By Harro van Asselt, Romain Weikmans, Timmons Roberts and Achaea Abeysinghe.

One of the key elements of the Paris Agreement is its “enhanced transparency framework”, set out in Article 13. This paper offers an analysis of some of the major questions raised by the Paris Agreement with regard to transparency, in the form of a commentary on Article 13 as well as other related provisions of the Paris Agreement and Decision 1/CP.21. It identifies several areas where the Paris Agreement has left gaps in building a comprehensive and coherent transparency system, and offers recommendations on next steps with critical elements of the framework, including, inter alia: flexibility; relationship with the global stocktake, the compliance mechanism and other elements of the Paris Agreement; accounting for financial support received; reporting on non-financial support; and capacity building for transparency.