Paris Agreement member nations are required to report on the progress made toward implementing and achieving their nationally determined contributions, which includes reporting on the amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted each year. However, there are many ways a nation can collect and interpret this information, leading some to question the validity of data from some countries and about certain sectors or gases. 

In this video, Timiebi Aganaba-Jeanty, a post-doctoral fellow with CIGI’s International Law Research Program, looks at the methods that nations are using to determine GHG emissions as part of their commitment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and how new technologies, frameworks and organizations could work toward a standardized international data set to support implementation of the Paris Agreement on climate change. For example, could statistical methodology approaches for determining GHG emissions data be supported by integrated data from satellites, land-based measurement stations and statistical data? More questions arise from the integration of these data sources: Who has control over the data? How will the in-situ components be coordinated? And what are the security risks to an open-data policy?