In recent months, critics have renewed attacks claiming that the United Nations climate negotiations are broken beyond repair. Bjørn Lomborg has long dismissed the COP process as a ‘circus’ of non-binding pledges. Alex Epstein says restricting fossil fuel use in developing countries is ‘immoral’. Even insiders like Christiana Figueres and Mary Robinson warn that weak targets and unmet finance promises risk eroding the legitimacy of the process. Yet the paradox of multilateral climate diplomacy is that it only works when countries fear failure enough to stretch themselves. That pressure – so evident in the run-up to 2015’s Paris Agreement, the only modern treaty adopted by nearly 200 countries – remains essential today. While deeply flawed, the UN climate process remains a foundation the world cannot afford to discard.
The UN climate process remains indispensable | Chatham House – International Affairs Think Tank
