With 2023 set to be the warmest year on record, the urgency of action to meet the Paris Agreement targets on time has intensified (WMO, 2024). One of the main findings of the first global stocktaking was that “[…] parties are off track in terms of meeting their Paris Agreement goals” (UN, n.d.), which calls for an assessment of how to get parties back on track.

Despite the collective efforts of state and non-state actors, global progress remains insufficient to reach the 1.5 threshold ^about C (IEA, 2023; UNFCCC, 2023a). In our assessment, the international community needs to rethink its approaches to achieving low carbon emissions by focusing on sectors rather than countries. We see it as the first pillar of our joint proposal. Furthermore, while most current climate change funding goes to mitigation, more funding is needed for climate change innovation and adaptation to enable systems transformation. New funding schemes form the 2nd pillar of our proposal. Finally, we believe that the current climate governance model not only lacks transparency, but its five-year global review generates delays in knowing whether we are on the right track – something we cannot afford, as it can make it difficult to make timely adjustments. Pillar 3 of our proposal therefore recommends a new way of enforcing climate compliance by actors in the form of a digital climate accountability framework. (More on orfonline.org)