (ii) issues in transparency of reporting on mitigation sectors and on relevant progress indicators (iii) incomparability of methodological approaches proposed and used, and (iv) the implications of limited national capacity for transparent reporting. The UNFCCC and developed country Parties now have the opportunity of providing specialized support for developing country Parties. This could include tailored guidance to address gaps in both greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions accounting, and reporting challenges, to ensure consistent, comprehensive, and transparent reporting to reinforce capacities moving forward following the next GST.
Tag: climate policy
Not all forest carbon credits are created equal: High integrity programmes and conditions for success
Concerns about the environmental and social impacts of carbon markets have sparked an effort towards higher integrity. However, greater clarity is needed regarding the different definitions and benchmarks of high integrity carbon (HIC), where these come from, and how they are interpreted and why, to understand their potential.
This Occasional Paper reviews the grey and scholarly literature to understand the main trends in HIC definitions, benchmarks, and use. The review finds more uniformity in perspectives on environmental integrity than in social integrity; there are differences in emphasis regarding HIC programme governance and on how to monitor integrity. Furthermore, despite the varied understandings of social integrity, with regard to the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPs and LCs), the bottom line across reviewed documents remains tied to a “do no harm” standard; this should be considered as a minimum requirement that does not rise to the high ambition expected for high integrity.
Based on our review, we define HIC credits as emissions reduction or removal units supplied by programmes that bring together high quality and high ambition, in both ecological and social dimensions. Concerning high social integrity, we are particularly influenced and inspired by the perspectives and demands from IPs and LCs themselves. Social integrity needs to be taken as seriously as environmental integrity, conceptualized, and practised as going beyond safeguards that ‘do no harm’, and with greater attention to the financial investment and specific guidelines, methods, tools, and capacities required to make it achievable.
What is high integrity carbon? Forest carbon programmes and conditions for success
Key messages
- With growing interest in ‘high integrity’ carbon, different definitions have been put forward, but few give social integrity as much attention as environmental integrity.
- Similar commitments should be made towards social integrity, including financial investments; specific guidelines, methods, tools, and capacities required to make it achievable; and monitoring and evaluation systems.
- Carbon programmes committed to high integrity must consider five key aspects relevant to the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPs and LCs) – free, prior, and informed consent, gender equality, land and resource rights, benefit sharing, and grievance mechanisms and safeguard compliance.
- Fundamentally, a shift is needed from ‘safeguarding’ to supporting IPs and LCs interested in participating in carbon actions, enabling their communities and organizations to be protagonists of their own self-determined well-being agendas.
- Although favoured by high integrity approaches, jurisdictional programmes are burdened by the historical relationships between governments and IPs and LCs: failing to place equal importance on social and environmental integrity may reify power imbalances and inequalities.
- The implementation of these recommendations will be challenged by governments treating jurisdictional programmes as if they were projects; programmes need to be fully integrated into jurisdictional governance.