UNFCCC Process and Climate Change Conference

What can be expected from the UNFCCC process and the Paris Agreement? To achieve transformative change, existing unsustainable routines embedded in socio-economic systems must be transformed into new and sustainable routines.
Lukas Hermwille and Wolfgang Obergassel, both project Co-ordinators of the Energy, Transport and Climate Policy Division at the Wuppertal Institute, Christiane Beuermann, Co-Director of the same Division, and Hermann E. Ott, former colleague at the Wuppertal Institute and now head of the German branch of Client Earth, conceptualise the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the associated policy processes as catalysts for this translation. In their article "UNFCCC before and after Paris - what's necessary for an effective climate regime?" they apply a structure-theoretical regime model. The model distinguishes between rules (norms and collective understanding) and resources (means of finance and production, authoritarian and allocative power). It also makes it possible to grasp action (agency) beyond the nation-state level at various levels.

The result of the analysis shows that the limited focus of the UNFCCC on emissions and thus on resources has proved ineffective. The static division into industrialised and developing countries in the annexes to the Convention, combined with the consensus principle, has so far prevented ambitious climate protection.
The team of authors concludes that the UNFCCC is better suited to provide a governance structure in the form of rules. The UNFCCC should therefore consciously focus more on the creation of norms and collective understanding in order to contribute more effectively to global climate protection.

The complete article has been published in Climate Policy (Vol. 17/2017) and is available in the following link.