What is water? The history of a modern abstraction

with the latter, however, is that Hoffmann sees two governance systems – a traditional multilateral one and an experimental one – whereas it could also be argued that both systems are subsumed under one and the same governance ‘complex’. Such an approach would allow for a more in-depth analysis of the interactions between the various experiments and the UNFCCC, an issue that receives only scant attention in the conclusions. These minor criticisms should not detract from the overall message that this is an essential book for anyone interested in moving global climate governance forward. The realisation that the UNFCCC is not the only locus of climate governance is an important one, and Hoffmann provides a novel and engaging contribution that helps us make sense of the complex of institutional arrangements governing climate change. However, whether the governance experiments presented by Hoffmann will become more than the sum of their parts or whether they are simply all that we have got in the absence of multilateral progress remains to be seen.