Bringing Information Credibility Back Into Transparency: The Case for a Global Monitoring System Of Green House Gas Emissions

Abstract: The goal of climate change governance is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations. This requires the reduction of anthropogenic global net emissions. In the pursuit of such a reduction, knowledge of greenhouse gas sources and sinks is critical to define baselines, and assess the effectiveness of climate governance over time. Such information and the means to independently verify its credibility continue to remain out of reach including in the recent Paris agreement. This essay argues that to make real progress in mitigating future climate change, this status quo must be challenged both intellectually and practically. First, it proposes to acknowledge and address the inconsistency between the objectives of a climate regime and the role of transparency as a mean to achieve these objectives. It does so by redefining transparency as the addition of publicity and measurability, which turns it into a credible information generating mechanism for governance. Second, it shows how in practice, a global monitoring system of greenhouse gas net emissions, based on this new definition of transparency and designed as a global public good, could provide the necessary knowledge to help frame governance solutions by providing both credibility and completeness in understanding the scope of the problem to solve.