Negotiating Climate Change

Climate change negotiations have failed the world. Despite more than thirty years of high-level, global talks on climate change, we are still seeing carbon emissions rise dramatically. This edited volume, comprising leading and emerging scholars and climate activists from around the world, takes a critical look at what has gone wrong and what is to be done to create more decisive action. Composed of twenty-eight essays—a combination of new and republished texts—the anthology is organised around seven main themes: paradigms; what counts?; extraction; dispatches from a climate change frontline country; governance; finance; and action(s). Through this multifaceted approach, the contributors ask pressing questions about how we conceptualise and respond to the climate crisis, providing both ‘big picture’ perspectives and more focussed case studies. This unique and extensive collection will be of great value to environmental and social scientists alike, as well as to the general reader interested in understanding current views on the climate crisis.

This book examines how an error in global meta-policy set climate change negotiations on an unproductive course. The decision to base negotiations on the Montreal Protocol and overlook the importance of interests, it argues, institutionalised an approach doomed to fail. By analysing interests, science and norms in the process, and the neglect of ‘interactive minilateralism’, learning was delayed until the more promising Paris Agreement was finally concluded, only to encounter a Trump Presidency, which (ironically) might offer further learning opportunities.

Reconstructs negotiations of the Framework Convention on Climate Change at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit.

This edited volume provides both a broad overview of cooperation patterns in the UNFCCC climate change negotiations and an in-depth analysis of specific coalitions and their relations. Over the course of three parts, this book maps out and takes stock of patterns of cooperation in the climate change negotiations since their inception in 1995. In Part I, the authors focus on the evolution of coalitions over time, examining why these emerged and how they function. Part II drills deeper into a set of coalitions, particularly "new" political groups that have emerged in the last rounds of negotiations around the Copenhagen Accord and the Paris Agreement. Finally, Part III explores common themes and open questions in coalition research, and provides a comprehensive overview of coalitions in the climate change negotiations. By taking a broad approach to the study of coalitions in the climate change negotiations, this volume is an essential reference source for researchers, students, and negotiators with an interest in the dynamics of climate negotiations.

As the Kyoto Protocol limps along without the participation of the US and Australia, on-going climate negotiations are plagued by competing national and business interests that are creating stumbling blocks to success. Climate Change Negotiations: A Guide to Resolving Disputes and Facilitating Multilateral Cooperation asks how these persistent obstacles can be down-scaled, approaching them from five professional perspectives: a top policy-maker, a senior negotiator, a leading scientist, an international lawyer, and a sociologist who is observing the process. The authors identify the major problems, including great power strategies (the EU, the US and Russia), leadership, the role of NGOs, capacity and knowledge-building, airline industry emissions, insurance and risk transfer instruments, problems of cost benefit analysis, the IPCC in the post-Kyoto situation, and verification and institutional design. A new key concept is introduced: strategic facilitation. 'Strategic facilitation' has a long time frame, a forward-looking orientation and aims to support the overall negotiation process rather than individual actors. This book is aimed at academics, university students and practitioners who are directly or indirectly engaged in the international climate negotiation as policy makers, diplomats or experts.

The basic assumption of this book is that the organization of a negotiation process matters.The global negotiations on climate change involve over 180 countries and innumerable observers and other participants, addressing enormously complex and economically vital issues with conflicting agendas. For the UN to create an effective and well-supported international regime has required enormous and very skilful organization: factors such as the role of the Chair, the choice of negotiating arenas, the rules for the conduct of business and the approach of negotiating texts are usually taken for granted, and rarely attract attention until something goes wrong.This book explores how the negotiations were organized to produce the Kyoto Protocol to the Climate Change Convention and the subsequent Bonn Agreements and Marrakesh Accords. The author draws out the lessons and implications for other intricate and far-reaching negotiations, not all of which have succeeded so far, such as the WTO trade negotiations at Seattle and Cancun.This is essential reading for all participants in and organizers of international negotiations; and for researchers and students of international relations, climate change and environmental studies.

The Politics of Climate Change Negotiations describes the successes and failures of long international negotiations and most importantly, examines the lessons they hold for the future. Drawing on more than 100 interviews with climate change insiders in

This book discusses the history of the Group of 77 and China’s negotiating position on adaptation to climate change in the context of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It also addresses a number of questions that have arisen, such as: What was the process for constructing a collective position of the G77 and China on adaptation? Why is it worthwhile to negotiate in a group of such dimensions? What are the incentives for reaching the broadest common position on adaptation? What is the role of the leading coordinators, and how is this linked to the rotating annual Presidency of the G77 and China? And, how do the subgroups of the G77 participate in reaching this general position? Written by former and current adaptation negotiators from developing countries, the book offers various perspectives from the subgroups and leading coordinators of the G77 and China as well as other organizations. Furthermore, in contrast to previous analyses on climate change negotiations, which focus mainly on the behaviour or position of one group, it presents a unique approach based on the strength of collectivism in the G77 and China. The book appeals to practitioners and professionals as well as scientists in climate change management and policy, impacts and adaptation, international relations, as well as diplomacy and development.