WRI Working Paper Released: A Critical Decade for Climate Policy: Tools and Initiatives to Track Our Progress

This month, the World Resources Institute, a global environmental think tank whose mission is “to move human society to live in ways that protect Earth’s environment and its capacity to provide for the needs and aspirations of current and future generations,” recently released a report authored by Taryn Fransen with Casey Cronin titled, A Critical Decade for Climate Policy: Tools and Initiatives to Track Our Progress (2013). The 24-page report available here discusses how,

[t]he last five years have seen both broad and deep advancements in national policies to mitigate future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The next five years will be instrumental in ensuring that these policies are implemented effectively, creating sustained change that will achieve gigatonne-scale GHG reductions, and laying the foundation for countries to move ahead with ever more ambitious approaches to reduce GHG emissions and limit the dangers and costs of a changing climate.

In order to support effective development and implementation of climate policies, a suite of policy tracking tools and initiatives is evolving, with a variety of characteristics tuned to address different questions and audiences. Underlying these efforts is the observation of metrics related to climate policy development, adoption, implementation, and/or effect. These initiatives seek to complement the measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) processes under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), promoting accountability for governments to set and meet ambitious yet feasible goals and targets, identifying barriers and facilitating course corrections when necessary, and ultimately supporting overall policy progress and effectiveness.
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