What Comes After the Stocktake? Exploring Modes of GST–Follow-Up in Global Climate Governance

The Global Stocktake (GST) is intended to serve as the Paris Agreement’s central mechanism for assessing collective progress and guiding future climate action. Yet it remains unclear what it actually means for countries and negotiating groups to “take into account” the GST in their planning and positions. Does the GST meaningfully shape how Parties formulate climate strategies and negotiate under the UNFCCC, or does it risk becoming a procedural ritual—something referenced symbolically rather than used substantively? This paper examines how governments and negotiating groups interpret, respond to, and strategically deploy the outcomes of the first GST in the UN climate regime. Drawing on documentary analysis and interviews with negotiators and national experts, the study explores how GST results are used to frame priorities, justify policy choices, and signal ambition across different strands of climate governance. It analyses both explicit references to the GST in national documents and negotiations, as well as more implicit ways in which GST narratives and expectations shape Parties’ behaviour. The paper argues that engagement with the GST varies widely: for some, it offers political cover, legitimacy, or momentum for enhanced action; for some, it functions mainly as a requirement to acknowledge rather than a driver of substantive change and for others, related in particular to the fossil-fuel language, any reference to the GST is unwanted and resisted. By tracing these different modes of uptake, the study provides new insights into the political role of the GST in the Paris Agreement’s ambition cycle and into the conditions under which global review mechanisms can influence national and multilateral decision-making.