THE Paris Agreement (PA) had mandated a periodic five-yearly cycle of assessments of climate action called the Global Stocktake (GST) starting in 2023. GST is a process involving both country parties i.e., governments, as well as non-party stakeholders to review progress made on the different actions agreed upon in the international negotiations under the aegis of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to tackle the greatest crisis to confront humankind, namely climate change. GST is expected to go beyond a retrospective review to chart out pathways to achieve the goals set by the Paris Agreement and, implicitly, raise ambitions towards ensuring these goals. The current cycle, underway for about two years now, will culminate in December 2023 at COP28 in Dubai where governments would examine the results of the GST and, hopefully, take appropriate decisions binding on all countries.

The GST consists of several processes such as data collection and analysis, technical assessment and the political decision-making at the COP. The data collection process started in end-2021 during COP26 in Glasgow, then proceeded in parallel with the technical assessment which began in mid-2022, with both concluding in mid-2023 at the inter-sessional meeting in Bonn. Currently the findings are being studied in what is termed the Consideration of Outputs phase which would culminate at COP28. The assessment process has been taking place through three technical dialogues (TD 1, 2 and 3) at the inter-sessional meetings in mid-2022 and 2023 along with the intervening COP27 in end-2022. A final synthesis report was released towards the end of September 2023, and will be the main input into follow-up decision-making at the forthcoming COP28.

This report is, or should be, a watershed moment in the international climate negotiations, certainly in the post-PA phase. However, it barely received any attention in the media worldwide. Perhaps it got crowded out by the wall-to-wall coverage of the war in Ukraine in the western media. Maybe the perception was that the real action is to take place in December at COP28, when there will be a media circus anyway, so why not wait? Or perhaps climate fatigue has set in, at least as regards news about steps to curb emissions, since nothing special seems to be happening on that front. The increasingly frequent and more severe forest fires, heat waves, floods, polar and glacial ice-melts, and droughts in different parts of the world should be drawing attention as much to what needs to be done to check them as to the disasters themselves.

Editor: Zhong Yao、Deng Panyi

From:https://peoplesdemocracy.in/2023/1022_pd/global-stocktake-pre-report-glass-quarter-full（2023-10-22）