Multilateral Climate Governance

Abstract For nearly half a century, negotiations in the context of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have sought to reduce pressures on nature without curtailing the North’s wealth or thwarting the South’s economic development. Since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, science has become more granular, the global economy has grown phenomenally, greenhouse gas emissions and temperature rises have accelerated rather than slowed, the climate crisis and inequality have become more extreme, and the status quo interests have become more entrenched. After three lost (wasted, rather) decades, climate mitigation is terribly urgent, yet hugely contested. Choices are stark: financing mitigation and adaptation, or stomaching immense suffering.