‘A rapidly closing window:’ Major UN report offers sobering assessment of world’s climate efforts

The fight to secure a livable future for everyone on Earth requires much more urgent climate action — and only transformational changes will be enough to get back on track.

That was the sobering assessment from the technical dialogue of the United Nations’ first-ever “global stocktake,” a critically important process which looks at what countries have done to prevent a climate catastrophe.

The overarching synthesis report, published Friday, lays the foundation for the upcoming COP28 climate conference in the United Arab Emirates later this year.

Nearly 200 countries will meet in Dubai from Nov. 30 through to Dec. 12 to discuss how to use the U.N.’s technical findings to step up national measures.

Among its findings, the U.N. said that since the adoption of the landmark Paris Agreement in 2015, the accord had driven “near-universal climate action by setting goals and sending signals to the world regarding the urgency of responding to the climate crisis.”

“While action is proceeding, much more is needed now on all fronts,” the U.N. report said. “There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.”

The U.N.’s global stocktake was designed under the Paris Agreement as part of a global effort to accelerate climate action. The agreement said countries should take an inventory in 2023 to see how much progress had been made, and every five years after that. The current process is due to conclude at COP28.

As had been widely expected, the U.N. report confirmed the world is currently not on track to meet the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement.

The 2015 accord says that the long-term objective is to…