Global Climate Policy Conference

New ideas and approaches are needed to break the current impasse in the global climate negotiations and increase the likelihood of a successful conclusion to an ambitious and fair global deal.

Although many researchers attend the climate negotiations during COPs, agendas there are dominated by discussions that reflect the day-to-day, short-term issues in the negotiations, and are conducted in the heat of politicised deliberations. This provides little opportunity to reflect on the general direction of the negotiation process and the question of whether it will lead to useful outcomes. Moreover, some of the most thoughtful and innovative academics, in particular those from developing countries, rarely attend COPs and therefore have limited opportunities to influence the debate.

This project aimed to address this through creation of a dialogue between climate policymakers, negotiators and international political scientists. The conference, which was held in May 2014, opened up a space for critical discussion and analysis of the potential shape of the new 2015 climate agreement, bottom-up actions and the longer-term regime.

Outputs

Climate Strategies held a two day conference in May 2014, bringing together climate researchers, negotiators, policy-makers and wider stakeholders from developing and developed countries to share knowledge and experience to inform the climate negotiations.

A publication was produced, bringing together the findings of the conference in ‘The State of International Climate Policy’ report.

CDKN funding: £42,000

Project Manager: Fran Walker