How do states respond to the challenge of climate governance? This question has important practical policy implications but also suggests unexplored conceptual terrain. From a practical point of view, the Paris Agreement has anointed ‘nationally determined contributions’ – those emerging from national circumstances and politics – as the centrepiece of the global collective response to climate change. As this formulation suggests, the centre of gravity of the global climate response has shifted to national and sub-national scales. Yet, there is relatively little understanding of how states organize themselves internally to put together their national contributions, the forces that act on the determination of those contributions, and the factors that shape implementation possibilities. This talk will share preliminary insights from the “Varieties of Climate Governance” project, which seeks to shed light on this question through eight comparative country case studies. Navroz K Dubash is a Professor at the Centre for Policy Research, a New Delhi based think-tank. He has been actively engaged in global and national debates on climate change, air quality, energy and water as a researcher, policy advisor and activist for over 25 years.