Governance & Policy
Ratchet Mechanism
The Paris Agreement's built-in requirement that countries strengthen their climate commitments every five years, never weaken them.
Definition
The ratchet mechanism is the Paris Agreement's cyclical design for increasing ambition over time: parties must communicate a nationally determined contribution every five years, each successive NDC required to be a progression beyond the current one and to reflect the party's highest possible ambition. Informed by the global stocktake, the cycle is intended to "ratchet up" collective ambition toward the agreement's temperature goals.
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