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What is the Global Stocktake, and why does COP31 matter for it?

The short answer

It is the five-yearly assessment of whether the world is collectively on track against the Paris Agreement. The first one concluded at COP28 in Dubai in 2023. The second one begins at Antalya and concludes in 2028.

The Paris Agreement has no enforcement. It relies instead on a cycle: countries set their own targets, the world assesses the total, and countries are expected to come back with more. The Stocktake is the assessment step, and it is the mechanism the whole agreement leans on.

The first one produced the language about transitioning away from fossil fuels, which was the headline outcome of COP28. That is what a Stocktake is for: it turns an arithmetic finding about the gap into political text that the next round of national plans has to answer.

Because the second Stocktake opens at COP31, Antalya is the start of a two-year process rather than the end of one. The decisions taken there shape what is being measured, which is less visible than a headline but sets what countries can be held to in 2028.

Where this comes from
Next question
What is an NDC?A Nationally Determined Contribution, which is a country’s own climate plan under the Paris Agreement: what it will cut, by when, and what it will do to adapt. Every country writes its own and submits a new one every five years.What is the difference between the COP, the CMA and the CMP?They are three separate meetings for three separate treaties, held in the same building at the same time. The COP serves the 1992 Convention, the CMP serves the Kyoto Protocol and the CMA serves the Paris Agreement. At Antalya they are COP 31, CMP 21 and CMA 8.What is a cover decision?The overarching political text adopted at the end of a conference, sitting above the individual technical decisions. It is where a presidency puts the headline message, and it is usually where the hardest fight of the fortnight happens.