Overview

At a number of recent international meetings, public and private sector leaders agreed that in addition to appropriate target setting (eg. that follow the evolving science) and predictable large-scale financing, meeting the challenges of climate change will require the creation of transparent and trusted mechanisms for monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) and of decision-support capabilities to enable both mitigation and adaptation execution programs to address the climate change challenge. The essential preconditions to effective agreements in climate change are the trust and transparency that come from reliable and auditable measurement. We can’t manage what we can’t measure.

The transition to a low carbon economy will require a vast array of small and large decisions made by a range of governments, corporations, communities and other stakeholders. But currently they are forced to make these with only very partial information. To unlock reliable, scaleable, open participatory mechanisms to achieve trust and informed decision making we need to pool the assets and capabilities of researchers in public and private sectors, leading space agencies, NGOs, think tanks, academia and international scientific institutions. No single institution has the capabilities, assets or knowhow to complete the R&D program required on its own– national and international cross-sectoral collaborations are key.