Complexity ethics and UNFCCC practices for 1.5 °C climate change

Introducing a 'complexity ethics' frame would help society mitigate or adapt to climate warming within or exceeding the Paris Agreement 1.5 °C aim. A complexity ethics frame underlines existing facilitative multi-stakeholder methodologies used at subnational scales to build adaptive capacity and may be scaled-up in a transformed UNFCCC. Adopting such approaches at the international political level would permit non-state, non-Party stakeholders to more efficiently integrate their tremendous capacity for climate action into the global climate action process, leading to more substantial climate mitigation and adaptation for and over 1.5 °C warming. In turn, this would help satisfy critiques regarding the democratic legitimacy of polycentric moves to include non-state actors at this level, incorporate other global initiatives and problems like the SDGs and biodiversity loss, and meet high-level calls for more co-operative responses.