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Combine and conquer. That was the strategy of those seeking to develop an international regime to address marine biological diversity found in areas beyond national jurisdiction—areas that constitute half of the world's surface and a much greater proportion of its habitable volume. States had quite different visions for the regime. On the one hand, the European Union and other developed countries such as Australia and New Zealand wanted a conservation-oriented regime providing for the establishment of marine protected areas and setting rules for environmental impact assessments; on the other hand, developing countries wanted a resource-oriented regime that would allow them to get what they consider their fair share of the benefits of marine genetic resources and would assist them with capacity building and technology transfer. Only by combining these disparate topics in a single package was agreement possible.

This article provides a retrospective assessment of the United Nations climate change regime at age thirty. It begins by reviewing the four key stages in the development of the regime. It then discusses how, despite considerable changes in the world, the climate change regime has stayed much the same, and analyzes why the issue has been so intractable. It introduces three models of how international law might address the climate change problem—a prescriptive, contractual, and facilitative/catalytic model—and argues that the facilitative/catalytic approach reflected in the Paris Agreement is best suited to address the climate change problem. It concludes with a report card on how the regime is doing on its 30th anniversary.

Welcome everyone, to this session on "The Climate Change Gap: Inequalities, Narratives, and International Law." I am Dan Bodansky, and I am going to be moderating our panel today.

Know your limits. This familiar adage is not an inspirational rallying cry or a recipe for bold action. It serves better as the motto for the tortoise than the hare. But, after many false starts over the past twenty years, states were well advised to heed it when negotiating the Paris Agreement. While it is still far too early to say whether the Agreement will be a success, its comparatively modest approach provides a firmer foundation on which to build than its more ambitious predecessor, the Kyoto Protocol.