MRV of Emissions and Mitigation Action: the Paris Agreement and Financial Support for Transparency- Related Capacity Building in Developing Countries

This article examines the role of the Paris Agreement in enabling developed-country
financial contributions aimed at building transparency-related capacity in developing
countries. It first analyses the legal means and institutional arrangements utilized
by the Agreement to support developing countries in building transparency-related
capacity. It then argues that even though the Agreement adopts certain legal and
institutional means to foster transparency-related capacity building in developing
countries through financial support, it does so in a way that risks undermining the
meaningful and accountable use of climate finance, while softening the bindingness of
the Agreement’s provisions. The lack of accountability obligations on climate finance
for developing countries, the principle of flexibility, and the challenges intrinsic to
climate finance, combine to weaken the climate-finance obligation, while calling into
question the effectiveness of the Agreement.