The following article, written by Justyna Maksimiuk, is part of a series of reflections on the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as the 29th Conference of the Parties (COP29) that took place in Baku, Azerbaijan in November 2024. The series covers different aspects of the COP negotiations from Article 6 discussions and the Global Stocktake to commitments to technology advancements. All articles in the series were initially developed for Professor Achinthi Vithanage’s Advanced International Environmental Law course at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University.
Many critics describe COP29 as having a rather anticlimactic conclusion, especially for a conference that began with great expectations. The financing commitment that developing countries were hoping to receive from developed nations to achieve their Nationally Determined Contribution (NDCs) did not materialize. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, parties did not adequately address the results of the first global stocktake (“GST”), which took place in 2023. Under Article XIV of the Paris Agreement, parties must conduct a periodic assessment of their progress towards achieving the goals of the Agreement. The GST is to be conducted in a “(…) comprehensive and facilitative manner, considering mitigation, adaptation and the means of implementation and support, and in the light of equity and the best available science.”
The first GST resulted in some striking conclusions that revealed problems with the way that parties are implementing the Paris Agreement. For example, the findings indicated that the world is not on track to stay under the 1.5°C warming limit that has been established in the Agreement. The current parties to the Agreement are simply not working quickly enough to reduce their emissions. Based on the alarming findings of the GST assessment of party progress in accomplishing NDCs, several guidelines were developed. These guidelines should be followed to help parties stay focused on keeping global warming under 1.5°C. The guidelines include mitigation and adaptation measures, funding for mitigation and adaptation measures for developing countries, and cooperation and knowledge transfer measures. Pursuant to GST, parties agreed to collective targets such as increasing renewable energy usage and energy efficiency, transitioning away from the use of fossil fuels, stopping deforestation and improving food systems.
While Article XIV does not specify in what way countries must utilize the information provided in the GST, it does mandate that the GST outcomes “(…) inform Parties in updating and enhancing, in a nationally determined manner, their actions and support in accordance with the relevant provisions of this Agreement, as well as in enhancing international cooperation for climate action.” One of the biggest failures of COP29 is that the parties did not reach an agreement on how they will implement the GST suggestions. Instead, this discussion was postponed until COP30, which will take place in November of 2025 in Belém, Brazil.
This is problematic on multiple levels. Firstly, the purpose of the GST is to enhance the transparency infrastructure in the Paris Agreement. Tracking the progress that parties are making in implementing the Agreement is vital to gaining an understanding of what methods are effective and what implementation mechanisms are not sufficient to reach the desired goals. This is the reason for the existence of the transparency infrastructure in the first place – it has an important role in ensuring effective implementation. However, the existence of a transparency mechanism is not enough to ensure that implementation is properly monitored – parties must also utilize the information generated by the transparency mechanism to change their harmful behaviors. The international community is not using the information generated by the GST promptly and it is neglecting to take the guidelines produced by the GST seriously.
In addition, critics note that parties to the Paris Agreement are not moving quickly enough to reduce their emissions. Studies have shown that temperatures are already 1.6°C above pre-industrial levels and that maintaining the temperature increase at 2°C above pre-industrial levels is at this point scientifically impossible. Thus, disregarding the results of an exhaustive mechanism that was created specifically to assess state progress in implementing the treaty is counterproductive. One can argue that the goal of the GST is to influence decisions made at COP in order to set parties that are straying too far from their commitments back on the right path before it is too late. Rapidly implementing guidelines stemming from the GST’s findings would help reach this goal.
COP29 should have taken steps to implement the results of the GST because this would have set a positive precedent for how GSTs are used in the future. The 2023 GST was the first global stocktake and it is important to treat the document with the reverence that it deserves. Its goal is to evaluate whether parties to the Paris Agreement are properly implementing their targets. Disregarding the results of the GST and pushing off discussion of these results to the next COP sets a bad precedent and seemingly disregards the urgency of the situation that we are in.
In conclusion, the importance of the GST as a transparency mechanism must not be underestimated. It is a periodic evaluation of parties’ accomplishments that was created to ensure that states are taking their self-determined goals seriously. Disregarding the conclusions of the first GST and pushing their consideration off to a future COP sets a bad precedent and places the future of this vital transparency mechanism, and therefore the potential success of the Paris Agreement in slowing down global warming, in jeopardy.