The climate summit COP25, organised in December 2019 under Chilean presidency in Madrid, took place under the shadow of an increasingly polarized global political situation. Its objective was to complete the transition of UN climate governance to the framework laid out in the Paris agreement in 2015. The report takes COP25 as a starting point, to examine how the current transition of climate governance is unfolding in practice, and what obstacles it is encountering. It places the focus not only on states and formal negotiation outcomes, but also on side-events, happenings and the role of wider civil society. Based on our observations, we argue that UN climate governance currently faces a set of distinct and partly conflicting expectations. We condense these into three stylized roles: the accountant, the admonisher, and the animator. After discussing each of these roles in turn, we go on to explore the dissonances and disconnects accompanying the current transformation of global climate governance. We relate these to institutional features and legacies of the UNFCCC, but also to new tensions that are rooted in inherent contradictions between the three roles. We conclude by reflecting on possible evolutions of global climate governance, sketching three plausible future scenarios.
The climate summit COP25, organised in December 2019 under Chilean presidency in Madrid, took place under the shadow of an increasingly polarized global political situation. Its objective was to complete the transition of UN climate governance to the framework laid out in the Paris agreement in 2015. The report takes COP25 as a starting point, to examine how the current transition of climate governance is unfolding in practice, and what obstacles it is encountering. It places the focus not only on states and formal negotiation outcomes, but also on side-events, happenings and the role of wider civil society. Based on our observations, we argue that UN climate governance currently faces a set of distinct and partly conflicting expectations. We condense these into three stylized roles: the accountant, the admonisher, and the animator. After discussing each of these roles in turn, we go on to explore the dissonances and disconnects accompanying the current transformation of global climate governance. We relate these to institutional features and legacies of the UNFCCC, but also to new tensions that are rooted in inherent contradictions between the three roles. We conclude by reflecting on possible evolutions of global climate governance, sketching three plausible future scenarios.