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

First policy brief from the NDC ASPECTS project published

  • News 27.10.2021

The five-yearly Global Stocktake (GST) plays an essential role in the overall ambition mechanism of the Paris Agreement on climate change by 'assessing the collective progress towards achieving the purpose of this Agreement and its long-term goals'. While the Katowice climate conference set out the broad parameters for the design and implementation of the GST, it did not provide all the necessary details of how the process will be organised. With the first GST due to start at COP26 in Glasgow, there is an urgent need to identify how the GST could be organised so as to maximise the effectiveness of the process.

The policy brief "Maximising the Impact of the Global Stocktake: Options for Design and Implementation" by Christiane Beuermann and Wolfgang Obergassel, both Co-Head of the Global Climate Governance Research Unit at the Wuppertal Institute, and Harro van Asselt, Maximilian Häntzschel and Moritz Petersmann from the University of Eastern Finland aims to contribute to this understanding. Recognising the importance and interrelatedness of all three thematic areas of the GST, it focuses on mitigation. Applying the concept of governance functions of international institutions, the policy brief derives the following key recommendations:

  • A sectoral approach could help to ensure that the expected outcomes of the Global Stocktake (GST) are achieved. A sectoral approach would help break down the rich base of information collected into more manageable pieces through which Parties could further align their policies with the Paris Agreement goals.
  • While the Paris Agreement and the Katowice decision do not provide an explicit entry point for a sectoral approach, it could nevertheless be pursued under several of the broadly formulated 'guiding questions' that are supposed to from the basis of the GST.
  • To ensure procedural fairness and boost transparency and accountability, equitable access should be guaranteed for developing country government delegations and different stakeholder groups. Equitable treatment of non-Party stakeholders' inputs and perspectives includes early communication of time frames and procedures.
  • To strengthen the follow-up of the GST outcomes, GST cycles should culminate in a high-level event and associated COP decision and/or declaration acknowledging the Paris Agreement's long-term goal, stating collective overall and collective sectoral climate ambition and committing to further action needed. The core of a detailed technical summary of available options, best practices and recommendations could be recommendations for sectoral decarbonisation targets and roadmaps.

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