Doomed to fail? A call to reform global climate governance and greenhouse gas inventories

Abstract

Commitments to emissions reductions following the landmark Paris Climate Change Agreement have proliferated. Though it is promising that 145 countries have declared a net-zero emissions target, with 33 enshrining this goal into law, comparison of country-level emissions inventories can only be effectively carried out with uniform and consistent data. The extent to which greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory comparison is possible, and the ancillary climate governance implications, are the motivation for this article. Based on time-series correlation analyses over 32 years and 43 Annex-I countries, we uncover issues that are likely to inveigh against country-country comparison of GHGs—with the potential to weaken climate governance systems that are based mainly on emissions inventory tracking. First, the Global Warming Potentials (GWPs)—which convert each respective GHG into carbon equivalents (CO₂-e), and are revised with each IPCC report—are not immediately or consistently integrated into GHG inventories. Second, GHGs apart from carbon dioxide, based on the data analysis, do not appear to be tracked uniformly. Should comparison of emissions remain a cornerstone of global climate governance, an overhaul of country-level GHG inventories is called for, specifically to enable effective reporting and tracking of GHGs apart from only carbon dioxide.