The Role Of The United Nations In Global Climate Governance

With the deepening of globalization, climate change appears to be a compelling global issue continuously, and global climate governance has become an important part of global governance. As a significant actor in global governance, the United Nations plays an important role in global climate governance.First, the UN has dominated the process of leading climate change from a science topic to a global political issue; it also builds the organizational basis of global climate governance by creating new organizations and uniting existing organizations. Second, by releasing science reports and launching activities under specific themes, the UN has boosted the principled consensus of the global climate governance in the international community. What’s more, the UN does contribute to the legal basis of the global climate governance; it has done plenty of preparation for the World Climate Conferences, and helped to bring about many important international treaties and documents such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol and so on. Finally, the UN helps the international community build up a multilateral negotiation model aiming at regulating the emissions of greenhouse gas, which promotes the formation and development of a long-term multilateral cooperation mechanism of the global climate governance at various levels.In the foreseeable future, the exciting multilateral mechanism of global climate governance dominated by the United Nations will still be an important platform to solve the problem of climate change, and the role of the UN in global climate governance cannot be replaced. But in today’s global climate governance, the UN is facing many internal puzzles:different countries and contradiction camps confront fiercely and constantly; the actual binding effect of the meetings or the treaties isn’t strong enough; and the institutional reform seems to be lack of lasting motive force. At the same time, the UN is challenged not only by the traditional governance actors but also by many emerging multilateral organizations. The UN should continue to deepen its internal reform and try its best to mediate the relationship with other governance actors, in order to respond to the expectation of the international community for the UN, thus contributing to the improvement and promotion of global climate governance from theory to practice.