SBSTA

The Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) is one of two permanent subsidiary bodies established under Article 9 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), adopted in 1992. It works in parallel with the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) and reports to the Conference of the Parties (COP), the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP), and the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA).

SBSTA's mandate is to bridge scientific information — particularly from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — and the policy needs of Parties. Its core areas of work include:

• Methodologies and reporting: developing guidelines for national greenhouse gas inventories and the Enhanced Transparency Framework under Article 13 of the Paris Agreement.
• Technology development and transfer: providing guidance to the Technology Executive Committee and the Climate Technology Centre and Network.
• Research and systematic observation, including the annual Earth Information Day.
• Cross-cutting issues such as agriculture (e.g., the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture, concluded in 2022 and succeeded by the Sharm el-Sheikh joint work), response measures, and Article 6 cooperative approaches (often handled jointly with SBI).

SBSTA meets at least twice a year: once during the June sessions in Bonn (hosted by the UNFCCC Secretariat) and again immediately before and during the annual COP. Sessions are chaired by an elected chair serving a one-year term, with rotation across UN regional groups. Decisions are taken by consensus and forwarded as draft conclusions or draft decisions to the COP, CMP, or CMA for formal adoption.

For negotiators, SBSTA is where much of the technical groundwork — accounting rules, common reporting tables, metrics for global warming potentials — is hammered out before politically visible decisions are taken in the COP plenary.