This report first examines whether the logic of the regime, and the Paris Agreement in particular, is effective. The Paris Agreement is having a positive impact: if nationally determined contributions (NDCs) are fully implemented, projected global temperature rise would be around 1 degree C less than it would have been had the agreement not been adopted. Yet the pace of action is not enough to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement—the world is on track to overshoot 1.5 degrees C, and even staying within 2 degrees C of warming is far from certain. Clearly, incremental improvements in climate ambition and implementation are not enough. A transformational shift is essential.

The report then examines how the regime’s “norm-setting” function can be strengthened to make it fit for an evolving purpose, remain functionally relevant, and deliver on the goals of the Paris Agreement. More specifically, recommendations are made in the following areas:

• enhancing ambition and fairness by increasing peer pressure that encourages and inspires ambition in light of different national circumstances and fair shares
• accelerating implementation and strengthening accountability across sectors and within nations with improved systems and processes to understand and follow up on the progress made
• strengthening cooperative action on adaptation and loss & damage (L&D) in the context of urgent needs and overshoot pathways
• expanding coverage to prepare for the future demands that will require agreement on a range of issues that are currently not addressed by the regime well or at all
• streamlining and fine-tuning processes to enhance responsiveness to an evolving purpose.

Finally, this report reviews the regime’s catalytic role in the wider landscape of climate action. The wider landscape includes relevant international organizations and agreements, international cooperative initiatives (ICIs), multilateral development banks (MDBs), international financial institutions (IFIs), and voluntary commitments by non-Party stakeholders (NPS). There is considerable potential in leveraging the actors in this landscape to narrow remaining ambition and implementation gaps in relation to mitigation, adaptation, and means of implementation, as well as fulfilling governance functions in ways that complement and reinforce the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process.

At the same time, there remain core challenges related to transparency, accountability, and the thematic and geographical balance of the wider landscape. To ensure that this wider landscape effectively contributes to and strengthens the catalytic role of the climate regime, this report highlights key findings and makes the following broad recommendations:

• Parties should harness existing agenda items under the UN climate regime, or establish a targeted mechanism or process, to foster substantive exchanges with other international organizations and treaties, including IFIs, and to recognize, consider, and promote alignment of their goals and actions with the objectives of the Paris Agreement.
• Parties should enhance the role of, and engagement with, all types of ICIs, in the context of an upgraded Global Climate Action Portal, including by strengthening their transparency and accountability as well as their thematic and geographical balance.

Parties, the UNFCCC Secretariat, the High-Level Climate Champions/Marrakech Partnership, the UN Secretary-General, and/or the Conference of Parties (COP) Presidencies could advance and implement these recommendations variously, including through leveraging the GST process.

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It lays out the certainty of impact, feasibility, and barriers of each key signal, as well as existing initiatives working toward its implementation, relevant sustainable development goals, and options for outcomes of the GST at COP28. The report also underscores the importance of linking the GST outcomes to active progress in 2024 and updated nationally determined contributions in 2025.

The post A Solutions-oriented Approach to the Paris Agreement’s Global Stocktake appeared first on Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.

This event will look at what has changed on the resilience landscape since COP-27, including the impact that the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) are having on private sector resilience efforts, especially those related to the energy grid. The event will also explore key initial findings from a convenings by C2ES to better understand businesses’ actions on resilience, especially as it relates to energy grid hardening and expansion and other infrastructure development.

The post Building A Resilient Future: How Public and Private Efforts Are Making A Difference appeared first on Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.

“We must solve the climate emergency and sustainable development challenges together, or we will not solve them at all.” The outcomes of first global stocktake in this critical decade need to send clear and specific signals as to what Parties and non-Party stakeholders could usefully do after COP28 in order to collectively achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, both as part of an immediate response as well as through more ambitious NDCs in 2025. These efforts must also go hand-in-hand with enhancing sustainable development.

The report “Synergy Solutions for a World in Crisis:  Tackling Climate and SDG Action Together” highlights this imperative. Published in September, the report illustrates that integrated and synergistic action on climate and development is critical to achieve the course correction needed to build a more sustainable future. It provides data, case studies, an overview of existing barriers, and offers ten recommendations to support enhanced coordination, policy coherence, and revised governance frameworks at national and international levels.

Speakers will outline a theory of change for moving from incremental progress in the UNFCCC to transformational levels of ambition, implementation, and international cooperation. Speakers will elaborate examples of key operational and transformational signals, including the tripling of renewable energy capacity, through the lens of the SDGs, highlighting synergies and trade-offs that can inform and drive effective progress in the GST and beyond COP28. The normative potential of both regimes – UNFCCC and SDG – can be leveraged to ensure that all stakeholders – national governments, local authorities, civil society, the private sector, national level practitioners, multilateral organizations and UN agencies, among others – align their efforts in our global transformation.

This event will feature the Expert Group on Climate and SDG Synergy Co-Lead Luis Gomez Echeverri.

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