ADP: Ex Ante Review - General Concepts.

For what feels like forever I have been working through the 11/6/15 revision of the negotiating text of the Ad-Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform (ADP). However despite all my efforts I have only succeeded in getting as far as Section E.

In selecting the options from the text that I did I am trying to create a system whereby nations submit Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC's) that cover both their mitigation and the adaptation actions. These submission will then be subjected to a non-binding peer review process.

The purpose of this ex ante review is to establish whether a nation's intended actions are achievable and whether they are fair and ambitious in the context of the long term goals of the agreement. However the ex ante review is also intended to build capacity by allowing nations to see what each other are doing and hopefully learn from other's examples.

So while I fully understand that Section F dealing with finance and technology transfer is vitally important with so much of the success of the agreement resting on the review process it is only logical that I deal with that first.

The problem is that the current negotiating text has not been written with a view to creating the type of system I envisage. So instead of having a section dedicated to the review process it has sections dealing with transparency, timeframes, processes and other matters that manage to be both excessively long and excessively vague while trying to address each nation's specific negotiating position within the context of a workable legal instrument.

Therefore if I am going to recommend language that addresses many of these matters - particularly transparency - in a workable peer review process I am going to have to write it myself. It turns out though that I am woefully under-qualified for this task. Therefore it is my hope that actual parties to the agreement will also address the problem - ideally in time for the October meeting.

Before anyone addresses the language of the agreement though they first need to think about how the review process will work;

The only way I can think of it working is for the secretariat to divide the nations into working groups. This creates the obvious question of how many groups there will be and how many parties will be in each group? Based on 160 signatories to the convention the obvious answer would be 13 groups of 13. However depending on the workload of each group and how long they have to complete the task it may be better to have a higher number of smaller groups each reviewing a smaller number of submissions.

Once it's been decided how many groups there will be there is then the question of how each nation will be assigned to each group. Will it been an entirely random process or do we want to weight the groups so they evenly represent geographic regions, economic development or the designated blocs within the convention such as Small Island Developing States (SIDS). This distributed approach will obviously aid with capacity building with more capable nations being forced to work with less capable ones.

Then there is the question of whether we take wider political rivalries into account when assigning the working groups. For example at the moment I think that a group containing both the US and Russia or a group containing both Saudi Arabia and Iran might struggle to complete its task.

Once the groups has been established there is a question of which submissions they review. Does each group review the submissions of its members in a sort of round-table or are they assigned submissions by the secretariat? If they're assigned them is this process random or again weighted to distribute submissions based on criteria to be determined? If submissions are assigned by the secretariat should there be a rule that prevents a group reviewing a submission of one of it's members?

How the submissions are divided also poses the question of whether all submissions should be reviewed by the groups or should some be reviewed by the working groups while the secretariat reviews the others? If all submissions are to be reviewed by the working groups should the secretariat also be able to conduct it's own review of submissions either through random selection or at the submitters request? A review by the secretariat could of course produce a very different outcome to review by the working group.

Then there is the question of how long the review process should take. I think 12 months is broadly sufficient but that will obviously depend on the workload placed on each group.

In terms of the scope of the review process I think the fundamental principle that will keep it as a scientific rather then a political process is that the findings of the review are strictly non-binding. That grants the process the freedom to grow and develop as it is carried out over the 80-100 years of the agreement. However I do think there needs to be language in the agreement confirming that the primary process of the exercise is to establish whether a submission is viable and how it relates to the ambition of the agreement.

In order to assist with the next round of submissions I think there also needs to be an ex post review process at around the 5 year mark to assess the progress each submission is making. I think the ex post review can use the same format as the ex ante review but that's a question that still needs to considered. For example if the same format is used does that mean the same group that performed the ex ante review performs the ex post review.

In recent days we've provided with a prime example of the advantages of a rigorous ex ante review process in the form of the Volkswagen emissions testing scandal.

To people familiar with climate change negotiations this is hardly a surprise because there is a wide acceptance that if you create a system whereby people can gain an advantage by cheating that system then that is exactly what they will do.

For example creating a similar splash at the recent September meeting there was a report by the Stockholm Environment Institute that nations such of Russia were able to generate some 400 tonnes of carbon credits by fraudulently over-estimating the reductions from processes such as mining coal waste piles. It almost goes without saying that Russia is not keen on any form of peer review process.

Although it has been exposed prior to the new agreement coming into force the Volkswagen scandal would be covered by the US' INDC which intends to reduce emissions by 28% from the 2005 baseline by 2030 by in part by introducing tougher restrictions on vehicle emissions.

Depending on how much detail their peers wish to go into as part of the review process the US would not only be asked how this proposed new law would be introduced but how it would be enforced. This would require them to provide details of their testing regime which is already available to any manufacturer who wants to sell vehicles in the US. Although it is more difficult with things like power stations or forests the group reviewing the US' submission could then conduct their own version of the US test on a range of vehicles to see if there are any anomalies.

This is actually how the Volkswagen scandal was uncovered with a private testing company carrying out its own emission tests on Volkswagens and discovering that time and time again their results did not match the US government's results.

The Volkswagen scandal also raises questions about compliance. If this new agreement does impose financial penalties for missing reduction targets as I think it should and the US misses it's target then the US would be forced to pay a fine. However because the failure was caused by Volkswagen defrauding the US government then the US could recover the cost of any fine from Volkswagen.

20:40 on 24/9/15 (UK date).