Introduction

From the preceding chapters it may be concluded that the regulation of climate change at the international level is clustered around a small number of institutions or programs. One of them is the IPCC – the grand enterprise that synthesises empirical data and supplies information on the climate system in a digestible form for policy-makers. Other elements of the international regime fall under the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol. The Convention’s meeting schedule and procedural rules, its Secretariat and general administration, may be treated as a distinct program. While this facilitative regulation is not a main focus of this book, its importance to the operation of the climate change regime should not be underestimated. When the administrative institution is put to one side, we are left with three important and distinct clusters of regulation:

• The Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol (discussed in Chapter 6);

• The financial mechanism of the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol, including the Global Environment Facility. The GEF, created in 1990, pre-existed the UNFCCC, but was co-opted by it, and is administered by the UNFCCC in conjunction with the World Bank (more about the GEF and the new Green Climate Fund in Chapter 8);

• The monitoring, reporting, and verification system (sometimes labelled MRV) under the Convention, which under the Kyoto Protocol has been extended by a unique compliance system for Annex I (developed) states.

Other regulatory clusters, such as the emerging scheme under the Convention to protect forests (REDD, Chapter 7) and the technology transfer mechanism under both treaties (covered in Chapter 8), are still being constructed and therefore have few well-established, binding aspects.

This chapter examines the climate change regime’s MRV program and the Kyoto Protocol’s compliance system. Around them has coalesced a distinct and vitally important body of rules within the broader international climate regime.