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The end of 2015 will see the return of a familiar ritual in international climate politics. Thousands of government delegates, industry lobbyists and environmental campaigners will gather in Paris for the 21st annual Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), ready to go through the usual rollercoaster of politicking, strategizing, and emotional calls for action.

The chances are that COP21 will not be the breakthrough summit that the world needs. In all likelihood, scientists will call on the international community to rise to the occasion and strike a deal on emissions reductions¹; activists will stage spectacular stunts to dramatize the significance of the make-or-break summit; and at the end, after two weeks of painstaking talks, diplomats will ask for patience and a sense of realism when announcing that they could only reach a modest agreement with more talks to follow. So is it time to consider alternative forums for negotiating climate mitigation, such as the G20 or subnational networks?

In Nature Climate Change, Mattias Hjerpe and Naghmeh Nasiritousi² report the findings of a survey of climate negotiators and observers on the importance they attach to such alternative international climate forums. Their analysis suggests that no clear rival to the UNFCCC has emerged, with respondents expressing sharply divergent views on their preferred minilateral or regional setting.

International climate governance has evolved considerably from its state-centric origins in the early 1990s, when the UNFCCC regime was created. A growing number of trans- and subnational initiatives now provide forums for climate mitigation efforts: the G20 and the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate (MEF) allow small groups of leading economies to coordinate mitigation strategies, the CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) invites large corporations to report their carbon emissions and informs investors about climate risks, and the C40 Cities network connects more than 75 major cities and their climate strategies. Governments and international organizations themselves have encouraged the growth of such novel initiatives outside the intergovernmental regime. At the UN climate summit in September 2014, the Secretary-General of the UN sought to galvanize the creation of multi-stakeholder initiatives that promote emissions reductions and climate resilience.

Just as the number of climate actors and initiatives has increased, so has the risk of fragmentation in global climate governance. In their analysis of 922 responses from the International Negotiations Survey, carried out at two consecutive COPs in 2013 and 2014, Hjerpe and Nasiritousi point to a widely diverging range of opinion with regard to the ever more complex field of climate initiatives².

It is clear from their findings that there is no frontrunner that could claim to have widespread support and legitimacy outside the UNFCCC. While the G20 is mentioned by 14% of the respondents, the MEF and the Montreal Protocol are only noted by 5% and 4% respectively. Other forums receive even less support. Most government officials favour UN-style multilateralism, while non-governmental organizations generally focus more on domestic and non-traditional initiatives involving non-state actors. Minilateral forums are of particular interest to officials from European and North American governments, but find few supporters in other regions of the world.

Hjerpe and Nasiritousi's research² offers a valuable glimpse into the minds of climate negotiators and observers at a critical time in the international process. Whatever the outcome of the Paris climate summit, the search for novel governance mechanisms is likely to intensify. As the authors note, “the UNFCCC is no longer the only show in town”, but none of the emerging minilateral forums has gathered any significant recognition and support among practitioners to offer a legitimate alternative to the multilateral approach. Of course, whether minilateralism can ever hope to provide a more realistic answer to the global climate problem is a question that requires further investigation and goes beyond the scope of their study (see ref. 3).

Hjerpe and Nasiritousi's research has certain limitations that should be noted. The short time horizon of the survey — just two years, between 2013 and 2014 — does not allow for meaningful conclusions about trends in practitioners' views. Should the forthcoming Paris COP21 fail to produce a strong outcome, as expected, we may see government delegates' interest in minilateral forums picking up. By the same token, a breakthrough deal in Paris that puts the multilateral mitigation strategy back on track could lead to a dramatic decline in practioners' interest in such alternatives.

As the authors acknowledge², their survey suffers from considerable selection bias. Attendees at climate COPs have usually invested a great deal of time and energy in the UNFCCC negotiations, and it is therefore hardly surprising that government officials should express a “preference for state-led, multilateral forums”, according to Hjerpe and Nasiritousi. Actors operating outside the UNFCCC context may take a different view.

The UNFCCC process has come in for a lot of criticism in recent years, but Hjerpe and Nasiritousi's research suggests there is no viable alternative at the moment. The search may be on for alternative forums, but no minilateral club has as yet garnered enough support to be a legitimate alternative to the multilateral regime.

1. Carrington, D. Act on climate change now, top British institutions tell governments. The Guardian (21 July 2015); http://go.nature.com/TGHwPs
2. Hjerpe, M. & Nasiritousi, N. Nature Clim. Change 5, 864–867 (2015).
3. (Falkner, R. A Minilateral Solution for Climate Change? On Bargaining Efficiency, Club Benefits and International Legitimacy (Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, 2015).

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