ABSTRACT

The 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference – in formal terms, the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – was an extraordinary event, not just for the climate negotiations, but for global diplomacy more broadly. 1 Some 28,000 people set foot in the conference centre, while the first day assembled the largest ever gathering of heads of state in one location (Kinley 2016). The resulting Paris Agreement was adopted to a standing ovation and (almost) unanimous acclamation. While dissenting voices (McKibben 2015; Monbiot 2015) pointed to the Agreement’s weaknesses, no superlative was spared in praise of the negotiation process itself and in particular the diplomacy of the French hosts (BBC online 2015; NYT 2015).