Build capacity for climate action

Abstract

It is clear that climate action is not on course either to achieve agreed-upon temperature goals or to protect people from increasingly severe climate impacts. The United Nations climate meeting (COP28) now underway is being called upon to provide a "course correction," and the Global Stocktake (GST) to assess progress under the Paris Agreement has identified the need for "systems transformations." As in previous years, COP28 will undoubtedly focus on finance and technology development and transfer, but these alone will not enable adequate, effective, and equitable climate action. It is time to expand focus to the third means of implementation: capacity building, without which a course correction involving multiple systems transformations is not going to occur.