The UN climate process needs ambition – the law demands it

Share: X (Twitter) Facebook LinkedIn WhatsApp Email Print Bill Hare is the CEO of Climate Analytics, a global climate science and policy institute working to accelerate climate action. The word 'implementation' has featured long and loud recently in discussions about the UN climate process. The host government of last year’s COP30 summit, Brazil, argued that it should be an “implementation COP”. And if you talk regularly to influential participants in the UN process, you’d be surprised how many will tell you that in the current political climate, it’s all about implementing the pledges and targets governments have already made, rather than aiming to raise them. This interpretation of ‘implementation’ is dangerously wrong. You can see that it is wrong . Article 4 states that Parties (countries) “shall prepare, communicate and maintain successive nationally determined contributions” (NDCs), and that each new NDC “will represent a progression” beyond the Party’s previous one and “reflect its highest possible ambition”. In other words, regularly increasing ambition is a central element of implementing the Paris Agreement. Governments pledged to increase ambition regularly, and the community of people who care about climate change needs to hold them to that pledge. Log in here → Continue reading with free access Climate Home News is on the ground in Bonn — one of the few outlets covering the negotiations that will shape COP31 in November. Join free and keep reading → It takes less than a minute. ×Log in to your account Forgot your password? Bill Hare is the CEO of Climate Analytics, a global climate science and policy institute working to accelerate climate action. The word 'implementation' has featured long and loud recently in discussions about the UN climate process. The host government of last year’s COP30 summit, Brazil, argued that it should be an “implementation COP”. And if you talk regularly to influential participants in the UN process, you’d be surprised how many will tell you that in the current political climate, it’s all about implementing the pledges and targets governments have already made, rather than aiming to raise them. This interpretation of ‘implementation’ is dangerously wrong. You can see that it is wrong . Article 4 states that Parties (countries) “shall prepare, communicate and maintain successive nationally determined contributions” (NDCs), and that each new NDC “will represent a progression” beyond the Party’s previous one and “reflect its highest possible ambition”. In other words, regularly increasing ambition is a central element of implementing the Paris Agreement.