With COP30 approaching, a new initiative is attracting attention: the Global Ethical Stocktake (GES). But what does it mean to bring ethics into climate action? In this interview, we speak to Dr Niklas Wagner (IDOS), expert in Climate Sociology, to find out how this emerging initiative aims to put justice, inclusion, and shared moral responsibility at the heart of global climate decision-making – and why this moment could be a turning point.
The Paris Agreement already has a Global Stocktake to measure how countries are doing on climate targets. Why is a separate Ethical Stocktake needed, and why now?
The Global Stocktake (GST) is the Paris Agreement’s core mechanism to assess collective progress. It is grounded in the principles of equity and the best available science — yet both are interpreted differently by countries, and the process remains highly technical. The problem today is not that we lack knowledge about climate change, but that, despite knowing so much, we act too little. The Global Ethical Stocktake (GES), initiated under Brazil’s COP30 Presidency, aims to complement the GST by bringing ethics, art, and culture into the debate. It seeks to mobilise other forms of knowledge — to evoke emotion, moral reflection, and a shared sense of justice around who bears responsibility and how we respond. In this sense, the GES could help make the equity principle more tangible and operational.
Could you give an example of how the GES seeks to include diverse moral perspectives or voices that are often overlooked in climate negotiations?
By inviting artists, philosophers, and representatives of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, the GES promises to make climate debates more plural and value-driven. Still, its participatory design remains narrow. Regional meetings like the one in Geneva were organised on short notice and restricted to UN-accredited participants — hardly the broad, bottom-up deliberation envisioned. Examples such as citizens’ assemblies show how randomly selected groups can deliberate over complex issues, ensuring diversity and genuine inclusion. Adapting such principles could make the GES more than a consultation exercise — a space for real co-creation where scientific, moral, and experiential knowledge meet to co-design fair and locally grounded responses to climate change.
Could ethics help where formal agreements have struggled or are still struggling?
Because climate negotiations are, at their core, negotiations over justice, integrating ethics into the process could help re-centre equity and solidarity in global climate policy. The GES sits outside the UNFCCC’s formal structures, so its significance depends on whether it can feed back into those political arenas rather than remain a parallel conversation. The COP30 Presidency’s broader ambition to strengthen synergies between the Rio Conventions offers a promising opening for such integration beyond the climate regime. However, this will require translating moral reflection into concrete and more binding principles that inform negotiations and bridge ethical ambition with institutional practice.
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