Could a failure to comply with obligations related to the Transparency Framework under Article 13, Paris Agreement, be a trigger for action by the Compliance Committee under Article 15 ?

Advice:

The Paris Agreement does not provide for any explicit relationship between Article 13 (transparency framework) and Article 15 (compliance mechanism). There is nothing to prevent the compliance committee from investigating a party’s failure to provide the information required under the transparency framework, since providing such information is an obligation of parties under the Paris Agreement. Whether a failure to provide the information under the transparency framework will ‘trigger’ the compliance mechanism is to be determined by the modalities, procedures and guidelines mentioned in Article 15.3. The draft text can be found here. Paragraph 20 provides two options. The first option allows a breach of mandatory obligations – including those under Article 13 – to be referred to the compliance mechanism, while the second option explicitly mentions the obligations of parties under Article 13, as well as ‘significant and/or persistent’ breaches of the modalities, procedures and guidelines adopted under Article 13.13. Also, systemic issues relating to the transparency framework could be considered under paragraphs 31-33. Of course, this is still all draft text that is not yet agreed.