Support for the first Global Stocktake of the Paris Agreement

Systematic presentation of the Global Stocktake in the NDC cycleClick to enlarge
The Global Stocktake in the NDC cycle

In the NDC cycle, the global stocktake evaluates progress and initiates the agenda-setting.

Source: Jeffery et al. (2021)

The Global Stocktake reviews global progress towards the goals of the Paris Agreement every five years. On behalf of the German Environment Agency, experts analyse the inputs for the Global Stocktake 2023, assess the collective progress made so far and identify courses of action for increasing mitigation efforts at national level.

Table of Contents

 

The Global Stocktake

To achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, all countries must massively increase their climate change mitigation efforts. The Paris Agreement established a mechanism to regularly review progress towards the goals of the Agreement - the so-called Global Stocktake (GST). This will be conducted for the first time in 2023 and every five years thereafter. The GST will thus take place two years before the resubmission of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and is intended to set the course for further ambitious action.

 

The Talanoa Dialogue

A first stocktaking was already carried out in 2018 in the framework of the so-called Talanoa Dialogue. Based on submission by Parties and civil society and on discussions during the climate change conference in Katowice, the COP presidencies delivered the Talanoa Call for Action. They emphasised the importance of a just transformation, the potential of technology and the importance of leadership and acting together to fulfil the goals of the Paris Agreement.

 

Modalities of the Global Stocktake

During the Katowice Climate Change Conference 2018 (COP24) the modalities and the information sources for the GST were defined (Decision 19/CMA.1). The GST consists of three phases:

In the first phase, information is collected and processed. This includes the status of GHG emissions, mitigation actions undertaken by Parties, the overall impact of NDCs, the status of adaptation efforts, finance flows, specific barriers and challenges for developing countries, opportunities to strengthen international cooperation on mitigation and adaptation, opportunities to strengthen support, and equity aspects. The information is summarised in synthesis reports by the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

In the second phase, the information is assessed in a technical dialogue consisting of workshops, round tables and other activities, which also involve the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In the third phase, a political assessment of the results is carried out. This takes place in high-level political meetings and aims to identify pathways for more ambitious action and support, as well as examples of good practices. The three phases will last a total of two years; the first phase of the first GST already started in 2021.

 

Aims of the project

The project commissioned by the German Environment Agency "Technical and political support for the first Global Stocktake" is accompanying the first GST under the Paris Agreement. The focus of the project is on mitigation issues. The overall objective is to contribute to ensuring that the results of the GST have an impact and that more ambitious NDCs are submitted in 2025. Furthermore, the results of the work aim to support the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) in the international climate negotiations.

 

Analysis of submissions

The first work package of the project will analyse the submissions that will feed into the process from 2021 to 2023. Based on scientific publications and country reports submitted for the Global Stocktake, collective mitigation efforts and their gaps will be analysed. In addition, an overview of submissions by countries and civil society under the Global Stocktake will be compiled.

 

Assessment of collective progress

In another work package, the so-called ‘performance distribution’ approach will be further developed. This approach was first developed in a project commissioned by the German Environment Agency on the challenges of assessing collective progress. In this approach, data such as changes in greenhouse gas emissions at national level are used, but in an anonymised manner. Individual country information is displayed in histograms so that no individual country is highlighted but it is nevertheless possible to see if some countries are either leading or lagging behind others. This approach illustrates the collective progress of the international community in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The aim is to show pioneers and laggards as well as room for ambitious action. Further information is available in the leaflet "Introducing performance distributions to visualise collective progress towards mitigation goals of the Paris Agreement".

 

Pathways for action at national level

Finally, possible pathways are shown on how to communicate the results of the GST to a broad public and how to use them to initiate further ambitious action at the national level of Parties to the UNFCCC. The central statements of the GST will be presented in a generally understandable way and it will be shown how these can be incorporated into the development of new, more ambitious NDCs.

The project period runs from August 2021 to May 2024.