The latest round of climate negotiations wound down last Friday in Bonn, Germany with most delegates from the nearly two hundred countries represented expressing guarded optimism that progress has been made toward laying the groundwork for an international agreement to be signed in 2015 at the COP 21 climate conference in Paris.
In learning lessons from the past, especially with the disappointing outcome of the COP15 conference in 2009, negotiators are coalescing around the idea of creating a more “fluid” pact, freeing countries from the need of endless rounds of negotiations as they respond to new scientific understanding and technological breakthroughs in their efforts to cut carbon emissions.
“The agreement of 2015 cannot be cast in stone, and it cannot be frozen in time,” said Christiana Figueres, the current Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). “It needs to accompany the efforts of countries over time, and it needs to be able to bring on board consistently and constantly the emerging science on the one hand and the growing capabilities of stakeholders on the other.”
At the national and international level 
For national governments party to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the so-called “
