This policy brief proposes six changes that could improve the international climate change negotiating process at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and facilitate consensual outcomes.

These include using a single negotiating text; discontinuing ‘on-screen’ negotiations; eliminating the norm that ‘nothing is agreed until everything is agreed’ and dividing the climate change problem into pieces that may be more readily acceptable; giving negotiating roles to ministries besides foreign affairs; establishing a group of states to play the ‘regime-builder a different process in which all parties can be heard, while fair and effective agreements in the common interest also have a greater chance of adoption.’