Climate governance · UNFCCC
Facilitative dialogue
Definition
The facilitative dialogue was mandated by Decision 1/CP.21 (the Paris Adoption Decision), paragraph 20, which called for a dialogue in 2018 "to take stock of the collective efforts of Parties" towards the Paris Agreement's long-term mitigation goal (Article 4.1) and to inform the preparation of nationally determined contributions (NDCs). Fiji's COP23 presidency renamed it the Talanoa Dialogue (Decision 1/CP.23), structuring it around three questions — Where are we? Where do we want to go? How do we get there? — and running it through 2018 as a preparatory and political phase.
References
2018 mandate, purpose (stocktake of collective efforts toward Article 4.1, inform NDCs), Talanoa renaming, three guiding questions
Overview
What it means
The facilitative dialogue was the forerunner of the periodic global stocktake: it tested whether parties could collectively assess progress against long-term goals in a non-negotiating, trust-based format and use the findings to ratchet up ambition in updated NDCs due by 2020.
How it is used
As a completed process it is now a reference point in UNFCCC history; the term survives in analyses of the Paris ratchet mechanism and in the design of later stocktake and ambition-raising exercises.
Why it matters
It established the template — collective stocktake feeding national ambition — that the global stocktake institutionalised, making it a key link in the Paris Agreement's progression logic.