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International mechanisms to monitor and review progress, to identify and respond to non-compliance, are relevant as a means to advance implementation of the technology transfer and cooperation provisions of the Protocol. The Convention already has in place an elaborate system for the collection and review of national information. The system aims to assess progress and facilitate national implementation of the international obligations under the Convention (OECD, 1998a). The Kyoto Protocol proposes to continue the monitoring, reporting and review functions, and calls for strengthening of the review and compliance assessment functions (OECD, 1999). Article 8 of the Protocol, in particular, requests the Climate Change Secretariat to identify questions related to implementation as part of the normal review of the performance of individual Parties (see Box 3.5).
At present UNFCCC reviews of national performance include an assessment of the Annex II Party implementation of technology transfer and cooperation provisions of the Convention. However, because these provisions are ambiguous, it is difficult to assess performance in a compliance sense. An important step forward would be to identify a checklist of relevant activities or implementation actions that every Annex II Party should take. This would provide a point of departure for reviewing the performance of the Convention and the more recent Kyoto Protocol obligations. Because of the lack of clarity about these obligations, the UNFCCC review of national information tends to be a descriptive exercise rather than one that points out key areas of progress and shortfalls. Clarifying the expectations of the international community with respect to these obligations, for Annex II Parties as well as for all other Parties, would bring the technology transfer obligations of Parties fully into the international compliance system, and encourage open and transparent review of progress over time.
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