COP28: An Update on the Global Stocktake
Origins
Article 14 of the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change provided that -
“The Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to this Agreement shall periodically take stock of the implementation of this Agreement to assess the collective progress towards achieving the purpose of this Agreement and its long-term goals (referred to as the “global stocktake”).”
This Global Stocktake is intended to be a five yearly review and assessment of the global response to climate change. It will assess Climate Mitigation; Climate Adaptation; and Means of implementation, including finance, technology transfer and capacity building: this includes Loss and Damage.
What is Loss and Damage?
Read our explainer here.
Crucially, the first Global Stocktake is intended to inform revised Nationally Determined Contributions, ‘NDCs’, which are due to be fully updated by 2025.
Phases
The first Global Stocktake has been some time in the making, in its three main phases. These are
Data Collection and Preparation, from COP26 in 2021 to March 2023, from Parties to the COP, stakeholders and non state actors and civil society.
Technical Assessment, from mid 2022 to Mid 2023, concluding at the Bonn, Germany climate talks, from which we reported on earlier.
This stage resulted in a Synthesis Report published in September 2023. This broadly concluded that much more effort was needed in most areas in order to achieve the Paris Agreement levels of limits to global warming: no surprises there. This is one extract from the Executive Summary:
“All Parties to the Paris Agreement have communicated NDCs [Nationally Determined Contributions] that include mitigation targets and/or measures. A growing number of Parties have also communicated LT-LEDS [long-term low-emission development strategies] Emissions gaps are the difference between the emission levels implied by the NDCs and the average emission levels of global modelled mitigation pathways consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 °C or 2 °C. Implementation gaps refer to how far currently enacted policies and actions fall short of reaching stated targets. Based on current NDCs, the gap to emissions consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 °C in 2030 is estimated to be 20.3–23.9 Gt [Gigatonnes]CO2 eq.2”
Consideration of outputs, concluding at COP28.
The first Global Stocktake therefore is to conclude at the COP28 climate talks in the UAE in November 2023.
That is the point at which countries attending the COP demonstrate whether or not they share what Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley has referred to as “the simple political will” to do what is necessary on climate and to match the conclusions of the Global Stocktake’s Synthesis Report of September 2023, and the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report of 2023.
Find out more:
What is the “Global Stocktake” and How Can It Accelerate Climate Action?
Jamal Srouji and Deidre Gogan, World Resources Institute,
8 September 2023