Submission to the United Arab Emirates Dialogue on Implementing the Global Stocktake Outcomes Pursuant to Decision -/CMA.7 (FCCC/PA/CMA/2025/L.6, para. 6) and Paragraph 97 of Decision 1/CMA.5

March 2026

Introduction

The Climate Action Network (CAN) International, the world’s largest network of civil society organizations working on climate and environmental issues, comprising over 1,900 member organizations in more than 130 countries, welcomes the opportunity to submit views to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Dialogue on implementing the outcomes of the first Global Stocktake (GST1), as established by paragraph 97 of decision 1/CMA.5 and operationalized through decision -/CMA.7 adopted at COP30 in Belém.

CAN notes with concern the significant delay in operationalizing this Dialogue. Paragraph 97 of decision 1/CMA.5, adopted at COP28 in December 2023, established the UAE Dialogue as a mechanism to support the implementation of GST1 outcomes. Paragraph 98 called for the Dialogue to be operationalized starting from CMA.6, with the Subsidiary Body for Implementation directed to develop its modalities at SB60 in June 2024. However, it was not until COP30 in Belém in November 2025 that decision -/CMA.7 was adopted to finalize the modalities of the Dialogue. As a result, the first UAE Dialogue will take place at SB64 in June 2026, nearly two and a half years after the GST1 decision was adopted. This delay is deeply concerning in the context of a rapidly closing window for 1.5°C-aligned action. Each year of delayed implementation increases the costs and complexity of the transition required, deepens the adaptation deficit, and compounds losses and damages borne disproportionately by vulnerable communities and developing countries. The urgency of accelerated implementation cannot be overstated, and CAN calls on all Parties to approach this Dialogue with a commensurate sense of purpose.

CAN views the UAE Dialogue as a critical institutional mechanism for translating the political signals and substantive commitments of the GST1 into concrete, measurable implementation pathways. The Dialogue must serve not merely as a forum for the exchange of experiences, but as a space that builds political momentum for accelerating the implementation of GST1 outcomes across all thematic areas, including mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage, and means of implementation, with climate justice, equity, human rights, and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR-RC) at its core. As affirmed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) Advisory Opinion on Climate Change, States bear clear legal obligations to prevent significant harm to the climate system, to respect and protect human rights in the context of climate change, and to cooperate in good faith toward the realization of the Paris Agreement’s objectives. The UAE Dialogue should be guided by these obligations.

This submission is structured around two principal elements: first, recommendations on the substantive content and thematic priorities that should inform the first UAE Dialogue at SB64; and second, recommendations on the design, modalities, and conduct of the Dialogue to ensure that it delivers meaningful added value, complements the wider architecture of the Paris Agreement, and advances climate justice. CAN emphasizes that the provision of finance, capacity-building, and technology development and transfer are not ancillary considerations but the fundamental enablers without which implementation of the GST1 outcomes will remain aspirational rather than operational.

Context: The Imperative of Accelerated Implementation

The climate crisis is not a future risk but a present reality, disproportionately borne by those who have contributed the least to its causes. Rising global temperatures are already inflicting devastating consequences on human life, health, livelihoods, food and water security, ecosystem integrity, and cultural heritage, with vulnerable communities, Indigenous Peoples, women, children, and persons with disabilities bearing the heaviest burden. The IPCC AR6 Synthesis Report confirmed that every increment of warming increases risks to human and natural systems, and that overshooting 1.5°C, even temporarily, will result in irreversible impacts, including damage to ecosystems and greater loss of human life. The ICJ Advisory Opinion has further clarified that 1.5°C constitutes the primary temperature target under the Paris Agreement and that States’ obligations to prevent climate harm are grounded in international law.

The GST1 decision (1/CMA.5) represented a landmark moment in the Paris Agreement’s implementation cycle, acknowledging that Parties are not yet collectively on track toward achieving the purpose of the Paris Agreement and reaffirming the imperative of limiting global average temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. It called on Parties to contribute to deep, rapid, and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions of 43 per cent by 2030 and 60 per cent by 2035 relative to 2019 levels, and for the first time in the history of COP decisions, explicitly called for transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems. At the same time, OECD–UNDP analysis has demonstrated that accelerating climate implementation delivers significant co-benefits for people-centred development, with robust climate measures capable of lifting approximately 175 million people out of extreme poverty by mid-century through improved health, jobs, and energy security.

However, a troubling gap persists between the ambition articulated in the GST1 decision and the actions taken by Parties. Global action at the time of the GST1 was found to be insufficient to keep the 1.5°C limit within reach, while ensuring a just transition across economies. This implementation deficit is not incidental but systemic, rooted in governance gaps, inadequate provision and mobilization of public climate finance from developed to developing countries, and structural inequalities that undermine climate action where it is most needed. CAN notes that this provides both a key opportunity and a challenge to the implementation of the Paris Agreement which should be explored through the UAE Dialogue to ensure progress towards climate justice.

Dialogue Objectives and Thematic Content

CAN notes that the UAE Dialogue, as mandated by decision -/CMA.7, provides opportunities for Parties and non-Party stakeholders to share experiences and explore opportunities, challenges, barriers, and needs in implementing the GST1 outcomes across different regional, national, and sub-national contexts. In the spirit of supporting the implementation of GST1 in a complementary way, CAN calls for a UAE Dialogue that facilitates substantive exchange on two key elements of implementation:

1. Learning, experiences, and opportunities to meet conditional ambition through means of implementation across scales, in a manner that fully complies with States’ obligations for just and equitable climate action and to protect human rights, as outlined in the ICJ Advisory Opinion on Climate Change.
2. Learning, experiences, and opportunities to exceed targets and raise ambition across all Parties in a just, equitable, and human rights-compliant manner, through strengthened public climate finance, technology development and transfer, capacity-building, and other means of implementation at all scales.

To provide a framework for practical sharing of experiences, knowledge, and learnings, CAN proposes that the first Dialogue should aim to explore opportunities for coupling climate imperatives with people-centred development needs and wellbeing across topics relevant to the scope of the GST1 outcome. Through this, Parties and non-Party stakeholders could be provided with the opportunity to share current finance and other means of implementation challenges and opportunities to unlock replication of best practices in other contexts. CAN proposes to cluster discussions across three core topics.

1. Alignment of national and international policies, legislation, and implementation tools with the scale of emissions reductions needed

The UAE Dialogue provides an opportunity to exchange best practice on how political mandates, legislative frameworks, regulatory tools, and implementation systems can be strengthened to mobilize rapid emission reductions while respecting, protecting, and fulfilling human rights and leaving no one behind. As the ICJ Advisory Opinion has confirmed, 1.5°C constitutes the primary temperature target under the Paris Agreement, and States bear legal obligations to take all necessary measures to contribute to the achievement of this goal.

As reflected in the findings of the GST1 technical dialogue, global emissions remain off track and are not in line with modelled global mitigation pathways consistent with the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement, and much more ambition is needed in implementing domestic mitigation measures. At the same time, cost-effective and equitable mitigation solutions and technologies already exist across all sectors. Often, the primary barriers to progress are not technological but structural, rooted in governance gaps, insufficient provision of public climate finance from developed to developing countries, policy incoherence, and the persistence of fossil fuel subsidies. The GST1 outcome itself recognizes this challenge, noting the need for stronger governance structures, accountability frameworks, and scaled-up means of implementation to deliver action at the scale required.

Discussions under this topic should examine how Parties are translating the GST1’s call for transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems into concrete legislative and regulatory measures; how enabling conditions, including adequate public finance, technology transfer, and institutional capacity, can be strengthened to support developing countries in implementing their nationally determined contributions (NDCs); and how systemic barriers and the influence of fossil fuel interests on national and international climate policy, can be addressed.

2. Preparedness for escalating climate impacts through transformative adaptation action

The UAE Dialogue could help Parties identify transformative approaches that mainstream climate risk into national planning, strengthen long-term resilience, and prioritize investments that safeguard people, livelihoods, and development trajectories. Adaptation planning and implementation must be grounded in principles of equity and justice, ensuring that interventions address not only the physical dimensions of climate risk but also the structural vulnerabilities and historical injustices that determine who is most exposed and least able to cope. Moreover, adaptation preparedness must account for the socioeconomic dislocations associated with the just transition away from fossil fuels, particularly for communities and workers whose livelihoods are structurally dependent on fossil fuel-based economies, ensuring that transition planning is integrated with resilience-building and social protection measures.

GST1 underscores that countries are not adequately prepared for the accelerating impacts of climate change. The IPCC AR6 Working Group II finds that current adaptation responses remain fragmented, incremental, sector-specific, and unequally distributed, falling far short of the speed and scale of risks already materializing. The resilience deficit spans critical infrastructure, food and water systems, public health, ecosystem stability, social protection, and urban planning, with climate-driven losses already eroding development gains and imposing growing economic burdens. The GST1 technical dialogue similarly highlights that one third of the world still lacks access to essential climate and early-risk information and early warning systems, and that developing countries continue to face serious barriers in accessing adaptation finance and technology and building institutional capacity.

CAN emphasizes that effective adaptation must be needs-based, rights-based, and centred on the capabilities and agency of affected communities. Drawing on the equity and justice principles articulated by the CAN Adaptation Working Group, CAN calls for adaptation metrics, planning, and implementation that are grounded in the following frameworks:

• Needs-based approaches: Effective adaptation must identify and address context-specific needs, especially of the most vulnerable communities, prioritizing factors that enable adaptation on the ground including building adaptive capacity and institutional strength for implementation.
• Rights-based approaches: Adaptation must correspond to a rights-based understanding of climate action and human development that includes rights to life, health, water, housing, and culture, and captures the obligations of the State in designing and implementing policy, incorporating Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) for Indigenous Peoples and local communities, meaningful participation, non-discriminatory approaches, transparency, and accountability.
• Distributive justice: Adaptation interventions must address the fair allocation of both the benefits of adaptation projects and the unavoidable impacts of climate change, ensuring that without deliberate intervention, adaptation efforts do not widen socioeconomic inequalities. Resource allocation should be guided by vulnerability-based targeting that overlays climate hazard maps with socioeconomic vulnerability indices.
• Procedural justice: Affected communities and marginalized groups must have meaningful avenues for participating in adaptation planning and implementation, with inclusive decision-making processes that ensure transparency and accountability.
• Corrective justice: Adaptation frameworks must address the fundamental question of remedy for harms caused by historical emissions and adaptation failures, distinguishing between economic damage, non-economic losses, and non-economic damage, and enabling targeted remediation linked to historical emissions patterns.

Discussions under this topic should examine how the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience (GGA) can be operationalized through transformative, locally led, and rights-based adaptation interventions; how adaptation finance, in terms of quality, quantity, and accessibility, can be scaled up to meet the estimated needs of developing countries; and how adaptation planning can integrate justice frameworks that ensure the most vulnerable communities are recognized not only as at-risk populations but as knowledge holders whose expertise informs adaptation solutions.

3. Security of critical and globally significant carbon sinks and reservoirs, and tipping points

The UAE Dialogue could offer a platform for sharing proven governance approaches, financial mechanisms, and cooperative actions that can secure globally significant carbon sinks and reservoirs, prevent tipping point risks, and integrate ecosystem protection into long-term climate and development strategies.

According to the IPCC AR6 Working Group I, land and ocean sinks absorbed 59 per cent of cumulative anthropogenic CO₂ emissions between 1850 and 2019, preventing them from remaining in the atmosphere. The distinction between carbon sinks, that is, ecosystems actively sequestering additional carbon, and carbon reservoirs, that is, ecosystems acting as vast stores of already-accumulated carbon, is critical, as the loss or degradation of either would have catastrophic consequences for the global carbon budget. New evidence from the Global Tipping Points Report 2025 warns that the world is at risk of crossing multiple globally relevant tipping points in these critical systems as warming approaches, and exceeds, 1.5°C, ranging from irreversible coral reef die-off to destabilization of the Amazon rainforest and polar ice sheets.

Through the GST1 outcome decision 1/CMA.5, Parties explicitly recognized that protecting and restoring ecosystems is critical for maintaining global stability and achieving the Paris Agreement’s long-term goals. UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell has similarly stressed that safeguarding critical natural systems is a core requirement for avoiding catastrophic and irreversible climate impacts, not an optional co-benefit. Discussions under this topic should focus on proven governance approaches for protecting natural sinks and reservoirs, rights-based frameworks that centre the stewardship roles of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and financial mechanisms for scaling up ecosystem protection and restoration efforts.

Securing Impact and Complementarity to the Paris Agreement Negotiations

CAN highlights a set of principles for the consideration of the Secretariat and UAE Dialogue Co-facilitators as they shape the Dialogue. These principles aim to ensure that the Dialogue delivers meaningful added value, accelerates implementation of GST1 outcomes, and remains fully complementary to the wider architecture of the Paris Agreement.

1. Complementarity

The UAE Dialogue should be explicitly designed to complement, and not replicate, existing mandates under the Paris Agreement. This includes avoiding duplication with the Annual GST NDC Dialogue, the Work Programme on Mitigation, the Adaptation Committee, the Standing Committee on Finance, and the Technology Mechanism, while strengthening linkages to their outputs where appropriate.

By focusing on systemic enablers, governance approaches, and practical implementation challenges, the UAE Dialogue can fill a critical gap in the UNFCCC landscape: providing a structured, cross-cutting space for Parties and stakeholders to share evidence-based solutions that directly respond to GST1 findings. Ensuring clear complementarity will build confidence among Parties and help embed the Dialogue as an integral, and useful, part of implementation cycles.

1. Effective and Inclusive Participation

The UAE Dialogue should ensure inclusive, balanced, and meaningful participation by both Parties and non-Party stakeholders, reflecting the Paris Agreement’s whole-of-society approach and the human rights obligations of States to ensure public participation in environmental decision-making.

Parties should be invited to share experiences from their national contexts and identify opportunities for replication or cooperation with others facing similar challenges. Non-Party stakeholders, including civil society, Indigenous Peoples, local communities, youth, women’s groups, academia, and the private sector, should have respected space to contribute insights on implementation across scales, from local to global, aligned with the three thematic areas outlined above. Consistent with paragraph 15 of decision -/CMA.7 and paragraph 9 of the GST1, observer organizations should be afforded genuine opportunities to contribute substantively to the Dialogue, not merely to observe. Input from civil society should be systematically reflected in the co-facilitators’ summary reports.

A participatory approach that reflects the diversity of implementation actors will enrich the Dialogue’s outputs and enhance their practical relevance.

1. Format and Interactivity

To maximize its value, the UAE Dialogue should be interactive and solutions-oriented, adopting formats that encourage honest exchange, peer learning, and replication of successful approaches. Traditional panel-heavy or “world café” models may not be sufficient on their own. CAN suggests also exploring formats that:

• Enable spontaneous, interest-driven breakout discussions among Parties and experts on replicating specific governance or technical solutions;
• Allow for problem-solving clusters, where countries facing similar implementation barriers can work through practical options together;
• Integrate short, evidence-based inputs from implementation partnerships and Parties with experience in framework climate legislation, followed by moderated small-group discussions on application; and
• Create opportunities for peer-to-peer exchange between countries that have developed effective policies, tools, or institutional arrangements and those seeking to adopt them.

An interactive format focused on replication, problem-solving, and real-world experience-sharing would help the UAE Dialogue become a practical engine for accelerating implementation between GST cycles.

1. Outputs, Follow-Up, and the Road to GST2

As the first of two UAE Dialogues, the SB64 session presents a critical opportunity to set the scene for the subsequent Dialogue and the high-level ministerial roundtable at CMA9 (paragraph 8, decision -/CMA.7). CAN calls on the co-facilitators to ensure that the outputs of the first Dialogue are structured to inform and build momentum toward these subsequent processes.

• The summary reports produced by the co-facilitators (paragraph 7) must be substantive and analytical, identifying not only shared experiences but also the specific gaps, barriers, and needs that the Dialogue reveals, with particular attention to the provision of finance and means of implementation.
• As the reports will serve as inputs to the second Global Stocktake (paragraph 9), they should be structured in a manner that facilitates their integration into the GST2 process and enables the tracking of implementation progress over time.
• The high-level ministerial roundtable at CMA9 should be designed to generate political commitments and mobilize action, not merely to restate existing positions. It should be informed by the findings of both UAE Dialogue sessions and should result in concrete ministerial declarations on scaling up implementation.

Conclusion

The UAE Dialogue arrives at a moment of profound challenge for the multilateral climate regime. The gap between the ambition articulated in the GST1 and the actions taken by Parties, particularly developed country Parties, threatens to undermine the credibility of the Paris Agreement and the trust upon which international climate cooperation depends. The two-year delay in operationalizing this Dialogue only compounds the urgency. CAN urges Parties to approach the UAE Dialogue not as a procedural formality, but as a genuine opportunity to identify and overcome the barriers to implementation, to hold one another accountable to the commitments made at COP28, and to build the political momentum necessary for a course correction before the window for 1.5°C-aligned action closes.

Climate justice demands that the implementation of the GST1 outcomes proceed on the basis of equity, historical responsibility, the protection and fulfilment of human rights as affirmed by the ICJ Advisory Opinion, and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. The UAE Dialogue must be a space where this imperative is not merely acknowledged but acted upon, with the urgency, ambition, and solidarity that the scale of the crisis demands.