The Global Climate Regime: Explaining Lagging Reform

Abstract

There have been growing calls for reform of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). How have governments met the demand for action on climate change despite the lagging pace of UNFCCC reform? New qualitative data demonstrate that the institutional, sectoral, and technical characteristics of multilateral institutions have guided government choices in managing climate change issues. Institutional resources and sectoral participation in multilateral institutions have enabled governments to handle climate change issues outside the UNFCCC, reducing the need to invest in its reform as demand for action has grown. These specialized institutions are able to mitigate political disputes and facilitate greater efficacy in handling specific issues such as financing and emissions mitigation. They have mandates that overlap with the cross-cutting nature of climate change, requiring no new mandates, which mitigates political disputes in managing specific climate issues.

The Role of the 2015 Agreement in Mobilising Climate Finance

“…A range of studies show that in general political institutions tend to be "path dependent" because they make alternative actions that deviate from their original mandates more costly over time. Yet, such institutions are more likely to change when they are under external pressures (see also Ovodenko, 2014;Mahoney and Thelen, 2010).…”