What’s on the agenda? UN climate change negotiation agendas since 1995

Abstract

Our understanding of climate change has expanded to include issues beyond reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, we do not have a sound empirical understanding of how negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations have evolved to address an increasingly wide range of issues relevant to climate change. To understand what the climate talks have focused on and how the volume of work has changed, the authors create a Climate Negotiations Database that categorizes negotiation agenda items starting from the first Conference of the Parties (COP) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1995. Overall, the volume of work in the negotiations is shown to have steadily increased over time but it is not necessarily tied to the negotiation of new rules enshrined in major agreements or outcomes. While the negotiations have broadened to include a wider range of issues, we demonstrate that transparency and mitigation matters traditionally dominate the agendas. This finding lends support to the call for greater balance among issues. Transparency and mitigation show different patterns. While mitigation issues are more negotiations-intensive, and often about markets, the transparency discussions tend to be more implementation-focused. The database provides an empirical base for further research on various aspects of global climate governance.Key policy insights Intergovernmental agendas provide one way to study how countries collectively view climate change and potential governance options.The Climate Negotiations Database finds relative stability in the top ten climate issues discussed over time, with mitigation and transparency as the top two categories.The range of issues discussed in the context of international climate negotiations has expanded, especially since 2007. The climate talks have broadened their focus beyond reducing emissions.There is a mismatch between the recurrence of mitigation sub-items and substantive outcomes that would yield emissions reductions. Half of the mitigation sub-items relate to market mechanisms and forests, perhaps indicating a lack of attention to the core work of reducing emissions from industrial sources.The number of agenda sub-items for the climate regime spiked at the start of the Paris Agreement negotiations and remained relatively high. Under the Paris Agreement, the balance of issues considered may shift and potentially amplify the recent downturn in mitigation-related items.