Mapping the Trajectory of Adaptation in the Climate Negotiations Arena

The negotiations within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have been characterized by a growing number of themes corresponding to the different parties’ often conflicting interests and issue-framings. An example is the place acquired by the controversial topic of adaptation to the impacts of climate change. Mapping this complex phenomenon constitutes a challenge in the quali-quantitative analysis of the public problems that this article is examining. The authors present and discuss an experiment in the production and visualization of data on the configuration of the thematic space of negotiations and its deployment over time. Changing the scale and alternating visualization and narration allows for reducing and reframing the complexity, in order to account for the trajectory of adaptation. However this is simply one example among many others, based on data modelling, which can be produced. This type of visualization thus has potential as a boundary object, for discussing the past, present or future implications with regard to a synoptic view of the process.