MARKING THE WAY

The report analyzes climate accountability frameworks—systems that break long-term greenhouse gas targets into interim milestones—using case studies from jurisdictions like the UK, Aotearoa/New Zealand, British Columbia, and Manitoba. It identifies six common elements and associated best practices, such as legislating targets, ensuring independent expert advice, and using cumulative carbon budgets. For Canada, the authors recommend a national framework with legally binding milestones set only at the national level to avoid regional burden-sharing conflicts, while encouraging subnational governments to implement their own complementary frameworks. The report emphasizes a collaborative approach where the federal government provides policy backstops and financial incentives to ensure a resilient, multi-jurisdictional response to climate change.

• Climate accountability frameworks consist of six common elements: formalizing governance structures, defining roles and responsibilities, establishing interim emissions reduction milestones, producing action plans, requiring monitoring and reporting, and broadening scope beyond emissions reduction.
• Best practices for these frameworks include legislating long-term targets to increase resilience to political changes, utilizing independent advisory bodies to depoliticize policy, and adopting a 'whole-of-government' approach to distribute responsibility across departments.
• Defining interim milestones as cumulative carbon budgets is considered a best practice because it provides a more meaningful measure of a jurisdiction's global contribution and clarifies trade-offs across time, regions, and sectors.
• To maintain accountability, governments that miss their emissions milestones should be required to publish revised plans and policies to compensate for excess emissions in future periods.
• In the Canadian context, the report recommends that legally binding emissions milestones be set only at the national level to avoid divisive regional burden-sharing debates and the economic rigidities associated with binding subnational or sectoral targets.
• The report suggests a combined federal-provincial approach to policy implementation, where the federal government uses policy 'backstops' (such as a benchmark carbon price) and financial incentives to encourage subnational ambition.
• A successful Canadian framework must formally recognize Indigenous rights and embed Indigenous expertise in decision-making, drawing lessons from Aotearoa/New Zealand's integration of Māori perspectives.

APA

Beugin, D., Dion, J., Kanduth, A., Lee, C., Sawyer, D., & Arnold, J. (2020). MARKING THE WAY. Canadian Climate Institute. https://climatechoices.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/CICC-climate-accountability-framework-FINAL.pdf

Chicago

Beugin, Dale, Jason Dion, Anna Kanduth, Caroline Lee, Dave Sawyer, and Jonathan Arnold. MARKING THE WAY. Canadian Climate Institute, 2020. https://climatechoices.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/CICC-climate-accountability-framework-FINAL.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Beugin |first1=Dale |last2=Dion |first2=Jason |last3=Kanduth |first3=Anna |last4=Lee |first4=Caroline |last5=Sawyer |first5=Dave |last6=Arnold |first6=Jonathan |title=MARKING THE WAY |publisher=Canadian Climate Institute |date=June 2020 |url=https://climatechoices.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/CICC-climate-accountability-framework-FINAL.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{beugin2020marking, author = {Beugin, Dale and Dion, Jason and Kanduth, Anna and Lee, Caroline and Sawyer, Dave and Arnold, Jonathan}, title = {{MARKING THE WAY}}, institution = {Canadian Climate Institute}, year = {2020}, month = jun, url = {https://climatechoices.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/CICC-climate-accountability-framework-FINAL.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }