The Global Climate Action Agenda (GCAA) covers a wealth of cooperative action between governments, cities, businesses, non-governmental organisations and citizens. Non-state climate initiatives under the GCAA represent a key means to rapidly bridge the gaps in current climate action. This report identifies some 300 international cooperative initiatives worldwide, noting Nordic stakeholders among the most active participants within these initiatives. The analysis recommends continued Nordic support for initiatives with strong commitments to effective and transparent action. It also filters out...

With the December 2018 deadline to operationalize the Paris Agreement looming, climate negotiators are faced with the herculean task of pulling together volumes of draft notes and the disparate views of negotiating blocs into comprehensive implementing guidelines to be adopted later this year. A new paper from the Project for Advancing Climate Transparency provides both an overarching vision and practical suggestions for what should be included in the main pillars of the implementing guidelines of the Paris Agreement. Key findings: The world’s governments are working toward a December 2018...

The Project for Advancing Climate Transparency (PACT) consortium supports the design and development of robust and effective transparency and accountability rules and processes for the Paris Agreement on climate change. This working paper explores the global stocktake created by the Paris Agreement and the design of the modalities, procedures, and guidelines that will govern the implementation of the global stocktake. Highlights: The global stocktake established under Article 14 of the Paris Agreement is a process for taking stock of collective progress toward achieving the purpose of the...

The outputs from research activities that NewClimate Institute undertook with various partners, are presented as inputs to the Talanoa Dialogue, organised along the themes mitigation and finance/support and along the main questions of the dialogue: “Where are we?”, “Where do we need to be?” and “How do we get there?”.

In December 2015 Parties adopted the Paris Agreement at the 21st session of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In its Article 2 governments agreed to limit global warming to “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and to pursue to limit it to 1.5°C (UNFCCC 2015). The UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2015 showed that a gap of 14 GtCO2e exists for 2030 between the (unconditional) mitigation proposals submitted by Parties as part of their intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) and a pathway compatible with holding temperature increase below 2°C (UNEP...

This paper provides an overview of options to assess mitigation commitments before Paris and beyond. This includes a review of current activities to assess individual INDCs as well as a discussion of some of the attributes and requirements such assessment needs to fulfil. The paper goes on to explore options of how the assessment could be carried out and linked to the UNFCCC process, followed by a discussion of methodological approaches to assess the ambition of mitigation contributions. In conclusion, it provides some recommendations on a feasible and realistic way forward drawing out...

The preparation for the new international climate agreement has advanced national policy making even before the agreement is adopted. NewClimate Institute in cooperation with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB), assessed the extent to which the preparation of intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) has catalysed enhanced national climate change mitigation capacity and action, beyond the preparation of the INDC itself. The survey and...

This discussion paper provides an overview of the development of the international carbon market mechanisms and emerging domestic carbon pricing systems, and lays out three distinct but potentially complementary options for market mechanisms in a future climate change agreement. Options for narrowing the emissions gap before 2020 using market mechanisms are also explored. Recommendations for short term action for the G7 countries are given.