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The Glasgow climate conference marked a symbolic juncture, lying half-way between the adoption of the UNFCCC in 1992 and the year 2050 in which according to the IPCC special report on the 1.5°C limit net zero CO2 emissions need to be reached, globally, in order to maintain a good chance of achieving the 1.5°C limit. This article undertakes an assessment of what the UNFCCC and in particular the Paris Agreement and its implementation process have actually achieved so far up to and including the results of the Glasgow conference. The article discusses efforts at ambition raising both within and outside the formal diplomatic process, the finalization of the implementation rules of the Paris Agreement, as well as progress on gender responsiveness, climate finance, adaptation and loss and damage. In summary, the Paris Agreement and its implementation can be considered a success as it is having a discernible impact on the behavior of parties as well as on non-party actors. However, significant further efforts will be required to actually achieve the objectives of the Agreement.

2020 was meant to be the year of climate ambition. Then the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the Glasgow conference was postponed to November 2021, and climate policy generally appeared to have been put on the backburner. But towards the end of the year prospects seemed to brighten with a series of zero-emission pledges and the election of Joe Biden as US President. This article analyses what the year of the pandemic achieved in terms of combating climate change. This article first summarizes the virtual events that were organised to substitute for the physical UNFCCC conferences and what progress was or was not made on the outstanding items of the "Paris rulebook", implementation of the Gender Action Plan, and other items. Subsequently, the article surveys the status of NDC updates and to what extent recovery programmes have been used to advance climate action. Finally, the article takes a closer look at the current dynamics among non-Party actors. In summary, while formal negotiations essentially stopped in the year of the pandemic, the conservation did not. However, implementation is still lagging far behind the ambitious targets that have been set. While implementation is mostly the domain of national policy, the international process has a number of options at its disposal to foster climate action.

The five-yearly Global Stocktake (GST) plays an essential role in the overall ambition mechanism of the Paris Agreement on climate change by ‘assess[ing] the collective progress towards achieving the purpose of this Agreement and its long-term goals’. With the first GST due to start at COP26 in Glasgow, there is an urgent need to identify how the GST could be organised so as to maximise the effectiveness of the process. This policy brief aims to contribute to this understanding.

In 2015 three high-level processes to achieve a paradigm shift towards a sustainable and low-carbon development are running in parallel. The general idea behind these processes is to specify global and national objectives in terms of environmental protection, development and climate protection. We face a debate on firstly Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the UN Post-2015 Development Agenda originating from the Rio+20 process and secondly on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that may be merged with the SDGs. Thirdly parties are negotiating a new Climate Convention under the UNFCCC. These processes are intended to provide inspiration for action and deliver objectives for implementation at the national level supported by international institutions. A globally defined but flexible approach for assessing sustainable development can provide invaluable support towards a globally harmonised assessment of sustainable development, comparable through mitigation mechanisms and embedded into development planning at the national level. This can then be used to integrate sustainability assessment standards into Performance Measurement Systems such as national Monitoring, Reporting and Verification Systems. On the other hand, compliance with standards ensures that countries also meet the requirements of international financial institutions such as the Green Climate Fund. Sustainable development benefits of climate protection instruments are highly relevant for development paths beyond aspects of climate change. Mitigation measures may include additional health, social, environmental and macro-economic as well as equity benefits. With the prospect of a new climate protection agreement at the end of 2015, some developing countries have already started to prepare and develop their climate policies. Benefits of sustainable development in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and new market mechanisms indeed may have the potential to meet the needs of developing countries both in terms of sustainable development and mitigation measures. For this purpose, the CDM Sustainable Development Tool offers initial steps towards a globally applicable standard under an international UN institution. The Wuppertal Institute, together with UNEP DTU Partnership, has developed recommendations for its revision, improvement and enhancement that are outlined in this study.

Investors are paying more and more attention to the co-benefits of climate finance. Financing activities aimed at emission mitigation must not only result in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, the enhancement of mitigation, adaptive capacity and adaptation strategies, but should also produce additional outcomes on other environmental, social or economic aspects of sustainable development. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) was created precisely to cover these two aspects: firstly, to achieve cost-effective mitigation of greenhouse gases and secondly, to assist developing countries in achieving sustainable development based on their national development priorities and strategies. However, complying with the second objective turned out to be problematic. Registered projects appeared that had no proven sustainable development benefits, or even perceived negative impacts. Consequently, critique was raised that the current set-up is weak due to the lack of clear and transparent sustainable development criteria in many host countries, and whether the intended sustainable development benefits are actually achieved in the absence of standards or monitoring, reporting and verification procedures,. To strengthen the current system for assessing the impact of sustainable development within CDM projects, even the High-Level Panel on the CDM Policy Dialogue recommended introducing monitoring, reporting and verification schemes for measuring the outcomes. The accent was to enhance safeguards against the risk of negative impact and to support host countries with capacity-building and sharing examples of best practice. The issue was raised to the highest political level when the CMP to the Kyoto Protocol in Durban requested the CDM Executive Board to develop voluntary measures with the aim of highlighting CDM projects’ co-benefits, while preserving the right of host parties to determine their sustainable development criteria. This decision instigated the UNFCCC Secretariats development of the voluntary Sustainable Development Tool, which was approved by the CDM Executive Board in late 2012. A robust assessment of the impact of sustainable development in CDM projects is important to ensure the social and ecological integrity of the mechanism and compliance with the objectives of sustainable development as stated in the Kyoto Protocol. Research and best practice experience into how sustainable development issues are integrated into mitigation actions through the CDM Sustainable Development Tool and other respective standards can help inform the development of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions and future mechanisms on sustainable development assessment methods. As sustainable development is a complex multilayer process covering environmental as well as social and economic aspects that can be affected both positively and negatively, there is a variety of possibilities of how to assess the impact an intervention may have. The high number of approaches analysed by this study reflects this. The contractors assessed the Sustainable Development Tool against international standards for sustainability assessment by comparing it with other mechanisms such as voluntary carbon offset schemes as well as emerging policy frameworks.

One of the objectives of the CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) which is strongly embedded in the Kyoto Protocol, is to contribute to the sustainable development of the host countries in addition to climate protection. However, some non-governmental organisations have signalled the poor implementation of this requirement. The independent High-Level Panel on the CDM Policy Dialogue has also considered the need for improvement. Subsequently the Conference of the Parties serving as the meetings of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) 7 at Durban called on the CDM Executive Board to develop a tool for voluntary use in order to highlight the contribution of CDM to sustainability. As a result, in late 2012 The Sustainable Development Tool was developed and adopted. The fact that CDM projects should support sustainable development in the host countries is a key element of the CDM, which is why past experience suggests that a strong approach to the assessment of projects is important. Meanwhile, many innovative approaches taken by Designated National Authorities (DNAs) have superseded the restraint that was prevalent in earlier sustainability assessment with rather general sustainability criteria, superficial examinations and difficult stakeholder consultations. Such new approaches include scoring of indicators, priority sectors, checklists as well as improved documentation requirements for verification, municipal approval or on-site visits by DNA staff. When developing the Sustainable Development Tool, it is important not to neglect or bypass the needs of the users. Accordingly, the paper at hand looks into user-friendliness and the suitability of the sustainability tool from three perspectives - DNAs, governments with a programme of buying credits from projects with high sustainability contributions, and project developers. Host countries of different size and various levels of experience with CDM and sustainability assessment and project developers with expertise for various types of projects were interviewed in a survey about their experiences. Subjects were the sustainability assessment of CDM projects by the host country, the applicability of the Sustainable Development Tool and the national sustainability assessment. The results were evaluated to see how closely the Sustainable Development Tool matched the needs of project developers and buyers. As one main conclusion the study sees the need to further include safeguards against negative impacts of CDM projects on local communities or the environment into the Sustainable Development Tool and to elaborate methods to quantify and monetize benefits. In addition the experiences with the Tool for the CDM may be further explored to enlighten potentials of simplification and unification for new mitigation mechanisms.