Cross-Constituency Submission: Views on the approach to the consideration of outputs component of the first global stocktake, February 2023

As the heart of the Paris Agreement’s ambition mechanism, the Global Stocktake (GST) is essential to ensure its effective and timely implementation. And by ambition, we mean all aspects necessary to reach all of the Paris goals : mitigation, adaptation, means of implementation and support, finance flows, addressing loss and damage, science, technology transfer and capacity building while securing intergenerational justice, gender equality, and a just transition, protecting human rights, labour rights and biodiversity. Thus, the GST aims to support Parties and the international community to raise their climate ambition with the ultimate goal to protect people, their rights and livelihoods, and natural ecosystems, from the impacts of climate change. Young people and vulnerable communities shall be supported to mitigate and adapt, and to build resilience in order to reach climate justice. A just transition for affected workers and communities will guarantee social justice which is crucial to enable the move away from fossil fuels. The science is clear: Parties and the global communities are far off track to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The GST outputs must therefore propose clear, actionable, and specific paths forward to get on track with the Paris goals, with concrete policies and plans that take a gender-responsive, evidence-based and human rights-based approach, including the rights of Indigenous Peoples, taking into account social justice and inter-generational equity. This process cannot result in a mere repetition of vague commitments that have been made before, and the final Consideration of Outputs phase – or “political phase” – must be thoughtfully designed and carried out to avoid this very real possibility. In this submission, we propose a set of recommendations to ensure the GST lives up to its intended purpose in a way that galvanises all Parties and the global community to commit to the transformational action needed before 2030.