INSIDER: Designing the Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement: The Catalyst for Climate Action

The document outlines the structural and methodological questions countries must address to implement the global stocktake, the five-year cycle designed to assess collective progress toward the Paris Agreement's goals. It emphasizes the need for common methodologies to aggregate diverse mitigation commitments, a framework for tracking context-specific adaptation progress, and clear modalities for accounting for public and private finance flows. The author argues that the stocktake must be both backward-looking (assessing progress) and forward-looking (identifying opportunities for enhanced action) to serve as the 'engine' of the Paris Agreement.

• The global stocktake serves as the central mechanism for increasing climate ambition, occurring every five years to provide the basis for countries to strengthen their national climate commitments in the subsequent two years. The first full stocktake is scheduled for 2023, preceded by a 'facilitative dialogue' in 2018.
• Assessing collective mitigation progress is complicated by the variety of commitment types; while absolute emission reduction targets are well-understood, there is a lack of experience in aggregating qualitative policies or goals to peak emissions. This necessitates the development of common methodologies for estimating policy effects and robust reporting guidelines.
• Because adaptation goals are locally determined and context-specific, the global stocktake requires a common framework to aggregate national progress to a global level. This framework should categorize actions to connect with the global goal and link to the Sustainable Development Goals and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.
• Evaluating finance flows is a significant challenge due to the broad scope of both public and private investments and a lack of agreement on what constitutes 'climate finance'. The stocktake must specifically review the adequacy and effectiveness of support provided for adaptation, which has historically received less funding than mitigation.
• To be effective, the global stocktake must be forward-looking, delivering two primary outcomes: providing information to identify sectoral and technological opportunities for enhanced action, and identifying barriers to implementation to unlock necessary technical assistance and support.
• The stocktake should be conducted in three distinct streams—mitigation, adaptation, and means of implementation and support—consisting of a year-long technical phase of synthesis reports and expert meetings, culminating in a multilateral political moment at the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA).

APA

World Resources Institute (2017). INSIDER: Designing the Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement: The Catalyst for Climate Action. https://www.wri.org/technical-perspectives/insider-designing-global-stocktake-under-paris-agreement-catalyst-climate-action

Chicago

World Resources Institute. INSIDER: Designing the Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement: The Catalyst for Climate Action. 2017. https://www.wri.org/technical-perspectives/insider-designing-global-stocktake-under-paris-agreement-catalyst-climate-action.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Resources Institute |title=INSIDER: Designing the Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement: The Catalyst for Climate Action |date=1 May 2017 |url=https://www.wri.org/technical-perspectives/insider-designing-global-stocktake-under-paris-agreement-catalyst-climate-action |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldresourcesinstitute2017insider, author = {{World Resources Institute}}, title = {{INSIDER: Designing the Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement: The Catalyst for Climate Action}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, year = {2017}, month = may, url = {https://www.wri.org/technical-perspectives/insider-designing-global-stocktake-under-paris-agreement-catalyst-climate-action}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }