Section submenu:

Current Releases

News

Environmental Regulators call for increased financing in support of emissions accounting

22 October 2009

A high-level meeting of environmental regulators concluded on Saturday with agreement that greater resources are needed to ensure comprehensive and accurate reporting of greenhouse gas emissions data in developing countries. The Global Climate Network co-facilitated the meeting and provided a discussion paper to frame thinking ahead of the talks.

With less than seven weeks to go until December’s crucial UN Climate Change conference in Copenhagen, environment ministers and executive directors of environmental protection agencies from key countries, including the US, Brazil, Australia, Korea and Indonesia came together to share perspectives on the practical challenges facing them under a post-2012 international climate framework.

The task of monitoring and evaluating national policies and measures to cut emissions is central to the negotiations and is at the heart of the Bali Action Plan’s call for ‘measurable, reportable and verifiable’ plans and commitments to mitigate global warming. It enables governments to assess the effectiveness of emissions reduction programmes as well as their progress against the objectives of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Regulators have a key role to play in this process and in ensuring sources and industries across a range of sectors stick to their emissions allocations. In the two day meeting, which was hosted by the Environment Agency for England and Wales and the Global Climate Network, participants committed to working together in order to develop common standards for reporting and to help build one other’s capacity for frequent and robust emissions data collection.

The meeting took place at St George’s House, Windsor Castle and was presided over by Lord Chris Smith, Chairman of the Environment Agency. The deliberations at Windsor revealed strong consensus among regulators over the issue of capacity-building for emissions reporting, particularly in developing countries, and the need for ongoing dialogue and cooperation between regulators to help achieve this.

Read more about the meeting on the GCN events page.

Download the related GCN report: Building Trust and Cooperation in a North–South Climate Change Compact.