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What Can the Paris Agreement’s Global Stocktake Learn from the Sustainable Development Goals? journal article free

Jennifer Huang

Carbon & Climate Law Review, Volume 12 (2018), Issue 3, Page 218 - 228

In December 2018, countries will adopt the rules and guidelines that will bring the elements of the Paris Agreement to life. One key element is the global stocktake, a unique multilateral review mechanism focusing on collective action and achievement. Parties to the Paris Agreement may want to look to the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and its High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), which offer parallels to both the Agreement’s enhanced transparency framework and the global stocktake. A review of the potential similarities and differences in their review and reporting cycles, their high-level events and outcomes, measuring progress, managing technical expert input, sharing knowledge, information and experience, as well as including non-state actors could provide some relevant lessons for the upcoming international climate negotiations. In some ways, the SDGs process is structurally and politically too dissimilar to offer a template but its approach to adaptation offers insight into how adaptation could be addressed in the global stocktake. Both processes also highlight the need to build the capacity of governmental processes to continuously improve the reporting of key information over time. Because these processes are complementary and meant to evolve, countries could begin to look to the long-term integration of aspects of both regimes to enhance coherence and reduce redundancies. At the climate conference in Katowice, Poland, Parties will need to narrow the broad outlines of the global stocktake down to specifics. Cycles need to be defined and ways to aggregate or synthesize the vast amounts of information must be determined. Parties can begin to draw on parallels between relevant processes and any early lessons they offer as they consider what key features to include in the modalities, rules, and guidelines to be decided in Katowice.


The Paris Agreement Presents a Flexible Approach for US Climate Policy journal article

Fatima Maria Ahmad, Jennifer Huang, Bob Perciasepe

Carbon & Climate Law Review, Volume 11 (2017), Issue 4, Page 283 - 291

The Paris Agreement was specifically designed to provide sovereign nations with the flexibility they need to craft their own greenhouse gas reduction plans. The cyclical and transparent review of progress toward those goals is established to allow and encourage increasing ambition over time - a global race to the top. The withdrawal announced by the Trump Administration in June of 2017 has begun to motivate sub-national and non-state actors in the US to strengthen their own commitments. This combined effort, which is building off the tremendous technology advances underway, has the potential to keep the US in a global leadership position in the near-term. States and cities are continuing to craft legal frameworks to enable these transitions and the cost of clean power has evolved to make most public service commissions in the US comfortable with de-carbonisation plans. To achieve a very low carbon economy, federal policy to further unleash market forces will be needed in the longer-term. In light of the flexibility of the Paris Agreement regarding domestic policy, the likely continuation of technological advancement in key areas, and the momentum demonstrated by sub-national and non-state actors, the Administration is presented with an opportunity to take a new approach and claim a ‘better deal’ on the Paris Agreement. Looking at this groundswell of non-state and sub-national action and the opportunity for market-based approaches that have bipartisan support, there is no reason the Administration could not reformulate the US NDC in a way that contributes to resolving the climate problem.

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