Mapping the Climate Regime

Understanding the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC - the ‘climate regime’) is critical to ensuring its ongoing viability into the future, which is why ‘mapping’ the Convention in all its complexity is so important. But achieving a common understanding is of little value if it does not translate into action. The Climate Regime Map is intended as a decision-support tool that enables all stakeholders to navigate themselves around the regime’s many and varied elements — and thereby participate more meaningfully in the discussions around how the Convention is constructed into the future. From a design perspective, the project seeks to move beyond a two-dimensional mapping exercise, and encompass visually engaging graphics, connected databases of information, surveys, and other interactive components. The project is designed to engage governmental Parties to the Convention as well as civil society and non-governmental stakeholders in a process of critical reflection on the design of the current regime, and how to improve it into the future. The map will be available in the lead up to climate negotiators at COP 21 in Paris and beyond, to increase understanding of the current governance of the climate regime, and the many institutional arrangements that contribute to the overall integrity of the UNFCCC as a policy instrument for combatting climate change.