ofGy; Common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilitiesprinciplenot all nations should contribute equally to alleviate theproblem” Yamin and Depledge, 2004. It is also a fact thatdeveloped countries bear the main responsibility for climatechange, inasmuch as theyve contributed to the largest share of* Corresponding author.E-mail address GAO X..Peer review under responsibility of National Climate Center ChinaMeteorological Administration.Available online at ScienceDirectAdvances in Climate Changehttps//doi.org/10.1016/j.accre.2018.12.0041. IntroductionClimate change is a global challenge faced by all nations incommon. Scientific research highlights a quickening globaltemperature rise over the last two centuries, mainly caused byanthropogenic greenhouse gas GHG emissions IPCC, 2014.In 1992 during the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the UnitedNations Framework Convention on Climate ChangeUNFCCC, hereinafter referred to as “the Convention”wasadopted with an aim to stabilize GHG concentrations at a levelthat would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference withthe climate system. The Convention recognizes as fundamentalthe principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities andrespective capabilities” CBDRRC. This principle refers to thefact that the climate change problem “affects and is affected byall nations in common, if not to the same degree, and that theresulting ‘responsibilities’ ought to be differentiated becauseKeywords International climate change law; UNFCCC; Paris agreement; Transparenccountries.bEnergy Research Institute, National Development and Re Commission, Beijing 100038, ChinaReceived 18 November 2018; revised 28 December 2018; accepted 29 December 2018Available online 4 January 2019Abstract“Common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” CBDRRC is the most significant guiding principle in the inter-national climate change regime, created by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992 and inherited by the ParisAgreement 24 years later. This paper examines the operationalization of the CBDRRC principle in one of the cornerstone rules of the regi-medits transparency provisions, both in existing practice under the convention and possible evolvement in negotiations under the ParisAgreement, from the perspectives of both international rule-making and domestic implementation. The authors have found a continuousenhancement of the transparency framework since the 1990s, and gradual consolidation of a bifurcated system between developed anddeveloping countries into a common one. The authors argue that the transparency framework, as part of the procedural rules, should be designedto facilitate transparent ination sharing in accordance with substantive commitments under international climate change laws. Thus, itindirectly reflects historical responsibilities for climate change, while the framework should also be designed as feasible and reflective of therespective capabilities of nations. Finally, the evolution of the transparency framework will aim to enact common and enhanced provisions whiledifferentiating between developed and developing countries in the near term, and greater transparency-related capacity-building for developingReflection and operationalizationresponsibilities and respective capabilitiesframework under the internationalWANG Tiana,aNational Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooper1674-9278/Copyright 2019, National Climate Center China Meteorological AThis is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license http//creativecthe common but differentiatedprinciple in the transparencyclimate change regimeAO Xiangb,*ation, Ministry of Ecology and Environment, Beijing 100038, ChinaResearch 9 2018 Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi.ommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.negotiations since their establishment has been that the rulesand provisions for implementing the Convention should reflectthe principle of CBDRRC Stavins et al., 2014. During ne-gotiations for UNFCCC, developing countries wanted devel-oped countries to take the lead because of their historicalChange Research 9 2018 253e263historical GHG emissions. Therefore, the commitments ofdeveloped and developing countries on substantive, as well ason procedural, rules occupy a bifurcated system that reflectstheir differing responsibilities and capacities.Transparency is one of the pillars of the Paris Agreementadopted in 2015. As the Agreement adopted a bottom-upcommitment system, requesting its Parties to contribute tothe international climate change regime in a nationally deter-mined way, a robust transparency system was therefore crucialto ensuring the implementation and effectiveness of such aregime Bodansky, 2016; Rajamani, 2016; Winkler et al.,2017; Lawrence and Wong, 2017. As one of the proceduralrules, transparency provisions are also guided by the principlesof the Convention and Paris Agreement. However, there isdebate on whether the transparency provisions should beguided by all of the principles or some in academia and somein the international climate change negotiations.In order to understand the rationale on how principles guidetransparency rules, and to provide policy recommendations forinternationalpractice,theauthorshavestartedthispaperwithanexpressionoftheCBDRRCprinciple,followedbyananalysisofhow it is reflected in the evolution of transparency frameworkduring the last two decades. They then identify how differentnations respective capabilities influence the implementation oftransparency provisions. Last but not the least, they providerecommendations on how to operationalize CBDRRC in theenhanced transparency framework of the Paris Agreement.2. The CBDRRC principle and its interpretationUnder the Convention, the commitments of developed anddeveloping country Parties are designed to capture commonelements, though in a bifurcated system that reflects theirdifferent responsibilities and capabilities.The commonalities exist in Article 4.1 of the Convention,e.g., all Parties shall publish national GHG inventories, imple-ment measures to mitigate climate change and adaptation,promote and cooperate in technology development, etc. Article10 of the Kyoto Protocol reaffirms the above commonalities.Differentiation exists in the provisions for mitigation, in-ternational climate support, transparency, and compliance. TheConvention requested that the developed Parties take the leadin mitigation. This was further enhanced in the Kyoto Protocolwith an annex establishing quantified emission limitation orreduction commitments for developed Parties only, whichbifurcated the system for mitigation commitments by devel-oped and developing Parties. The commitments set by theKyoto Protocol resulted in a de facto bifurcated compliancesystem. Meanwhile, the Convention, as inherited by the Pro-tocol, requested that only some of the developed Parties pro-vide climate support to developing countries. They setdifferent provisions for developed Parties with regard to in-ation communication and review, compared to developingParties that evolved to a bifurcated measuring, reporting andverification MRV system over the last 20 years.254 WANG T., GAO X. / Advances in ClimateThe reason why these provisions were differentiated hasbeen variously interpreted. Central to international climateresponsibilities Soltau, 2014. However, their negotiatorcounterparts did not agree on whether developed countriesshould take the lead because of their “responsibilities,” their“capabilities,” or both. A “constructive ambiguity” using theword “accordingly” provided the drafting solution,1withoutattributing the provision to either “responsibilities” or “capa-bilities.” A Party could then interpret the basis for the devel-oped countries leading role as whichever aspect of theprevious sentence it deemed appropriate Biniaz, 2016. Infact, the only direct link between responsibilities for emissionsand developed countries taking the lead on addressing climatechange exists in the Cancun Agreement UNFCCC Decision1/CP.16 which was adopted by the Conference of the Partiesof the Convention COP in 2010. It states in the chapeau ofthe section dealing with mitigation and MRV of developedParties that “Aacknowledging that the largest share of his-torical global emissions of GHGs originated in developedcountries and that, owing to this historical responsibility,developed country Parties must take the lead in combatingclimate change and the adverse effects thereof.”The evolution of CBDRRC in the Paris Agreement high-lighted more about capabilities of nations than responsibilitiesfor emissions. Although the Paris Agreement inherited theprinciple of CBDRRC from the Convention, it added anaddendum to the text, “CBDRRC, in the light of differentnational circumstances.” This addendum was ulated bythe U.S.C0China Joint Announcement on Climate Change in2014 and subsumed by negotiators into the Paris Agreement in2015. Although one can argue that historical GHG emission isalso part of “national circumstances,” it generally refers tonational capacities. Nor did the Paris Agreement inherit theAnns of the Convention, which provided lists of Partiesthat became the basis for the bifurcated implementation pro-visions. Therefore, though the Paris Agreement providesdifferentiated provisions for developed and developing coun-tries, taking into account their various national capacities, itfocuses more on commonalities when it sets obligations toParties. For example, Article 3 requests all Parties to undertakenationally determined contributions NDC covering mitiga-tion, adaptation, finance, technology, capacity building, andtransparency.How to reflect CBDRRC in the transparency provisionssparked a heated debate during Paris Agreement negotiations.Generally speaking, developed countries emphasized more“common” elements, while developing countries stressed1Article 3.1 of the Convention states “Tthe Parties should protect theclimate system for the benefit of present and future generations of humankind,on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiatedresponsibilities and respective capabilities. Accordingly, the developed coun-try Parties should take the lead in combating climate change and the adverseeffects thereof.”“differentiated” ones. Ultimately, the “constructive ambiguity”contributed to the drafting of the Paris Agreement with theword “enhanced” included. “Enhanced” was borrowed againfrom a U.S.C0China proposal and agreed to by all Parties, thatestablished a middle ground between “common” and “differ-entiated,” and “provide[d] flexibility to those developingcountries that need it in light of their capacities,” as currentlystated in Article 13 of the Paris Agreement.The debate on how the transparency framework under theParis Agreement should be designed originated from divergentviews on whether transparency provisions should reflectdifferentiated responsibility or respective capabilities. Thecompromise reached in Paris resulted in Article 13 of theAgreement, with neither a bifurcated system, nor a singlecommon framework, and a transparency framework character-ized as neither “common” nor “differentiated,” but “enhanced”Winkleretal.,2017.Renewednegotiationssince2016debated“modalities, procedures and guidelines for the transparencyframeworkforactionandsupport,referredtoinArticle13oftheParis Agreement.” These were the specific provisions toimplement the Paris Agreement. As the Agreement leaves un-resolved the discussion on “common” versus “differentiated,”how best to reflect the CBDRRC principle becomes a funda-mental and uncertain issue for ongoing negotiations, withdivergent views on whether to be common or bifurcated still onthe table. The fundamental matter on the rationale of trans-parency framework design has still not been addressed.3. Reflection of the CBDRRC principle in transparencyframeworkTransparency provisions are widely applied in internationallaws,hailedasanattributeofgoodgovernance.However,acleardefinition of “transparency” is still complex and unsettled. Theterm “transparency” is borrowed from physics, which is oftencited asa metaphor, implyingvisibilityincontextsrelated tothebehavior of individuals or groups, and beyond that, openness,communication, and accountability. Tzanakopoulos 2013 de-fines transparency as “a general right of access to inationheld by those rcising public powers and in relation to thercise of these public powers, irrespective of motives orspecific interest on the part of those requesting access to theination.” Creamer and Simmons 2013 characterizetransparency as “the dissemination of regular and useful infor-mation.” Peters 2013 defines transparency as a “culture, con-dition, scheme or structure in which relevant ination forexample on law and politics is available.” Schnackenberg andTomlinson 2016 state, “transparency is the perceived qualityof intentionally shared ination from a sender.” These defi-nitions echo with the practice of the existing transparencyframework under the Convention. The Convention has requiredthe ination provided by the Parties to be “transparent,consistent, comparable, complete, and accurate,” since its firstreporting guidelines UNFCCC, 1999. It is now usuallyreferred to as TACCC transparency, accuracy, completeness,WANG T., GAO X. / Advances in Climateconsistency, comparability principle, in the context of discus-sing the climate change transparency framework.The practice under the Convention is to some extent in linewith the academic definition of “transparency,” but differentterms have been coined during the last two decades. Trans-parency framework refers to a set of arrangements ensuring thesubmission and quality of ination provided by Partieswithin the context of the Convention. According to existingpractice, several terms are used to address transparency, e.g.,“communication” Article 12 and “consider” Article 10, bothused in the Convention; and “report and review,” widely used inthe guidelines adopted by the COP. “Measuring, reporting andverification” MRV was created by the 13th Conference ofParties COP13 in 2007, while “international assessment andreview” IAR and “international consultation and analysis”ICAwereadoptedbyCOP16in2010. “Reporting,monitoring,and uation” was created by COP17 in 2011, while the ParisAgreement uses the expression of providing “ination, re-view, and consideration.”The above transparency-related terms, as used in practice,fall into four categories 1 to obtain ination, either bydirect monitoring or mathematic calculation and measure-ment; 2 to report the ination to the international com-munity; 3 to verify the quality of ination re