Chapter 3

3

Article 14 of the Paris Agreement Under the United Nations Framework

Convention on Climate Change called for a periodic taking

stock of all the signatory nations' carbon emissions, which meant in effect

the total global carbon burn for the year in question. The first "global

stocktake" was scheduled for 2023, and then every five years after that.

That first global stocktake didn't go well. Reporting was inconsistent

and incomplete, and yet still it was very clear that carbon emissions were

far higher than the Parties to the Agreement had promised each other they

would be, despite the 2020 dip. Very few nations had hit the targets they

had set for themselves, even though they had set soft targets. Aware of

the shortfall even before the 2023 stocktake, 108 countries had promised

to strengthen their pledges; but these were smaller countries, amounting

together to about 15 percent of global total emissions.

So at the annual Conference of the Parties the following year, some

delegations pointed out that the Agreement's Article 16, clause 4, specified

that the COP "shall make the decisions necessary to promote the Agreement's

effective implementation by establishing such subsidiary bodies as

are deemed necessary for the implementation of the Agreement." They

also pointed to Article 18, clause 1, which allowed the COP to create

new "Subsidiary Bodies for Implementation of the Agreement." These

subsidiary bodies had previously been understood to mean committees

that met only during the annual COP gatherings, but now some delegates

argued that given the general failure of the Agreement so far, a new subsidiary

body with permanent duties, and the resources to pursue them,

was clearly needed to help push the process forward.

So at COP29, held in Bogota, Colombia, the Parties to the Agreement

created a new Subsidiary Body for Implementation of the Agreement, as authorized by Articles 16 and 18, to be funded using the funding protocols

outlined in Article 8, which bound all Parties to the methods outlined

in the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage. The

announcement said:

"Be it resolved that a Subsidiary Body authorized by this twenty-ninth

Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the parties to the Paris

Climate Agreement (CMA) is hereby established, to work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and all the agencies of the United

Nations, and all the governments signatory to the Paris Agreement, to

advocate for the world's future generations of citizens, whose rights, as

defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are as valid as our

own. This new Subsidiary Body is furthermore charged with defending

all living creatures present and future who cannot speak for themselves, by

promoting their legal standing and physical protection."

Someone in the press named this new agency "the Ministry for the

Future," and the name stuck and spread, and became what the new agency

was usually called. It was established in Zurich, Switzerland, in January of

2025.

Not long after that, the big heat wave struck India.