Original citation: Monheim, Kai (2016) The 'power of process:' how negotiation management influences multilateral cooperation. International Negotiation, 21 (3).
• The collective success of dozens of negotiation groups facilitated by chairs below the top level at a climate summit contributes significantly to the success of high-level negotiations. For this reason, the quality of negotiation management at these lower levels is of vital importance, beyond the issues being negotiated. • Process itself is a key determinant of negotiation success across all levels of negotiation groups. • The latest research in this field, along with the experiences of numerous negotiators of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), indicate that certain approaches, habits and actions are more conducive than others to reaching agreements and avoiding deadlock. • Successful chairs will use tactics that include the following: brokering compromise while remaining as transparent and inclusive as possible; enhancing influence by acting impartially and recognizing cultural differences; managing the agenda to create momentum while clustering, prioritizing and linking issues; focusing debate using the chair's information advantage; steering individual negotiation sessions in a time-efficient way; and building trust by creating sheltered negotiation spaces that allow for frank and constructive dialogue.
The Paris Agreement was adopted under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in December 2015. Signed by 196 parties, it has since become a key reference point in global discussions on climate change, national efforts to formulate climate policies, and business investment decisions. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has described the Agreement as a "peace pact with the planet" and US President Barack Obama labeled it a "turning point" in the fight against climate change. At the very least, it representsin the word of one contributor to this book -"a substantial improvement in global climate governance." Today the Agreement is a standard against which we measure ambition and progress at both the international and national levels. It is the Paris Agreement that commits countries to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C; to increase the ability to adapt to climate change; and to make finance flows consistent with a pathway toward low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development. So central to our understanding of climate change and politics has the Paris Agreement become, that we could almost forget a time when it was not there. Yet the agreement was never inevitable. And if we turn back the clock to a freezing night in Copenhagen in 2009, when the climate change negotiations had collapsed, who would have believed it? The origins of the Paris Agreement underline that it cannot be taken for granted. It took years of hard work by thousands of delegates, civil society representatives, scientists, and others to craft it. The Agreement is not perfect. It may not even be sufficient. But it 1 of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.