A Global Stocktake, Next Week
We'd like more chocolate and fewer mosquitoes please. Oh, not that kind of stocktake. Fine.
So, starting next Monday (June 6th), experts and delegates from around the globe will meet in Bonn to assess how we’re doing in implementing the Paris Agreement.
This is the first time such a ‘stocktake’ is happening and it’s two years before nations are required to submit their update on commitments. Meaning, governments should be getting more aggressive with their emissions reduction goals soon….but of course, that will be tricky if we’re not meeting the existing goals. Which, spoiler alert, most of us are kind of not.
So this global stocktake is at a critical juncture. Bridging the gap between ambitions for a low carbon economy and implementation of those ambitions will become more and more difficult the longer the gap exists. An already uphill climb will get steeper.
On the other hand, some nations are doing exceptional work and the more we can learn from successful efforts, the more we can implement proven effective policies - from emissions reductions, to adaptation, to financing and beyond. This should also be part of a useful stocktake effort. I’m looking forward to hearing more about their findings from this meeting. And I’ll share more about it here when I do! Lucky you! (Though I sincerely hope the United Nations’ report writers get better at crafting titles for their reports.1 )
With all this in mind, another report, the Environmental Performance Index was issued from authors at Yale and Columbia Universities yesterday. It’s released every two years, and ranks 180 countries on a variety of climate, sustainability, and ecosystem-health metrics. This year, it includes a new metric that projects a country’s ability to meet a net-zero-by-2050 carbon goal.
The metrics are certainly not perfect and do require refinement, but it quite clearly shows that the U.S. significantly underperforms in environment metrics, and specifically in climate measures, relative to its wealth and size (and slid down in many of its rankings, likely due to rolling back climate and environmental policies during the last Administration).
The UK and Denmark are up at the top, way outperforming their relative wealth and size. (As a side note, this report does not break Scotland out on its own, so it’s lumped into the UK - more confirmation that its policies are supporting a successful effort. See my note from yesterday as an intro on that.)
It also shows that decarbonizing the electricity sector has been very effective in the countries that have prioritized it. In theory, that should lead to a lot of other benefits too, as sectors such as transportation, become more electrified.
Just like looking at your (my) savings account balance, a stocktaking activity can be painful, but it is an essential piece of assessing progress (or lackthereof) and making amendments to the plans. All of our next chapters depend on us making progress in securing our environmental health. Our efforts won’t ever be perfect, and that’s ok, but they need to keep getting better (quickly).
So this first attempt to take a look at how we’re doing might be a little painful, but hopefully, a lot helpful.
I swear to God, this is the actual title of a ‘pre-stocktake’ synthesis report for greenhouse gas emissions trends:
“Secretariat GST synthesis report: Synthesis report for the technical assessment component of the first global stocktake State of greenhouse gas emissions by sources and removals by sinks and mitigation efforts undertaken by Parties, including the information referred to in Article 13, paragraph 7(a), and Article 4, paragraphs 7, 15 and 19, of the Paris Agreement”
Catchy.
Ha! Not so catchy.....🙄😛😑