Can plurilateral coalitions save global climate policy? Reflections after Wuhan and Antalya

• Florence School of Transnational Governance
• EUI Climate Workshop
• STG Climate

The concept of "fragmented implementation" might offer an analytical lens for understanding how the Paris Agreement's provisions are being operationalised: not through centralised enforcement, but through a distributed and uneven configuration of national policies, bilateral arrangements, and plurilateral initiatives.

This workshop takes that concept as a point of departure to examine a central question in the current phase of climate governance scholarship: can plurilateral initiatives compensate for the structural limitations of the existing multilateral negotiation, or do they risk entrenching the very fragmentation that constrains collective ambition?

The discussion is grounded in two policy developments: the meeting of the Open Coalition on Compliance Carbon Markets in Wuhan, and COP31 in Antalya. Considered jointly, these cases can provide a basis for discussing how plurilateral cooperation and multilateral negotiation are currently interacting, and what this interaction suggests about the conditions under which climate ambition can be sustained amid deepening geopolitical tensions.

Speakers:

• Pier Paolo Raimondi, Research Fellow, Florence School of Transnational Governance
• Jacopo Bencini, Research Associate, Florence School of Transnational Governance

This session is part of the EUI Climate Workshop, a forum that brings together members of the EUI community from all departments working on climate-related issues across the institution. Find out more about the workshop and the upcoming sessions here.