Implementing the Paris Climate Agreement through Transparency, Participation, and Accountability

How the Open Government PartnershipThe Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a multi-stakeholder initiative focused on improving government transparency, ensuring opportunities for citizen participation in public matters, and strengthen... More can support country implementation

Countries must reduce carbon emissions much more aggressively this decade and mainstream adaptation to climate change across their economies to have any chance of meeting the 1.5 degrees Celsius target in the Paris Agreement — and avoid the most catastrophic climate impact on human societies and ecosystems in modern history. To sustainably address climate change, countries will need to build and channel public support into ambitious and equitable climate actions that are backed with the political will and institutional capacity to implement them. This is possible by providing the public access to relevant information and creating meaningful opportunities for participation, as well as developing mechanisms for raising grievances and seeking redress.

The OGP platform and action planAction plans are at the core of a government’s participation in OGP. They are the product of a co-creation process in which government and civil society jointly develop commitments to open governmen... process provide a ready-made mechanism for ensuring that countries’ implementation of the Paris Agreement adopts open government principles.

This brief is a guide to open government approaches for climate change mitigation, adaptation, and finance as outlined in the Paris Agreement. It is intended for climate change authorities, open government officials, oversight commissions, or bodies such as legislatures, courts, and supreme audit institutions, as well as civil society organizations and other non-state actors interested in taking action on climate.

Authors: Jesse Worker and Delfina Grinspan, World Resources Institute and Adna Karamehic-Oates, Open Government Partnership