African Climes

The 28 th conference of parties to UNFCCC serving as the 5 th meeting of parties to the Paris Agreement was held from 30 th November to 13 th December 2023 in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. This was an important one because of the global stocktake (GST), the process which assesses all climate progress vis-a-vis the goals of the Paris agreement. The stocktake tells us where we are in attaining these goals and sets the new basis for individual national climate targets (NDCs). The first was in 2023 and thereafter every five years. This 21-page decision was comprehensive because it involves everything in climate change and it contains every sector. It starts by acknowledging the findings of the UNFCCC NDCs synthesis report and those of the IPCC’s sixth assessment report. Notably, human activities have caused a rise of 1.1C above preindustrial times, and rapid deep and accelerated emission cuts are needed this decade to keep within 1.5 and reach net zero by midcentury. The P...