Designing the International Climate Regime

NGOs, think tanks, universities, and governments from developed and developing countries are generating innovative ideas for the design of an effective and equitable climate change regime. WRI experts are examining the status of the UNFCCC process and highlighting the best of these ideas for negotiators.

This project examines proposals that address a select list of key issues that are relevant to the design of an institutional architecture, that are pressing issues in the UNFCCC process, and that are expected to be the focus of important decisions at COP-17 and at the Earth Summit in 2012:

1. Increasing ambition: examining ways to bridge the gap between current mitigation pledges and the level of effort required by the science to avoid the most dangerous consequences of climate change.
2. Legal form: setting out the various legal options on the table for a post-2012 international mitigation framework.
3. Functions of an agreement: discussing the ways the UNFCCC and other international processes can best function together to advance global efforts to tackle climate change.

WRI experts analyzed over 130 proposals for the design of the future climate regime to distil approaches to strengthen international climate governance. The research project was undertaken in consultation with a broad range of climate experts, academics, and civil society colleagues. The completed working paper, Building the Climate Change Regime: A Survey and Analysis of Approaches, was released at dual launch events in Dublin and Washington, D.C. in time to present possible pathways to climate negotiators in advance of the seventeenth Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC in Durban, South Africa.

The paper will also be presented and discussed at a side event in Durban in the E.U. Pavilion (details forthcoming).

Photo credit: UN Climate Talks