Using the international climate regime as an example, Simone Schiele analyses the ability of international environmental regimes to evolve over time.

Simone Schiele is a junior professional officer for the Science, Assessment and Monitoring Unit of the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (SCBD). Before joining the SCBD, she wrote this book as part of her research at the University of Augsburg, Germany.

1. Introductory observations and approach; 2. International environmental regimes and their treaties; 3. International climate regime; 4. Effectiveness of international environmental regimes and 'creative legal engineering'; 5. International regimes as normative systems; 6. Methodology for determining the norms, sources and underlying theories of international law in the international climate regime; 7. Sources of legal norms in the international climate regime and the negotiations leading up to and at the Copenhagen conference; 8. Sources of legal norms in the international climate regime and Compliance Committee methods of interpretation; 9. Increasing robustness of the international climate regime as a system of norms; 10. Conclusions.