This book is the result of a collective effort of more than two dozen scientists, all sharing an interest in finding effective solutions to the imminent crisis of global warming and large-scale alterations of the Earth system. Our common goal was to develop new ideas and insights that may assist negotiations of new global agreements on global climate governance for the period after 2012, when the current commitment period under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change expires.

Many have described the creation of a stable long-term architecture for global climate governance as one of the largest political challenges of our time, with tremendous implications for most areas of human life. These implications range from far-reaching reforms in the richer industrialized countries with high per capita emissions of greenhouse gases to the parallel quest of the many poorer societies in the developing world to lift the living standards and eradicate poverty while limiting growth in greenhouse gas emissions to the extent possible. While mitigation of global warming must have centre stage in current policies to prevent further build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, it is also vital to prepare for a world that may be substantially warmer than today due to failed or belated climate policies in the past. This book thus addresses both governance for mitigation and governance for adaptation, and, in particular, possible synergies and conflicts between both policy objectives.

The research documented in this volume has been part of a larger research programme on Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies: Supporting European Climate Policy (the ADAM Project). The ADAM Project lasted from 2006 to 2009 and was funded as an ‘integrated project’ by a major grant from the European Commission under its sixth framework research programme (Global Change and Ecosystem Priority, contract No. 018476). In total, more than 100 researchers from 26 institutes in Europe, India and China were part of the ADAM Project at one stage.