Introduction

The climate change regime enjoys one of the highest levels of participation in the international environmental arena among both states and stakeholder organisations, including non-governmental organisations (NGOs), intergovernmental organisations (IGOs), and UN bodies and specialised agencies. This chapter provides an overview of the climate change regime's diverse participants and how they organise themselves, focusing on those most directly active in the regime itself. Appendix I, which lists all the Parties to the Convention along with key statistics and their negotiating coalitions, complements this chapter.

Parties

The Convention enjoys one of the highest rates of membership among MEAs, with its 189 Parties including 188 states plus the European Community, which participates as a regional economic integration organisation. Only a handful of states have not yet ratified the Convention and remain non-Parties, including Andorra, Brunei Darussalam, the Holy See, Iraq and Somalia. At the time of writing, the Kyoto Protocol had been ratified by nearly two-thirds of Parties to the Convention, representing nearly three-quarters of the world's population.

The Secretariat asks each Party to the Convention to designate a ‘national focal point’, who then serves as the main point of contact for that Party concerning activities in the climate change regime on a day-to-day basis. The great majority of Parties to the Convention regularly attend sessions of the regime bodies, with over 90 per cent typically represented at COP sessions and over 80 per cent at subsidiary body sessions. The size of delegations, however, varies significantly.