A Quick Guide to the COP21 Climate Talks

Representatives of more than 190 nations will soon meet for the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) UN climate negotiations in Paris, even as the city is still mourning the deaths of 129 civilians in terrorist attacks.

Rooted in a complex web of history and culture, the tragedy also serves as a marker of the human risks of an unstable climate. A 2015 National Academy of the Sciences study demonstrated links between climate change and the political and economic instability in Syria that bolstered ISIS's growth.

With the inextricable and unpredictable links between the world’s nations clear in this as in so many other examples, the stakes for the negotiations are extremely high. But for many people working in the built environment, what exactly the conference is, how it differs from previous iterations, and how it might affect designers, developers, policy makers, and other stakeholders is somewhat unclear.