Much rested on COP28 in Dubai, a milestone event slated to take up the first five-yearly global stocktake with respect to goals set under the Paris Agreement to combat the climate crisis. The global stocktake covers mitigation, adaptation, financing and other support to developing countries, for which a report of technical deliberations and a synthesis report had been prepared as inputs to the COP. Based on the global stocktake review at COP28, countries would be required to submit raised emissions reduction targets by mid-2025 for finalisation at COP30.
The global stocktake input reports conveyed what is already known from all major scientific studies, i.e., the window for restricting global heating to 1.5° C above pre-industrial levels is rapidly closing. Global average temperature rise is already dangerously close to that limit, having already touched it on many days this year. Severe heat waves, droughts, forest fires, floods and extreme rainfall are already being witnessed more frequently across the world, along with possible irreversible melting of polar and glacial ice and sea-level rise. The urgency to rein in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions causing climate change was clearly top of the agenda in Dubai.
