Maximising the Impact of the Global Stocktake under the Paris Climate Agreement

The five-yearly Global Stocktake (GST) is one of the key features of the Paris Climate Agreement. In this agreement, the international community has set itself the goal of limiting the global temperature increase to well below 2°C in 2015 compared to the level before the start of industrialisation, and preferably even below 1.5°C. However, the concrete climate protection contributions that countries have pledged so far are much weaker than would be necessary to achieve these goals.

The purpose of the GST is to review the implementation of the Paris Agreement in order to assess the collective progress towards achieving the purpose of the Agreement and its long-term goals. The outcome of the GST shall inform Parties in updating and enhancing their climate actions.

The new discussion paper "Design Options for the Global Stocktake: Lessons from other Review Processes" by Christiane Beuermann, Wolfgang Obergassel and Hanna Wang-Helmreich from the Energy, Transport and Climate Policy Division at the Wuppertal Institute surveys a number of other review processes within and outside the UNFCCC to derive lessons for the design of the GST. The processes that have been reviewed include:

• the Talanoa Dialogue – a process carried out in 2018 to help countries improve their nationally determined contributions by 2020;
• the United Nations High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development – the UN's key body for reviewing the progress on global sustainability policy within the framework of the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs);
• the human rights system of the United Nations; and
• the review processes under the Montreal Protocol – the key international treaty to eliminate substances that deplete the ozone layer.

One key take-away is that other processes that take place around the official stocktaking process may be as important as the official GST process. For example, arguably the largest impact of the Talanoa Dialogue in 2018 was the publication of the IPCC's special report on the 1.5°C limit. While the immediate uptake of the report in the official negotiations was rather muted, it had a large public impact and strongly contributed to increasing a sense of urgency regarding global climate protection efforts.

Key conclusions from the new discussion paper paper by the Wuppertal Institute will be presented in the webinar "iGST: Charting the Way Forward" on 4 June, 17:00-18:15 CEST. In addition, researchers from the UNEP DTU Partnership and the University of Maryland Center for Global Sustainability will present findings from research focused on how to deal with adaptation and mitigation issues within the GST.

The paper and webinar have been prepared as part of the independent Global Stocktake (iGST) initiative. The iGST is a data and advocacy initiative co-ordinated by the ClimateWorks Foundation that brings together climate researchers, modelers, campaigners and advocates to support the Paris Agreement. The iGST's objective is to support the official Global Stocktake and to increase its accuracy, transparency, and accountability. The "iGST Designing a Robust Stocktake Discussion Series" envisions the contours of an ideal Global Stocktake and suggests ways in which the independent community can help to achieve that vision.