Compliance Checks Prove a Big Hurdle

By STEPHEN POWER
WASHINGTON -- If the Copenhagen climate summit produces an agreement among nations to cut their carbon-dioxide emissions, a contentious issue will remain: How to catch countries that cheat.
Climate diplomats prefer words such as "transparency" to blunt terms like "cheat." Either way, the concern in developed countries is that projects designed to cut carbon-dioxide emissions in poor nations aren't really generating the promised reductions.
Debate has flared in Copenhagen. A United Nations panel has claimed that China has been manipulating a system under which rich countries can invest in carbon-abatement projects in poor countries and get carbon credits that can be traded. Chinese officials have called the U.N. panel's process of reviewing such projects opaque and unfair.
Senior Obama administration officials Tuesday said that climate negotiations in Copenhagen were in "a difficult state" and that clashes over verification of emission reductions and other fundamental issues could stymie a final agreement.
But the officials, who spoke in a news briefing, said they continued to have "very constructive" dialogue with their counterparts from China, a linchpin for a successful conference.
Lack of a robust system for monitoring countries' emissions could hurt efforts to forge a climate treaty in two ways, says U.S. government scientist Pieter Tans: Some countries might sign on hoping to exploit the system's opacity. Others might refuse to sign on, fearing the system will be gamed.
Governments that do agree to cut their emissions "don't want to be seen as having failed, so they'll be inclined to slant their emissions numbers somewhat," Mr. Tans says.
As greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide tend to be distributed fairly evenly in the atmosphere, any inspection regime must be able to detect small differences in countries' emissions levels. Many scientists say existing instruments and methods for measuring emissions aren't adequate to ensure compliance.
Verifying compliance with a climate treaty is likely to be "orders of magnitude more difficult" than verifying other international agreements, such as arms-control treaties, says Kenneth Lieberthal, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
For China, he adds, "the main concern is sovereignty, and a desire not to allow others to dictate what they see, and the conditions on which they see it."
Although China is a party to the Montreal Protocol -- a treaty to eliminate chemicals that contribute to ozone depletion -- its willingness to comply with a treaty involving greenhouse-gases is viewed with suspicion by some in Congress.
U.S. officials note a statement by Chinese President Hu Jintao and President Obama last month said any pact should "provide for full transparency with respect to the implementation of mitigation measures and provision of financial, technology and capacity building support." Raising transparency in Copenhagen, a U.S. official said Tuesday, is "about giving meaning and substance to those provisions that [Chinese officials have] already agreed to."
Under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, countries, including the U.S., are expected to report emissions levels to the U.N. But such reporting isn't required for all countries, and while power plants and other CO2 emitters in the U.S. and Europe generally have equipment to monitor emissions, that's often not the case in developing countries.
"You can do all the accounting you want from the bottom up, but you also need someone standing back and examining whether you're getting results," says James Butler, a climate scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth Systems Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo.
Write to Stephen Power at stephen.power@wsj.com