As the Kyoto Protocol limps along without the participation of the US and Australia, on-going climate negotiations are plagued by competing national and business interests that are creating stumbling blocks to success. Climate Change Negotiations: A Guide to Resolving Disputes and Facilitating Multilateral Cooperation asks how these persistent obstacles can be down-scaled, approaching them from five professional perspectives: a top policy-maker, a senior negotiator, a leading scientist, an international lawyer, and a sociologist who is observing the process.

The authors identify the major problems, including great power strategies (the EU, the US and Russia), leadership, the role of NGOs, capacity and knowledge-building, airline industry emissions, insurance and risk transfer instruments, problems of cost benefit analysis, the IPCC in the post-Kyoto situation, and verification and institutional design. A new key concept is introduced: strategic facilitation. 'Strategic facilitation' has a long time frame, a forward-looking orientation and aims to support the overall negotiation process rather than individual actors.

This book is aimed at academics, university students and practitioners who are directly or indirectly engaged in the international climate negotiation as policy makers, diplomats or experts.

Climate negotiations are continually plagued by competing national and business interests that create stumbling blocks to success. This book approaches these blocks from five professional perspectives. They identify major problems, including great power strategies, leadership, the role of NGOs, capacity-and knowledge-building, airline emissions, risk transfer instruments, cost benefit analysis, the IPCC, and verification and institutional design.

PART I. Introduction Strategic Facilitation of Climate Change Negotiations: An Introduction PART II. Professional Perspectives 1. The Perspective of a Politician: How Decisions are Made 2. The New Diplomacy from the Perspective of a Diplomat: Faciliation of the Post-Kyoto Climate Change 3. Costs and Uncertainties in Climate Change Negotiations: A Scientist's Perspective 4. The Observing International Lawyer 5. The Observing Sociologist PART III. Stumbling Blocks 6. Defining a Politically Feasible Path for Future Climate Negotiations: Lessons from the EU-US Divide over the Kyoto Protocol 7. Between Two Giants: Lessons from the Russian Policy on the Kyoto Protocol 8. Leadership and Climate Talks: Historical Lessons in Agenda Setting 9. NGO Participation in the Global Climate Change Decision-making Process: A Key for Facilitating Climate Talks 10. Institutional Capacity Building to Facilitate Climate Change Negotiations: A Need for New Thinking 11. Stumbling Blocks in a Sectoral Approach: Addressing Global Warming through the Airline Industry 12. Overcoming Stumbling Blocks: Can the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Deliver on Adaptation? 13. Common but Differentiated REsponsibilities: The North-South Divide in the Climate Change Negotiations 14. Developing a Legal Toolkit: Institutional Options to Remove Stumbling Blocks in the Climate Change Negotiations 15. Verification as a Precondition for Binding Commitments: Facilitation through Trust 16. Difficulties of Benefit-Cost Analysis in Climate Change Negotiations: Stumbling Blocks for Reaching an Agreement 17. Proposal for Insurance for Facilitation of Adaption PART IV. Conclusion Conclustion: Strategic Facilitation of Climate Talks Annex: The Evolution of COP