The Global Risks Forum (GRF)
Climate and nature are negotiated in parallel regimes: the UNFCCC and its Paris Agreement, the Convention on Biological Diversity and its global biodiversity framework, and the desertification, ozone, wetlands and migratory species conventions. Each turns national pledges into collective goals through reporting, review and periodic stocktaking rather than targets enforced from outside. This page sets out how these regimes work, what their transparency systems record, and what negotiators, ministries and parliaments need to read the evidence honestly.
GRF · Established · service level R0
Climate negotiations are the multilateral talks under the UNFCCC and its Paris Agreement in which states agree collective goals and rules for reducing emissions, adapting and financing. They run alongside negotiations under the Convention on Biological Diversity and other conventions, turning national pledges into collective goals through review and consensus.
Mountain ranges, deserts, wetlands, glaciers and reefs, and how remote each division is from large cities, shown for Ethiopia as an example geography for this subject.
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
Climate and nature diplomacy · Shared basin dialogue · Round 7
| Art. 3 | Data exchange | 2 | Agreed ad ref |
| Art. 5 | Low-flow sharing | 3 | Open |
| Art. 7 | Notification of works | 4 | Open |
| Art. 9 | Dispute avoidance | 5 | Not discussed |
Global environmental cooperation. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
Under the Paris Agreement each party sets its own nationally determined contribution and reports progress under the enhanced transparency framework. Ambition rises, if it does, through review, stocktake and peer pressure rather than penalties.
Decisions at the Conference of the Parties are taken by consensus because the voting rule in the draft rules of procedure has never been adopted. Any party can block, so texts carry brackets, options and deliberate ambiguity until late in a session.
Developing countries tie ambition to finance, technology transfer, capacity building and support for loss and damage. Gaps between finance committed and finance delivered are among the main sources of distrust in the regimes.
Forests, wetlands, peatlands and oceans store carbon and hold biodiversity, so decisions in one regime affect the other. Synergies are pursued through national plans, though the conventions keep separate secretariats, budgets and reporting cycles.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Nationally determined contribution | A country's climate plan under the Paris Agreement, setting its emission targets and actions. |
| Enhanced Transparency Framework | The Paris Agreement's common rules for reporting and reviewing emissions, progress and support. |
| Consensus | Adoption of a decision without formal objection, the default practice in UN climate and biodiversity meetings. |
Each indicator carries its unit, its cadence, the kind of source behind it and the evidence label a value would carry. No values are shown: a programme supplies them under its own authority.
| Indicator | Unit | Cadence | Source type | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nationally determined contributions submitted in the current cycle | count of parties | per cycle | UNFCCC NDC registry | DECLARED |
| Biennial transparency reports submitted | count of parties | biennial | UNFCCC transparency submissions | OFFICIAL |
| NDC measures stated as conditional on international support | share of coded measures | per NDC | Coding of NDC texts | ESTIMATED |
| Climate finance provided and mobilised, as reported | currency per year | biennial | Biennial transparency reports | REPORTED |
| Agenda items held over to later sessions | count of items | per session | Subsidiary body and COP session reports | OFFICIAL |
| National biodiversity strategies aligned to the global framework | count of parties | continuous | CBD clearing-house mechanism | OFFICIAL |
| Parties to the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol | count of parties | continuous | UN Treaty Collection | OFFICIAL |
| Proceedings on state climate obligations | count of pending and decided cases | continuous | Court records and climate litigation databases | REPORTED |
The topic as a computational graph: named sources feed the methods, an evidence review gates the outputs, and the decisions stay with the authorities that hold them.
Fig. 02Nodes carry their type, two metric rows and a state; connectors show what feeds what; dashed frames name the owners; the timeline is the cadence. Design of the pipeline, not a record of a run.
Named public datasets and institutional records, each with its licence class. Sources by agreement are used only under their terms and never republished.
| Source | What it gives | Licence class |
|---|---|---|
| UNFCCC NDC registry | Submitted nationally determined contributions and their updates | Public records, UNFCCC terms of use |
| UNFCCC transparency submissions | Biennial transparency reports, national inventory reports and technical expert review reports | Public records, UNFCCC terms of use |
| Earth Negotiations Bulletin (IISD) | Daily summaries of negotiating sessions and the positions of groups and parties | Free to read, attribution |
| CBD clearing-house mechanism | National biodiversity strategies, national reports and decisions of the Conference of the Parties | Public records, terms per secretariat |
| ICJ, ITLOS and regional human rights court records | Advisory opinions and pleadings on state obligations in respect of climate change | Public records |
| Sabin Center climate litigation databases (Columbia University) | Climate cases by jurisdiction, with filings and decisions | Free to read, attribution |
| IPCC assessment reports | Assessed science that negotiations and the global stocktake draw on | Free to read, IPCC copyright and permissions |
Diplomacy Nexus prepares evidence. The decisions below are taken by the authorities named, under their own rules, and never by the platform.
| Who decides | The question | Evidence this page serves |
|---|---|---|
| Heads of delegation and lead negotiators | Which text options to support, which to bracket and where to trade across agenda items | Text histories, group positions on record, the assessed science each option relies on |
| Environment, foreign and finance ministries | What to put in the next NDC and which parts to make conditional on support | Comparative NDC practice, transparency review findings, finance reporting |
| COP presidencies and co-facilitators | How to sequence consultations so that a consensus text becomes possible | Records of earlier sessions, items held over and the positions behind them |
| Parliaments and supreme audit institutions | Whether the government's pledges, reports and domestic measures are consistent | The pledge, the transparency reports and the review findings set side by side |
Climate change is a classic collective action problem: the benefits of reducing emissions are shared globally, while costs are borne nationally. Agreements have moved towards nationally determined commitments with collective review, which broadens participation but makes ambition depend on domestic politics.
Fairness is central. Countries differ in historical emissions, current capacity and exposure to impacts. Questions of finance, technology transfer and support for adaptation are therefore part of every negotiation. Biodiversity governance faces similar issues, with added questions of access to genetic resources and the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities.
Climate and nature are linked physically and institutionally. Ecosystems store carbon and buffer impacts; climate change drives biodiversity loss. Yet the agreements governing them developed separately.
Shared understanding of climate and ecosystem science from GCRI platforms such as Climate and Hazards and the Biodiversity Nexus.
Studying how agreements, review mechanisms and finance arrangements work, using policy science.
Examining how countries translate commitments into policy. Contexts differ widely.
Convening scientists, institutions and practitioners on implementation questions.
The platform does not negotiate or take positions on national commitments. Its records describe discussion, not agreement.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.