Introduction

The all-encompassing nature of climate change means that it cuts across a broad range of issue areas on the international agenda, including other environmental problems, as well as developmental, economic and trade concerns. As a result, the climate change regime intersects with many different parts of the international system, including the following, which are the focus of this chapter:

• Environmental regimes established by MEAs;

• The international trading regime under the WTO; and

• The broader work of the UN in the field of the environment, development and sustainable development.

Awareness of linkages between climate change and other issues, and the importance of tackling these in a coherent manner, has grown over the lifetime of the climate change regime. This awareness has led to moves to promote greater institutional cooperation across related regimes. These have emerged both through the forging of direct institutional links between the climate change regime and others, and as part of wider initiatives in the UN system. In broad terms, the twin aims of institutional cooperation have been to avoid conflicts and reap synergies, that is, to ensure that actions taken under one regime reinforce, and do not conflict with, actions under another. Such cooperation has taken many forms, including the following:

• Promoting coherence of rules, aimed at ensuring that the rules of the regimes reinforce, or at least do not contradict, each other;

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