Protocol Thinking in Climate Governance
The Importance of Predictable Problems
Climate change is often framed as a crisis demanding a grand solution—one heroic agreement or breakthrough to “solve” global warming once and for all. But real-world climate governance is messy. It involves a tangle of nations, businesses, and communities, each with overlapping but divergent interests, trying to balance economic growth with environmental sustainability. The result is persistent tension: everyone agrees the planet must be saved, yet no one wants to bear more cost or sacrifice than necessary. In effect, the fire of underlying competing interests keeps burning, and the smoke it produces is our ongoing climate predicament. Rather than chasing an elusive one-time fix, a more pragmatic approach is emerging: “protocol thinking.” This means shifting the system so it generates different, more manageable problems – managing the smoke instead of futilely trying to snuff out the fire. Using climate governance as our main example, let’s explore how protocol thinking works and why embracing continuous management of tension can make the system more resilient.
The Climate System: Many Actors, Divergent Goals
Global climate governance is a classic case of many actors, one atmosphere. Nearly every country and countless non-state players (corporations, NGOs, cities) have a stake in how we address climate change. Their interests overlap in wanting a livable planet, but they diverge sharply on priorities and responsibilities. As one analysis notes, “climate governance involves multiple actors and sectors, with divergent interests and roles.” These actors often break into narrowly focused issues – from carbon markets to economic development – and their clashing interests “lead undeniably to significant contentions between them” . In plain terms, each player brings their own agenda: fossil-fuel exporters worry about revenue, developing nations stress their right to grow, environmental groups push for aggressive emissions cuts, and so on.
A central tension is the perceived trade-off between economic growth and environmental protection. For decades, many policymakers acted on the belief that boosting current living standards must take precedence over curbing emissions. As a Brookings Institution piece put it, “Economic growth has taken precedence over environmental protection on the premise that raising living standards for people now must have priority over preserving nature for future generations.” This growth-vs-green dichotomy means efforts to cut carbon often face pushback from those fearing slowed development or lost jobs. Indeed, surveys confirm that “belief in a trade-off between economic growth and environmental protection is an important feature of the politics of environmental policy.” The result is a persistent hesitancy: each nation hopes others will do more so they can do less, a textbook collective action problem.
Such divergent preferences have repeatedly led to stalemates and delays. Global climate negotiations under the U.N. have been grinding on for nearly three decades with incremental progress. Every country agrees on the broad goal (prevent dangerous climate change) but argues over how to share the burdens. Should rapidly developing economies like China and India curb emissions as much as rich countries? Who pays for the necessary technology or for damages from climate impacts? These questions have no easy consensus answers, so conflict smolders on. Climate governance, by its nature, is full of “contentions” that never fully disappear – they merely shift form over time.
Yet this very friction is not a sign of total failure; it’s the normal state of a complex global system trying to do something unprecedented. Climate change, after all, is not a simple problem with a clear finish line. It’s what scholars call a “wicked problem” – one so complex and multi-faceted that it cannot be “easily or quickly solved but rather must be addressed by a variety of interventions over an extended period of time.” There is no silver bullet; any serious response requires ongoing negotiation, adaptation, and compromise among parties with different values. In other words, the fire of divergent interests will keep burning indefinitely. The question is: can we manage the smoke (the manifestations of that conflict, like policy gridlock and rising emissions) in a way that keeps the situation livable?
Common Tensions in Climate Negotiations
To grasp the persistent conflicts, it helps to enumerate a few recurring trade-offs that negotiators face:
Growth vs. Sustainability: How to balance economic development with emissions reduction. (Developing countries emphasize poverty eradication and growth, while others urge green constraints .)
Mitigation vs. Adaptation: How much effort and funding to allocate to cutting greenhouse gases (mitigation) versus coping with climate impacts (adaptation). Mitigation tackles the fire; adaptation manages the smoke. Many vulnerable nations argue adaptation needs far more support, as current climate effects already demand resources.
Present vs. Future Costs: Climate action often imposes upfront costs for future benefits. Politicians juggle short-term political/economic pressures against long-term planetary stability.
Fairness and Equity: Debates over historical responsibility (developed nations caused most past emissions) and capability (richer countries vs. poorer) underlie arguments about who should cut how much and who should pay for climate finance.
These tensions are essentially permanent – they reflect genuine differences in circumstances and perspectives. Climate diplomacy can alleviate or reframe them, but it’s unlikely to make them disappear entirely. This is where protocol thinking comes in: acknowledging that such tensions will persist, and designing governance systems that can productively manage them on an ongoing basis.
Two Roots of Crises: Resolved Tensions and Unmanaged Conflict
Left unmanaged, the above conflicts produced the defining problem of our age: climate change itself. In a sense, uncontrolled global warming is the byproduct of decades of poorly managed disputes over development, responsibility, and timing. Every country pursuing its own immediate interest (burning cheap fossil fuel for growth) without sufficient collective restraint has led to the accumulation of greenhouse gases. The climate system doesn’t care about political arguments – it responds to emissions, and those kept rising amidst gridlock.
The inability to reconcile growth and sustainability, for example, meant that for years many governments made only minimal climate pledges or none at all. The result is atmospheric CO₂ climbing year after year, which in turn drives more frequent heatwaves, floods, and other disasters. In effect, the system (global economy + weak governance) generated climate change as a continuous problem because the underlying tension was not resolvable. Conflict, metaphorically, was the smoke that signaled our inability to agree, and now the smoke has become thick enough to choke us.
It’s increasingly clear that a single unified solution to this crisis has not emerged – and likely cannot in the current political reality. Scholars have observed that despite efforts since the 1990s, “a single, unified approach to reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions has failed to emerge thus far and is likely to remain out of reach for the foreseeable future.” Instead, what we got is a patchwork of partial measures and forums – what some call a “regime complex” for climate governance . This regime complex includes the UN climate convention, the Paris Agreement, various bilateral deals, national policies, carbon markets, etc., all loosely coordinating. The turn to a regime complex was not by grand design, but by necessity: “the benefits of a comprehensive regime [seemed] not sufficient to justify the bargaining… required of individual states with often divergent interests” . In short, no single treaty could satisfy everyone, so we have many overlapping mini-agreements.
Crucially, this shift from one big solution to many smaller mechanisms is not all bad. Keohane and Victor (2010) argue a decentralized regime complex can be more flexible and adaptable, if properly managed . This is essentially an early articulation of protocol thinking: when a final resolution is impossible, focus on arranging the ongoing processes and partial measures in a way that still makes progress. As they note, “efforts to create an integrated, comprehensive regime are unlikely to be successful and may divert attention from more promising opportunities to build an effective regime complex.” In other words, insisting on a perfect all-or-nothing solution (“extinguishing the fire”) might be counterproductive; it’s better to improve the coordination of our imperfect, fragmented efforts (“managing the smoke”).
The history of climate agreements reflects this learning. The early approach was akin to seeking a one-and-done fix: the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 set hard targets for emissions reductions, legally binding on industrialized countries. It was a bold attempt to douse the flames by decree. But Kyoto’s strictness was also its downfall – some major emitters (like the U.S.) never ratified it, others (Canada, Russia) pulled out or failed to meet targets. Emissions kept rising. Kyoto, while a landmark, “has been limited in its success: greenhouse gas output has increased since 1997, not decreased,” as National Geographic summarized . The protocol’s top-down design couldn’t accommodate the divergent interests for long.
By contrast, the Paris Agreement of 2015 took a very different, more procedural approach. Paris abandoned the idea of legally enforced targets for each country. Instead, it asked each nation to submit its own voluntary pledge (the Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs) and to update those pledges every five years, ratcheting up ambition over time. There is no global police force to punish non-compliance – the agreement relies on transparency, peer pressure, and iterative negotiation. In essence, Paris created a standing protocol for climate cooperation: a recurring framework where countries regularly reconvene, report, and hopefully up their game. It’s explicitly not a one-time solution but an ongoing process.
Critically, this shift made the deal more palatable to virtually all nations. The Paris Accord quickly achieved near-universal participation, including from China, India, and other emerging economies that had been exempt or reluctant under Kyoto. The trade-off is that Paris is less stringent. As one commentary noted, “The Paris Accord is a lesser commitment than the Kyoto Protocol because unlike Kyoto, the Paris Agreement is non-binding, with voluntary targets and no legal enforcements.” Rather than a definitive cure, Paris offers a platform for continuous treatment of the problem. It acknowledges that nations still disagree on how much each should do – but instead of stalling until consensus, it institutionalizes progress through iterative compromise.
Protocol Thinking: From Fixes to Frameworks
This evolution from Kyoto to Paris exemplifies protocol thinking in action. Protocol thinking means favoring frameworks and processes over one-off fixes. It accepts that conflict (“us vs. them”) will persist, and thus focuses on how to manage that dynamic over time. As one observer wryly put it, “Unity isn’t coming any time soon. There is no We – there is only Us, Them, and Protocol.” In global climate politics, expecting all parties to suddenly unite behind a single plan is fantasy. Instead, we create protocols – agreed rules of engagement – that let us and them keep working together (or at least in parallel) toward a mutual goal, even as disagreements continue.
What does protocol thinking entail? A few key principles define this approach:
Embrace Ongoing Negotiation: Don’t aim for a final agreement that “solves” everything; instead, set up a durable process that brings stakeholders back to the table regularly. (The Paris Agreement’s 5-year review cycle is a prime example.)
Channel Conflict Productively: Provide structured venues for airing and addressing disagreements before they erupt into crisis. Protocols act like a ventilation system for the smoke of conflict. For instance, annual UN climate conferences (COPs) allow countries to hash out issues, make deals on sub-topics (finance, technology, etc.), and release pressure gradually rather than letting it build unseen.
Shape the Problem: Redefine what kind of “problem” the system generates. If outright climate stability is unachievable in the near term, maybe the next-best problem to have is a world that is gradually decarbonizing (still warming, but slower), versus a world on a runaway warming trajectory. The Paris process, while insufficient for now, at least bends the curve and creates a predictable arena for improvements.
Prefer Recurring, Manageable Problems over Rare Catastrophe: A stable protocol often means you’ll have known challenges popping up regularly. This is actually desirable if the alternative is allowing tension to accumulate until it causes an unpredictable disaster. In a political context, it’s better to have scheduled disputes than unscheduled breakdowns. (Think of how democracies hold elections at fixed intervals – which are noisy and contentious, but far preferable to irregular revolutions or coups.)
In climate governance, these principles translate into a strategy of system maintenance. We are not putting out the fire of conflicting interests; we are containing it, tending it, even using it in a controlled way to drive innovation and compromise. Each country still pursues its interests, but under agreed rules – a protocol – that aims for a collectively safer outcome than free-for-all competition would produce.
One tangible example is the use of carbon markets as a protocol mechanism. Rather than each country or industry either complying 100% with emissions cuts or flouting them, carbon markets create a structured system where actors can trade the right to emit. This introduces flexibility and continual adjustment: companies that can cut emissions cheaply will do so and sell permits, while others buy permits and take longer to transition. The market becomes an ongoing protocol that manages the distribution of the “pain” of cutting emissions. It’s not that polluters happily agree to quit (conflict remains), but how they negotiate emissions reductions is shifted into an efficient pricing mechanism. Firms can choose when and where to reduce emissions, targeting the cheapest options first, which still achieves the overall cap . In short, the problem transforms from “How do we force everyone to cut emissions equally?” to “How do we run a carbon market that hits the emissions cap?” The latter problem, while complex, is more structured and economically palatable – a manageable smoke instead of an unmanageable fire.
Another area where protocol thinking is crucial is the adaptation vs. mitigation balance. Initially, global talks focused overwhelmingly on mitigation (reducing emissions) – essentially trying to solve the root cause. Adaptation (preparing for climate impacts) was secondary, sometimes seen as admitting defeat. That bias has shifted as it became clear some warming is inevitable. Now, there are emerging protocols for funding adaptation in developing countries, integrating climate resilience into planning, and so forth. Adaptation is the epitome of managing the smoke: accepting that some “fire” will burn (some climate change will happen) and trying to minimize the damage. However, adaptation efforts historically lagged far behind. Climate adaptation finance has received “much less attention than mitigation finance” even though it “should play a key role in building climate resilience.” This is changing slowly through initiatives like national adaptation plans and the new global goal on adaptation established under the UNFCCC. The tension between mitigation and adaptation won’t disappear – resources are finite – but a protocol thinking approach treats it as a balance to be continually negotiated, not a one-time either/or choice. For example, wealthy countries now convene with vulnerable nations to periodically assess and increase adaptation funding (a recurring process), rather than assuming a single fund or pledge would settle the matter permanently.
Conflict Is the Smoke – Protocols Manage It
To better understand the philosophy of protocol thinking, consider the maxim: “Conflict is the smoke, not the fire.” The true fire is the underlying set of needs, values, and interests that differ between parties. In climate governance, that’s things like differing economic situations and political priorities. You will likely never extinguish those differences entirely – trying to do so (for instance, by insisting all countries adopt the same lifestyle or level of emissions cuts regardless of context) would be unrealistic and even counter-productive. The smoke is the visible conflict: the disputes, the gridlock, the messy compromises. It’s what happens when the fire of differences emits into the open. Protocol thinking says: don’t waste energy pretending you can put out the fire of fundamental interest divergence; instead, create a chimney or a filter for the smoke. In practice, that means institutions and agreements that handle the disagreements in a controlled way.
The Paris Agreement again is a good illustration. It doesn’t resolve the core disagreement about who should do more – that debate rages on each year. But it manages the smoke from that fire by stipulating that every country, no matter how grudgingly, must periodically up its pledge. Even if a country low-balls its target, the protocol creates a norm of incremental improvement and transparency. The predictable “smoke” here might be that every five years we’ll see diplomatic arm-twisting, naming-and-shaming of laggards, protests from climate activists saying the pledges aren’t enough (they rarely are). But all that is expected – it’s part of the process. It’s far better than the unpredictable shocks we’d get if there were no protocol at all (imagine the disorganized scramble in a world with no climate accord, as impacts worsen and each country reacts in ad-hoc panic or finger-pointing).
Another metaphor for this concept comes from wildfire management. In natural forests, small fires regularly clear out underbrush. If you suppress every small fire (trying to eliminate all “smoke”), you build up fuel loads until eventually a massive, catastrophic wildfire is inevitable. Modern forestry has learned to manage smaller fires through controlled burns to prevent monster fires. “Historically, smaller fires occurred in forests at regular intervals. When these fires are suppressed, flammable materials accumulate… Controlled burns seek to accomplish the benefits that regular fires provided while also preventing fires from burning out of control.” In the same way, a social or political system that suppresses all conflict can become brittle – tension accumulates until something breaks. Protocols act like controlled burns or safety valves: they intentionally allow the release of pressure in measured doses.
A firefighter monitors a controlled burn in a New Hampshire forest. Small, planned fires remove excess fuel and prevent larger wildfires . This illustrates how embracing manageable, periodic problems can avert catastrophic outcomes. In climate governance, allowing “controlled” conflict through protocols can prevent far worse crises.
In climate governance, predictable, recurring problems can be healthier than unpredictable crises. It’s preferable to have, say, an annual debate over climate finance contributions (where nations argue but eventually chip in some money) than to have no system and later face a climate-driven humanitarian disaster that nobody is prepared for. The former is essentially a maintenance cost for the global system; the latter is an emergency that can destabilize the system. By shaping the form of the conflict, we determine the maintenance cost vs. resilience trade-off. A system that budgets for and expects a certain level of conflict can be resilient, because it’s not surprised by it. On the other hand, a system that ignores tensions or tries to paper them over with one-time fixes may experience brittle failure when reality intrudes.
Consider the difference between gradual adaptation vs. sudden shocks. If coastal cities steadily invest in flood defenses, relocate communities from high-risk zones, and improve disaster response (all ongoing, expected efforts), they transform the nebulous threat of sea-level rise into a series of concrete engineering and social challenges they can handle year by year. However expensive and politically difficult those steps are, they are incremental and thus somewhat predictable. If they don’t prepare (perhaps hoping somehow the seas won’t rise or someone else will fix it), eventually a massive storm or inundation will hit, causing chaotic losses and panic. The total cost – in lives, money, and upheaval – of the unplanned disaster is likely far higher than the cumulative cost of proactive adaptation. In protocol terms, it’s trading one big unmanageable problem for a set of smaller, managed ones. This is why climate adaptation planning is so important: it accepts the “smoke” of conflict (spending resources now, maybe relocating populations – all contentious decisions) to avoid being suffocated by the “fire” of unchecked climate impacts later.
Resilience Through Continuous Management
When systems adopt protocol thinking, they often become more resilient. Resilience is the ability to withstand shocks and keep functioning. A resilient system doesn’t avoid stress altogether; rather, it faces stresses regularly and bounces back, learning and recalibrating each time. In the climate context, a resilient governance system might not prevent all climate damages (which is unrealistic now), but it prevents the collapse of cooperation and avoids the worst-case scenarios by always staying in the game and adjusting strategies.
For example, the Paris Agreement’s true genius may lie in its self-correcting design. Every five years, there is a “global stocktake” to see how the world is doing versus its goals, and then countries are expected to update their pledges. If we’re off-track (and we are), the protocol itself creates a prompt to course-correct. It’s not automatic or guaranteed (it relies on political will), but at least the architecture for improvement is there. After Paris, climate diplomacy didn’t stop; it shifted to implementation and ratcheting up ambition. This ongoing nature means the system can respond to new information – say, a breakthrough in clean technology or a series of climate disasters that change public opinion – by incorporating those into the next round of plans. In contrast, a one-shot treaty with fixed targets might quickly become obsolete or insufficient, yet have no built-in mechanism to update it short of reconvening another major negotiation from scratch.
We can also see protocol thinking in initiatives like the carbon price floor discussions or the formation of clubs like the Powering Past Coal Alliance. These are not universal solutions, but smaller agreements where subsets of actors set rules among themselves (e.g. a minimum carbon price, or a pledge to phase out coal by a certain date). They create forums for cooperation that can later expand. If one alliance fails or one policy tool backfires, the overall system still has others in play – that diversity actually adds resilience, much like an ecosystem with many niches is harder to destroy than a monoculture.
Critics might say this sounds like accepting mediocrity – managing problems instead of solving them. Shouldn’t we aim to eliminate the conflict by, say, aligning everyone’s interests through moral persuasion or a sense of shared humanity (“We’re all in this together”)? It’s a noble ideal, and certainly fostering more global solidarity is important. But protocol thinking is grounded in a bit of skeptical realism: it assumes that complete unity on climate action is unlikely in the timeframe we need. Waiting for a utopian consensus or trying to force one could actually let the problem get worse (as it did in the years of deadlock). By contrast, pragmatic frameworks can achieve progress even in the absence of unanimous agreement or perfect trust. They create a container for collaboration among uneasy partners.
One might also worry that managing the smoke means we’ll never put out the fire—that we’ll settle for an endless, costly management of climate symptoms without addressing root causes. However, the goal is not to abandon solving the root cause, but to incrementally tame it in a politically feasible way. Over time, successful protocols can actually reduce the underlying conflict. For instance, if carbon pricing and innovation protocols make clean energy cheap enough, the old growth-vs-green trade-off diminishes; interests converge as green technology becomes the new engine of growth. Similarly, good faith participation in climate funds and disaster assistance can build trust between rich and poor nations, gradually narrowing the rift. In that sense, managing the smoke can slowly cool the fire underneath. But even if the fire burns indefinitely at some low level, we can live with that—the world has other enduring disagreements that are managed without apocalypse.
Conclusion: Try to Produce Better Problems
Protocol thinking offers a mindset of humble optimism. It’s humble in that it forsakes the dramatic, clean “victory” over a problem – there will be no day when the climate conflict simply ends and everyone lives in harmony. But it’s optimistic in a quiet way, believing that through clever design of institutions and repeated cooperation, we can avert the worst and even thrive amid ongoing tension. In the climate arena, this means doubling down on frameworks like Paris and beyond: strengthening the protocols, not searching for a mythical one-time deal.
Climate change will test human civilization for decades, perhaps centuries. It is the quintessential case where we must keep muddling through – learning, adjusting, suffering some setbacks, but always coming back to the table. By focusing on which problems we prefer to face, we regain agency. We likely cannot choose a future with no climate problems at all (that ship has sailed), but we can choose a future with solvable problems over a future with cataclysmic ones. Do we deal with the manageable challenge of transitioning industries and reskilling workers for a green economy, or do we deal with the unmanageable chaos of mass climate disruptions? Protocol thinking urges us to choose the former by proactively shaping policies today.
In sum, protocols manage the smoke of conflict so we aren’t blinded or asphyxiated by it. They are the scaffolding that holds together cooperation when unity is out of reach. The climate fight is far from over, but it is increasingly a multitude of smaller fights – and that’s a good thing. Each small fight (over finance, technology sharing, timelines, etc.) is an opportunity to make incremental gains and to prevent a bigger conflagration. As the saying goes, “solve the problems you can solve, to buy time for solving the ones you can’t yet.” By continually shaping the system to produce the best kind of problems we can handle, we improve our odds of navigating an uncertain future. Protocol thinking isn’t about surrendering to conflict; it’s about civilizing it – turning a raging fire into a controlled burn, so that humanity can keep moving forward through the flames without getting consumed by them.
Sources:
Renner, J. (2020). New Power Structures and Shifted Governance Agendas… (Sustainability 12(7): 2799) – climate governance involves many actors with divergent interests .
McNeil & Barnes (2025). The environment–economic growth trade-off… (Ecological Economics 230) – belief in a growth vs environment trade-off shapes climate politics .
Thomas, V. (2023). The truth about climate action versus economic growth (Brookings) – economic growth has long been prioritized over environmental protection .
Keohane, R. & Victor, D. (2010). The Regime Complex for Climate Change (Belfer Center) – a single unified climate regime is unlikely; a loosely coupled complex offers flexibility .
Keohane & Victor (2010) – pursuing an integrated solution may distract from building an effective regime complex; incremental approach can be better .
Columbia SIPA IGP (2023). How Economics Can Tackle the “Wicked Problem” of Climate Change – climate change is a “wicked problem” with no quick solution, requiring many interventions over time .
Kleinman Center (2017). Lessons Learned: From Kyoto to Paris – Paris Agreement is voluntary (non-binding) unlike the Kyoto Protocol’s binding targets .
Blundercheck (Timber Schroff, 2023). A Lighthouse in the Widening Gyre – “There is no We – only Us, Them, and Protocol.” Coordination must happen via protocols since full unity is unachievable .
EDHEC Risk Institute (2022). Impact of Finance on Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation – adaptation finance has lagged but is vital for resilience .
National Geographic (2023). Controlled Burning – regular small fires (controlled burns) prevent catastrophic wildfires , an analogy for managing recurring problems to avoid big shocks.