Review and Accuracy of Reports

The Protocol expands the informational requirements (relative to the Climate Convention) that are needed to assess compliance with legal obligations.

Transparent measuring, reporting and verification are the vehicles through which compliance must be demonstrated.

All submissions relating to treaty compliance will be subject to increased scrutiny, and the "non-confrontational" review process under the Climate Convention will be strengthened to ensure the environmental integrity of the Protocol.

The review process under the Kyoto Protocol (outlined in Article 8) will, at a minimum, need to "provide a thorough and comprehensive technical assessment of all aspects" of a Party's implementation of the Protocol and a coordinated efforts to account for national performance with respect to Kyoto targets in an accurate and transparent way.

A key monitoring function of the international community under the protocol will be verifying countries achieve their targets and accounting for changes in national "assigned amounts" due to transactions under the Protocol's flexible mechanisms.

Parties will have the responsibility for monitoring and reporting accurately their national emissions as well as the transactions that affect their national emission levels. The Protocol links explicitly national reporting and review to compliance systems (Art. 5 and 7).

The stronger and greater measurement, reporting and review requirements of the Protocol as well as the priority given by the international community to compliance increase the urgency for a capacity by Annex I and Annex B countries to provide accurate, transparent and timely information both through the national communication under the Convention and the inventories under the Protocol.

EIT countries will have to develop "national systems" for measuring and reporting, which are not currently in place. In Hungary and other countries, for example, "relevant government institutions carry out the inventories on an ad hoc basis rather than as a regular activity."

Given the institutional and financial challenges associated with reporting, many of the functions for producing national reports or for measuring and verification are likely to continue to be outsourced. Such outsourcing can help maximize the comparative strengths of different national institutions in the effort to gather data and report.

However, a "national system" will require outsourcing arrangements that are supported by performance requirements, licensing, certification, or other methods sanctioned by authorities.

Mandates, responsibilities and lines of communication must be clarified for the many NGOs, government agencies, research institutes and other entities that are entrusted with measurement and reporting responsibilities.

Participating entities will also need to remain up-to- date on evolving standards, methodologies and reporting formats. A more coordinated, government-led effort would include:

• institutional arrangements for inventory preparation, project level monitoring and a tracking of assigned amounts;

• procedures and standards for collecting activity data, developing appropriate emission factors and ensuring quality of data; and

• procedures for quality control, internal and external verification of estimates.