One must be careful about applying ‘insights’ gleaned from the study of regimes in general to the specific case of climate change. The climate regime in its current form does not have the capacity to solve the problem of climate change and because the problem itself is becoming more acute with the passage of time, there is a sense of urgency about the need to put in place a more effective governance system to address this problem. This article addresses this issue in three steps. It examines the effectiveness of the climate regime in the second section and applies insights from regime...

One must be careful about applying ‘insights’ gleaned from the study of regimes in general to the specific case of climate change. The climate regime in its current form does not have the capacity to solve the problem of climate change and because the problem itself is becoming more acute with the passage of time, there is a sense of urgency about the need to put in place a more effective governance system to address this problem. This article addresses this issue in three steps. It examines the effectiveness of the climate regime in the second section and applies insights from regime analysis to explain the weak performance of this regime in its current form. The third section turns to interactions between the climate regime and other relevant regimes. The final section then turns to the implications of the arguments articulated in the preceding sections for climate policy.