Context: Climate diplomats from around the world are currently meeting in Bonn to lay the ground for the UNFCCC’s COP 28 in Dubai. This year’s conference has added significance because climate scientists have begun work on a critical mandate of the Paris Pact, known as the Global Stocktake.
About Global Stocktake:
- The Paris Agreement’s Global Stocktake process is designed to assess the global response to the climate crisis every five years.
- It evaluates the world’s progress in slashing greenhouse gas emissions, building resilience to climate impacts, and securing finance and support to address the climate crisis.
- It serves as a global accelerator, driving nations to step up their climate action and pursue the transformational change needed to secure a zero-carbon, climate-resilient, and equitable future.
- The first global stocktake will happen by the end of the UN climate summit in December 2023 (COP28) in Dubai.
- Countries must then agree on how they will leverage their findings to keep the global goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C alive and address the impacts of climate change.
Purpose of Global Stocktake:
- Established under Article 14 of the Paris Agreement towards achieving the purpose of the Paris Agreement and its long-term goals.
- Those goals include
- Cutting greenhouse gas emissions to limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) and ideally 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F);
- Building resilience to climate impacts; and
- Aligning financial support with the scale and scope needed to tackle the climate crisis.
- It is intended to evaluate progress on climate action at the global level, not the national level.
- In the Paris Agreement, Parties agreed that the Stocktake should inform countries in updating and enhancing their climate actions and support, and in enhancing international cooperation for climate action.
- It should also inform countries about new climate plans (known as “nationally determined contributions,” or NDCs) which will be fully updated next in 2025.
Thematic areas of Global Stocktake
- At COP24 in Katowice, Poland in 2018, countries agreed that the Global Stocktake would address climate progress in three key areas:
- Mitigation: Evaluating global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees.
- Adaptation: Measuring progress in countries abilities to enhance their resilience and reduce vulnerability to climate impacts.
- Means of implementation, including finance, technology transfer, and capacity building.
- Loss and damage helping assess the actions and support needed to respond to climate impacts beyond what communities and ecosystems can adapt to.
- It also considers the unintended social and economic consequences that may arise from climate action and implementation, known as response measures.
- It is also intended to emphasise the importance of promoting equity and leveraging the best available science to inform strategies for tackling the climate crisis.
Significance of Global Stocktake
- The Global Stocktake is meant to be a participatory process that is open, inclusive and transparent, as countries agreed at COP24.
- Taking place over the course of two years, the Global Stocktake begins with data collection and technical assessment phases and culminates with a high-level political phase.
