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    Review of 'A short history of the successes and failures of the international climate change negotiations'

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    A short history of the successes and failures of the international climate change negotiationsCrossref
    2023: the year that Scope 3 finally takes off
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    A short history of the successes and failures of the international climate change negotiations

    The last 30 years have been a period of intense and continuous international negotiations to deal with climate change. During the same 30 years, humanity has doubled the amount of anthropogenic carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. There has, however, been progress and some notable successes in the negotiations. In 2015, at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 196 countries adopted the Paris Agreement stating that they would limit global temperatures to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and would pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. The first review of the Paris agreement was at COP26 in Glasgow with many countries pledging to go net zero emissions by the middle of the century. But currently these pledges, if fulfilled, will only limit global average temperature to 2.4˚C to 2.8˚C. At COP27 in Egypt the core agreements from the Glasgow Climate Pact were maintained and countries finally agreed to set up a Loss and Damage facility – though details of who finances and who can claim are still be to be worked out. This article reviews the key moments in the history of international climate change negotiations and discusses what the key objectives are for future COP meetings.
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      Review information

      10.14293/S2199-1006.1.SOR-EARTH.A49EXH.v1.RCQHJG
      This work has been published open access under Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Conditions, terms of use and publishing policy can be found at www.scienceopen.com.

      Earth & Environmental sciences
      COP26,Paris Agreement,COP27,net zero,Climate,Policy and law,Sustainable development,UNFCCC,climate emergency,negotiations,Kyoto Protocol,climate change,environmental social movements,The Environment

      Review text

      I congratulate the authors as this paper that attempts to summarize a vast amount of information and history. Furthermore, its content is important to contextualize the economic landscape and transitions - driven by energy transitions - needed to achieve net zero.

      The paper would benefit from the inclusion of the following 3 points:

      1. Global Stocktake process: There is no specific reference to the UNFCCC Global Stocktake process (GST) when you discuss the assessment of the Paris Agreeement by countries. The GST is an important process that will conclude in 2023 at COP28 - to be held for 2 years at every 5 years.

      2. Global environmental social movements: The role of global environmental social movements is very important, namely the role of the private sector. I'd suggest mention of the 3 scopes used to help companies to better understand and manage their GHG emissions, and to facilitate consistent and comparable reporting. Measuring and reporting of those will accelerate energy transformations from now on. Measurement of emissions scopes 1 and 2 are already common practice by companies. However, there's added pressure for scope 3 accounting now based on the recognition of the increasing importance to engage supply chains, extraction, production, transportation and consumption to be able to achieve net zero commitments. You can read more about Scope 3 Emissions at: https://www.wri.org/update/trends-show-companies-are-ready-scope-3-reporting-us-climate-disclosure-rule

      3. Global Biodiversity Framework: It would be important to mention the recently adopted Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) at the Convention on Biological Diversity COP-15 in December 2022. Recognition that climate is negatively impacting biodiversity is timely. Biodiversity and ecosystems, with nature-based solutions such as the protection of mangrove forests and coral reefs, is gaining traction in the climate discussions, also as a way to create resilience. Protecting the world's ecosystems will help safeguard the world's climate (example, the Amazon Forest).

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