October 2013: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has published a paper that analyzes the possible types of mitigation commitments that could be made under the new climate agreement being negotiated by the parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, as well as the information that would need to be provided to understand the different types of commitments.

The paper, titled ‘Establishing and Understanding Post-2020 Climate Change Mitigation Commitments,’ explains that, to determine what their mitigation commitments should be, parties could take a “top-down” approach, which would involve ascertaining the global “emissions budget” and dividing it up between themselves (the parties). It further outlines a possible second approach, which would be more “bottom-up” and involve countries developing nationally-determined commitments with minimal international co-ordination. Highlighting that both approaches have challenges and flaws, the paper then describes a possible third approach, of “bounded flexibility,” which would involve parties agreeing on some aspects of the mitigation commitments (such as type and timeframe of commitment) but retain flexibility for other aspects.

The paper then identifies the ex-ante information that parties would need to provide in order to ensure clarity, including information relating to which greenhouse gases are included in their commitments, the time-frames for achieving the commitments and any conditionalities attached to the commitments.

It concludes by outlining the possible stages and tentative dates of the process for establishing and understanding the commitments. [Publication: Establishing and Understanding Post-2020 Climate Change Mitigation Commitments]