Unpacking the UNFCCC Global Stocktake for Ocean-Climate Action

With only two years to go until the UNFCCC Global Stocktake, a worldwide assessment of our progress towards implementing Paris Climate Agreement goals, it's critical that we prioritize action for the ocean.

A recent report lead by IUCN along with a group of organizations including the OA Alliance, unpacks the crucial role of the ocean, coastal and marine nature based solutions play as part of the UNFCCC Global Stocktake (GST.)

In 2015, the adoption of the UNFCCC’s Paris Agreement set in motion a series of national-level commitments– known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) – in which countries communicate the flexible but ambitions actions that they plan to take to meet the goal to limit global warming to well below 2°C and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. The Paris Agreement sets out, among other actions, mitigation, adaptation and finance goals.    

The Paris Agreement relies on the ambition mechanism of “ratcheting up” every five years with revised, increasingly ambitious commitments defined at a national level, based on country context, capacity, and flexibility through the NDCs. This ambition mechanism is the tool defined to assess progress towards meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement and to inform the next round of NDCs. The GST is an avenue for informing and raising the ambition of countries’ NDCs and could trigger additional public support and action on the ground.

Understanding where ocean issues can be adequately included within the GST and then integrating them into this process will be critical factors to ensure the ocean’s contribution to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement is reflected, understood, and prioritized.

The report provides a broader understanding of this crucial interlinkage, focusing on ocean as well as coastal and marine Nature-based Solutions (NbS) as part of the GST. Specifically, the report provides:

• Overview the GST and ambition mechanism of the Paris Agreement.

• Outline of current GST structural decisions and suggestions for how the ocean and coastal ecosystems can be reflected in each.

• Comprehensive list of potential actions for governments and non-government partners looking to represent and reflect ocean and coastal zone action within relevant decisions.