ABSTRACT
According to several assessments, climate governance under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has shifted from using a top-down model to a more pragmatic approach in which national and local initiatives, as well as public, private, and business ones, are able to mould the Convention. 2 This change stems from the failure of predominant climate politics in the past, which sought a comprehensive, uniform convention to mitigate climate change. In contrast, the new approach seeks to form a legally binding agreement from nationally determined contributions at the 2015 COP 21 in Paris. Although the new agreement has been hailed as a pragmatic approach that ushers in a new era of climate governance, the way in which national contributions are reached nevertheless very much depends on national governments. The Paris Agreement therefore highlights issues of integrity and fragmentation in global climate governance by a single regime from a new perspective. Indeed, climate governance already involves a mixture of states, international organizations (IOs), civil society organizations, businesses, and private actors, as well as a variety of development policies and market practices; the process also accommodates both multilateral and bilateral state relations along with public-private ones. Such a fragmented governance architecture raises issues for global attempts to mitigate climate change in that it challenges states’ abilities to tackle climate change as a single institution. 3
By extension, the fragmentation of governance raises questions about the relationship of governance to the UNFCCC regime. For one, how do different
regime’s integrity? The characteristics of fragmentation have been set in relief in the context of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), 4 the development of which also illustrates the development of the UNFCCC climate regime during the post-Copenhagen period up to the consensus that emerged at COP 21.
