Introduction

In 2007, the parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) agreed, through the Bali Action Plan, to enhance action on mitigation through consideration of ‘nationally appropriate mitigation commitments or actions, including quantified emission limitation and reduction objectives, by all developed country parties, while ensuring the comparability of efforts among them, taking into account differences in their national circumstances’.

This chapter considers the concept of ‘comparability of efforts’ for developed country parties in the context of the negotiation of post-2012 targets under the Kyoto Protocol, and long-standing efforts within this negotiating process to extend quantified emission reduction commitments and core elements of the Kyoto Protocol compliance system, both to Annex I parties that are not parties to the Kyoto Protocol (i.e. the United States), and to large developing country economies with a substantial and growing share of global emissions (e.g. China, India, Indonesia, Brazil). It considers two aspects of comparability of efforts in the context of the Bali Action Plan, and the Copenhagen Accord and Cancun Agreements which followed: (1) stringency of mitigation efforts; and (2) applicable rules for monitoring, reporting and verification of greenhouse gas inventories and achievement of targets.