Understanding pledge and review: learning from analogies to the Paris Agreement review mechanisms

This article draws lessons for the effectiveness of the Paris Agreement’s pledge and review mechanisms from the performance of comparable review mechanisms established under other international treaties. The article employs systematic evidence synthesis methods to review the existing literature on international review mechanisms in the human rights, trade, labour, and monetary policy fields and identifies six common factors influencing their performance. Applying these findings to the Paris Agreement, the analysis finds that its review mechanisms incorporate many of these factors. In particular, they combine both expert and peer review, allow for repeated interaction and capacity building, and facilitate the regular and transparent provision of information. The comparative analysis also highlights two major deficiencies of the Paris Agreement: the absence of procedures to assess the adequacy of national pledges and actions taken to implement them, and resource constraints in carrying out a complex and arduous review process. Active engagement of non-state actors with review mechanisms is identified as a potential remedy to these shortcomings. However, the overall experience of other regimes suggests that, on their own, review mechanisms provide few incentives for states to undertake significant policy changes. Rather, the political context of each regime conditions the performance of review mechanisms. We therefore conclude that the Paris Agreement’s review mechanisms alone are unlikely to bring about the necessary ratcheting up of climate policy ambitions.Key policy insights Review mechanism performance relies on six factors that are common across international agreements: the ability of the mechanism to solicit accurate information, the involvement of experts and state peers in the review process, the ability to ensure repeated interaction, the institutional capacity to carry out the review, the transparency of the review process and its outputs, and the salience and practicality of the outcomes produced by the review.The Paris Agreement’s strengths lie in its rules designed to facilitate the transparent provision of information, the inclusion of both expert and peer review, its facilitation of repeated interaction and in providing support to build the reporting capacities of states.The Paris Agreement severely restricts the salience and practicality of its review outcomes by prohibiting an assessment of the adequacy of national pledges.It remains uncertain whether the UNFCCC secretariat’s capacity and resources will suffice to carry out the arduous review task.