Diplomatic Rhetoric Shaping Adaptation Funding-related Issues at the UNFCCC Negotiations

In the contemporary world, the institutions that entangle states in certain obligations are crafted through multilateral negotiation processes. The Paris Climate Agreement provides one such glaring example. One of the vital issues of the Agreement, 'funding for adaptation’, which is crucial for the most affected countries like Bangladesh, received limited attention during the initial phases of the negotiations but emerged as a vital issue after a short time and quickly became a prominent issue. It finally ended up with a moderate profile in the Paris Agreement. How did the issues related to the Adaptation Fund emerge, and how were they framed-up, what was the mechanism of their evolution, and why did only some crucially-contested issues find traction? In this quest, this work extrapolates the framing theory from the media and communication domain and, through applying the approach, develops a simultaneous content and frame analysis, which leads to a historical mapping and tracing of the process of the evolution of the issues. It identifies a phenomenon of frame generation through the contested rhetoric framing of the actors in line with their primary logics, which were shaped by their original mental schemata and permeated throughout the negotiations. The work also identifies that the powerful actors determine the fates of the crucially-contested frames as well as their future implications.


INTRODUCTION
In the more than two decades of climate negotiations under the UNFCCC, that culminated in the Paris Agreement, issues related to funding for adaptation were the most important for the vulnerable countries like Bangladesh. Ironically, the least advanced, poorest, and most vulnerable countries are comparatively more exposed to the adverse effects of climate change, and so, compared to richer countries, must spend much of their scant resources on addressing this problem.
The focus on the adaptation funding remained minimal at the initial stages of the climate negotiations. The United Nations Framework Convention (UNFCCC), adopted in 1992, paid little attention to it. The UNFCCC did not specifically cite funding for adaption 2 but mentioned the term "adaptation" in weak phrases, such as: "shall also assist the developing country parties…that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effect…in meeting the cost of adaptation…" This weak formulation had considerable implications in shaping the subsequent diplomatic debates on funding for adaptation. Scholars have also pointed out that the issue of adaptation was not prominent in the discourses during the initial stages of the climate negotiations; the UNFCCC convention and Kyoto Protocol (KP) attached little emphasis to it; but the issues related to adaptation acquired salience over time, with the publication of the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which indicated that the adverse effect of climate change is imminent, inevitable and already happening (Burton et al. 2002,148;Helgeson & Ellis 2015, 26;Schipper & Lisa 2006, 82;Klein & Persoon 2008, 3).
Given the above context, this paper explains how the issues related to adaptation funding emerged and were framed-up at the negotiation table, and explores the question of why only specific issues found traction in the final Agreement while others failed. A thorough review of the literature indicates that while there exists ample work on the reasons for the emergence of the adaptation funding issues, a systematic investigation of those questions has not yet been undertaken. This paper endeavors to fill this gap. The work applies framing theory in its discourse analysis, develops a historical map of the evolution of the issues related to adaptation funding, and traces the process of evolution of the problems. It finds that the framing of the problems was the sine-qua-non for the sustenance of all of the issues, but framing alone could not determine the fates of the crucially-contested issues in which the powerful actors were involved.
A review of the literature follows this section, where some key concepts, definitions, and theoretical base are elaborated on, and a hypothesis is generated, using them as the basis. The methodology section next describes the data sources and the method, followed by the findings section. The findings section is divided into three segments. The first segment develops a simultaneous content and frame analysis that leads to a historical mapping of the evolution process. The second segment elaborates on the mechanism of the evolution of the frames using the analogy of connecting dots, as hypothesized in the method section. The third segment evaluates the outcomes as per the findings of this work. Finally, a conclusion is drawn, highlighting the contributions of this work.
It should be noted here that, given the vast volume of documents and discourses that this work incorporates, it appeared impossible to delve into all of the relevant aspects of adaptationrelated issues such as: technology development and transfer, capacity building, compensation, loss, and damage. The issues related to adaptation funding alone form the focus of this paper.

THE THEORY OF FRAMING AND ITS APPLICATION
Framing is an act characterized by selective enhancement of salience of viewpoints about an issue by the actor involved. Rein and Schön (1993, 146) define frames as "a way of selecting, organizing, interpreting, and making sense of complex reality to provide guideposts for knowing, analyzing, persuading, and acting. A frame is a perspective from which an amorphous, ill-Sorkar defined, problematic situation can be made sense of and acted on". Thus, frames provide a cognitive and normative tool that enables policy-actors to perceive an event in their own, nonobjective way. They suggest recognizing a particular frame by examining it from four angles: the structure, the boundary, conceptual schemata, and the generic narratives of a frame (Rein and Schön 1993, 88-89). In this work, once the fingerprints 3 of the framing attempts were identified through software; they were recognized by using this lens. Entman (1993) is one of the most authoritative and pioneering scholars who advanced the theory. Describing how frames work, he posits that "Frames highlight some bits of information about an item that is the subject of a communication, thereby elevating them in salience...Texts can make bits of information more salient by placement or repetition or by associating them with culturally familiar symbols " (Entman 1993, 53). He states that, if an idea or word, even unillustrated, fits the existing schemata, then the audience will accept it more easily; and, once it has been widely accepted, it will be difficult, sometimes impossible, to omit the perception of the audience with an alternative or opposite facts as they will ask about the credibility of the information and even fail to understand the communicator. He identified four locations in the communication process of frame building: the communicator, the text, the receiver, and the culture (p.52).
The framing of the issues related to the environment and the climate had been practiced by the developed and developing countries even before the adoption of the UNFCCC convention, ever since the pre-negotiation of the Stockholm Conference held in 1972 (Najam 2005, 308). The theory of 'framing' has, so far, been mainly applied in the field of communication studies and media research. It has been applied in the research on climate politics mostly to explain how the media or specialized media framed the issue at the national level (Asplund et al. 2013, Boykoff 2007, Olausson 2009, O'Neill et al. 2010, Zannakis 2015 and to study how the IPCC framed it in their assessments and at scientific conferences (Bjurström & Polk 2011). Despite its potential in explaining international negotiations on public goods, it has rarely been applied. Some of the comparable works that applied the theory in the field of climate negotiations are Sorkar (2019;, Vanhala and Hestbaek (2016), Moore (2012), and Ansari et al. (2013). Sorkar (2019; applied the theory in explaining how the issues related to Funding mechanisms and policies and the issues related to mitigation evolved in the UNFCCC negotiations and why only some critically contested issues found traction in the final Agreement. Vanhala and Hestbaek (2016) employed the analytical concepts from framing theory to investigate how the diverse framing efforts of the actors on loss and damage converged into ambiguous master frames and finally developed a text that secured a stand-alone place in the Paris Agreement. Moore (2012) elaborated how the issue of adaptation had been framed-up in climate negotiations as well as how newer ones had replaced older frames. Ansari et al. (2013) developed an inductive explanation as to how institutional innovation concerning different issues of climate politics evolved.
Taking our cue from the above mentioned earlier works, concepts, definitions, and in consideration of the research question of this paper, the following hypothesis is developed: Hypothesis 1. The more an issue is given greater salience through speech acts, and the more it fits the existing schemata of the actors involved in the negotiation process, the higher the possibility of its successful traction.
Salience here means "making a piece of information more noticeable, meaningful or memorable to audiences" (Entman 1993, 53). Salience can be gauged by observing a "speech act", i.e., the frequency and intensity of speaking in favor of a particular frame. Schemata are defined as the perception or understanding of a specific issue that organizes categories of information and the relationships among them. It is a mental structure for receiving ideas and information. It dictates how knowledge is received. People are more likely to notice things that fit into their schema, while information that contradicts their schema may appear to them as misinformation or exceptions. "Speech act" means repeated utterance of a word, especially by influential people.
This work falls into the genre of discourse research, which has become an active style in contemporary IR studies (Herschinger 2016). The dependent variable, the "successful traction" of the contested issues, becomes visible in the process of the historical mapping of the evolution of the frames and the independent variables, "speech act by an actor to intensify salience of its frame" and "how better that speech act fits the schemata of the audience", deter the outcomes.

DATA AND METHOD
Two specialized news bulletins, namely the Earth Negotiation Bulletin (ENB) 4 and another bulletin entitled "ECO," published by Climate Action Network (CAN), appeared to be the most promising sources of data for this work. However, it has been found that CAN reports are NGObiased, and some scholars have questioned their neutrality. The ENB data is more neutral than other available sources (Vanhala & Hesbaek 2016,114), and some scholars have used this data source (ibid; Boyd et al. 2008, Friman 2016. A total of 261 ENB coverage reports of the apex form of the negotiations from the 1 st UNFCCC's Conference of the Parties (COP) up to the 21 st COP were used for this work. Some secondary sources of data, which had appeared pertinent when reviewing the literature, were also contextualized in consolidating the arguments. Five semi-structured key informant interviews were carried out with five experts. All of them had attended COP negotiations, and one of them had attended all 21 of the COPs, offering a rare chance for a researcher to consult such a person.
The method for this study constituted a three-pronged analysis, comprising: a simultaneous content and frame analysis, a historical mapping of the evolution process and testing an assumption of the connecting dots of the evolution process of the frames. The content analysis was conducted by using the latest version of Atlas.ti software. The 'fingerprints' of the frames of different actors were first identified by using the keywords "adapt*|fund*|finance", then the respective loci of the fingerprints were studied elaborately and hand-coded. The software identified all of the loci where these words were uttered. Each of the loci was read carefully and coded with pertinent codes. Some of the relevant quotations were ascribed multiple codes as they appeared relevant. The quotations and codes were then exported into Word format, printed out and repeatedly read, after which the original codes were modified as per the new understanding. Rein and Schön (1996, 90-91) identified two major kinds of frames: rhetoric frames (identified from discourses, speech, memoranda, etc.) and action frames (identified by actual actions like the formulation of laws, regulations, and programs). The frame analysis used these terms in order to systematically explain the mapped evolution process (see Figure 2).

Sorkar
Presented below is a diagram that has been generated by the software through the coding process ( Figure 1). It shows the major actor codes and what that actor talked at the negotiation table. If we click on a code in the diagram, all of the relevant quotations for that code, together with their relations with other codes and quotations will appear. In this way, we can study the relevant quotations connected only with that particular code, which helps conduct the analysis efficiently and systematically. This is just a sample; we can select actor code or issue code, identify the statements related to those codes, and systematically conduct our analysis. In this way, the qualitative content analysis was conducted vigorously.

Figure 1: Major Actor-Codes and their Relations with the Quotations
An analogy of 'connecting dots' was developed to detect the evolution process of the frames. Beach and Pederson (2013, loc.668) provide an example of the connecting parts of a theorized rational decision-making mechanism, which are: (1) gather all relevant information; (2) identify all possible courses of action; (3) assess the alternatives based on the decision-makers' utility function; and (4) choose the alternative that maximizes the expected utility. Friman (2016, 291) and Tang (2009, 595-96) also developed similar process cycles in their works. Inspired by their models, and after analyzing a substantial part of the content, it appeared that a similar analogy of connecting dots with regard to the evolution of the frames could be developed for this work too. The connecting dots were presumed as hypothesized below: (1) the prominent actors conceive their underlying logic, (2) they frame their competing issues as per their conceived logics, (3) the contested issues reach a deadlock, and (4) a new action frame emerges from that deadlock.

HISTORICAL MAPPING OF THE EVOLUTION OF THE ISSUES
It was identified from the content analysis that the actor's rhetoric framing efforts were shaped and dictated by their primordial mental schemata, as summarized in the Fig.2 below, which were broadly bifurcated along the line of the developed and developing countries 5 . The contested logics permeated through all the waves of negotiations up until the Paris Agreement was reached. This contestation yielded action frames along the way, some of the prominent ones of those are funding for National Communications (NC); relations with the Official Development Assistance (ODA); three major funds: the Adaptation Funds (AF), the Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF) and the LDC Fund (LDCF); the National Adaptation Plan of Action (NAPA) and the National Adaptation Plan (NAP); Measurable, Reportable and Verifiable (MRV) funding; the Adaptation Fund Board (AFB); the Green Climate Fund (GCF); the relative importance of adaptation or mitigation; loss and damage and country ownership. Of these, the framing process of the most notable action frames, as presented in the following flow chart, is elaborated in the remainder of this section.

5
. This broad bifurcation is acceptable in climate politics because the debates are very much a subject of 'North-South' politics (compare Najam 2005, 304). Otherwise desperate groups attain a more cohesive pattern in these broad groups in the case of climate negotiations.

National Communications (NC)
In the first few COPs, the most actively debated issue concerning funding was related to NC. NCs are national reports that contain information about GHG emissions and removals by sources and inventories. The GHG data of the developed countries were available, but the data on the developing countries were disorganized, and they also lacked the necessary expertise to compile them. It appeared to be the foremost objective of the UNFCCC to gather all of the data and trends on the emission and removal of GHG so that a proper master plan could be devised at the global level. As per the convention, the developing countries were required to submit their NCs Actor's Primordial Mental Schemata Developed countries Given the global challenge of the climate change, all the countries irrespective of their development level should come forward to contribute for mitigation and the neediest countries can be supported through GEF basically for their additional burden with regard to mitigation related activities.
Developing countries The developing countries, particularly the vulnerable countries would suffer the most due to the anthropogenic climate change for which they are not liable. Therefore, the developed countries should extend financial and technical supports to them. within three years of entering the convention and every four years after that. The developing countries generally agreed to provide this information, but they found that the money, technique, and expertise needed to achieve this goal posed additional burdens on them. Hence, they sought full funding in this regard. The developed countries also recognized this necessity, but they imposed the condition that the developing countries were required to engage in a constructive review process of the NC submission to get financial support. The developing countries argued that providing information through NCs depended on the condition of meeting the financial pledges by the developed countries (ENB vol.12 1998: no.96 p.1). By the 5 th COP, some of the developing countries had begun to suspect that the data submitted through NCs might be used in future to set targets and the ranking of performance towards mitigation efforts for sustainable development, while they would be seeking access to GEF funding (ENBvol.12 1999: no.123p.15). In the later phases of the COPs, it was indeed found that the developing countries tried to relate the release of funds from LDCF and SCCF conditional on the submission of NCs. Both the European Union (EU) and UMBRELLA 6 countries attached high importance to the submission of NCs as frequently and as accurately as possible. The G77/China was reluctant to discuss the frequency of the submission of NCs and continued to emphasize on the availability of financial resources (ENBvol.12 2003: no.231p.8 and2004: no.253p.2). Although it was found from the study that the frequency of talks on NCs had decreased since the 6 th COP onward, probably due to the finalization of the modalities and accumulation of the initial data, the UNFCCC constantly considered this a vital pillar for understanding the global scenario and the developed countries always kept it as a high priority on their agenda. Cancun agreements, an outcome of the 16 th COP, require the developing countries to submit full update reports through NCs every four years and interim update reports every two years (compare Breidenich 2011, 4). The Paris Agreement reaffirmed this (Article 15).
Actors from both sides were of the view that the national communications needed to be submitted. They basically contested about the frequency of submission and sources of funds to prepare the reports. This small difference was the reason why this action frame sustained throughout time and secured a place in the Final Agreement.

ODA and the financial additionality debate
Until the 5 th COP, the debate on funding tended to pivot around the NCs. The developing countries were fixated to articulate their demands for other funding necessities. For example, funding for adaptation, compensation, and technology did not feature much in the discourses. The concern that the financial support by the developed countries has to be additional to their ODA pledges did not surface until then. At the 6 th COP, the developing countries argued that the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) fund should be over and above ODA, GEF, and other financial commitments, to which the UMBRELLA countries replied that no financial additionality was in the provision and that ODA could also be a source of funding (ENBvol.12 2000: no.158, no.160 p.2, no.170 p.2). The LDCs pursued a new fund for themselves, or at least that it should be separated within the GEF (ENBvol.12 1999: no.114). The salience of this debate was intensified in the subsequent COPs. As a result, the 6 th COP decided that the public funding for CDM would be separate from ODA and would not be counted as part of the financial obligations of the Annex-I parties (ENBvol. 12 2001: no.176 p.6).
With the advent of time, the issue of additionality to ODA turned to be a vital concern of the LDCs (see ENBvol.12 no.451 p.2, no.457 p.2, no.560 p.1, no.611 p.3, no.626 p.1, no.616 p.2). Climate finance and ODA are actually difficult to disentangle due to the policy of the GEF, which requires co-financing. The calculation of climate finance is a daunting task. Any climaterelated project is usually part of broader development projects. For example, if a country adopts a project to redress salinity intrusion, the GEF would finance a portion of the project proportional to the additional harm that salinity intrusion had taken place as a result of climate change. Now, how to calculate this additional harm? Moreover, most of the LDCs do not have the financial capacity to launch such projects since they have to bear the bulk of finance. LDCs, Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) repeatedly referred to the impediment of co-financing as a formidable obstacle accessing the funds (See ENBvol.12: 2004. no.251 p.1, no.253 p.2, no.254 p.2;2008. no.395 p.3;2010 no.489 p.1). The developed countries continued insisting on co-financing, saying that it creates countries' sense of ownership over projects (ENBvol.12: 2004. no.253 p.2;2008. no.388 p.2;2001. no.167 p.2). LDCs, who lack the bargaining power vis-à-vis their contenders (Gupta 2000;ENBvol.12 2004: no.260 p.15), were struggling to stand cohesively in favor of their frame. In the 11th COP, some of the developed countries proposed to devise a sliding scale on co-financing to which the G77/China objected by urging to avoid onerous operational policies and eligibility criteria (ENBvol.12. 2005: no.285 p.2). Bangladesh, in the 14th COP, proposed an innovative idea of having a "vulnerability index" (ENBvol.12 2008: no.390 p.1) but without success. A vulnerability index could circumvent the requirements of problematic calculations if the funds were allocated as per the rankings.
With the advent of time, the actual contribution of the developed countries plummeted. In the Copenhagen COP, South Africa flagged that the adaptation funding at that time was only coming from the developing countries themselves through CDMs (ENBvol.12: 2009, no.451 p.2). The developed countries tried to divert the focus by repeatedly insisting on a new frame of "country ownership" for adaptation projects. This frame implied that the recipient countries should mainly contribute to their projects. Ultimately, this is what is happening, as almost no country is waiting for money, and the vulnerable countries have been compelled to allocate a portion of their own budget for their adaptation purposes. For example, Bangladesh, one of the most vulnerable countries, has contributed around US$ 100 million from its budget annually for seven consecutive years (Huq 2018).

The emergence of three funds and their derivatives
The issue of funding for adaptation acquired salience after the publication of the reports by the IPCC that the most vulnerable countries will be hit by the adverse effects of climate change soon (see introduction). Bangladesh and Bhutan, in the 5 th COP, proposed to create a separate fund for the LDCs, prioritizing their needs (ENBvol.12 1999: no.114;no.123 p.13). In the next COP, this appeared as a vital topic (ENBvol.12 2001: no.156 p.2, no.168 p.26). The 6 th COP, in The Hague and Bonn respectively, was so contested that, unprecedentedly, a second phase of the COP had to be called for. The chair listed the issue of funding for adaptation in 'Box A' of the 'crunch' outstanding issues to be solved in the second phase (ENBvol.12 2001: no.163 p. 4 & 8). The COP president proposed the creation of an Adaptation Fund, a Convention Fund, and a Climate Resources Committee, as well as an increase in the resources for climate change funding (ENBvol.12 2001: no.162 p.2). Although not all of these proposals sustained in the later phases, this served as the foundation for the creation of the AF, LDCF, and SCCF. The Marrakech Accord institutionalized the establishment of these three funds. The first two funds were created under the ambit of the convention and the GEF, while the third one is the most significant and new one, created under the Kyoto Protocol.
The primordial logics of the actors permeated in case of framing the issues related to SCCF too. The G77/China emphasized on new, additional, predictable and adequate finance while the EU advocated mainstreaming it with individual nations' sustainable development, Millennium Development Goals and poverty reduction strategies (ENBvol.12 2003: no.226 p.2). In the subsequent COPs, the G77/China repeatedly reiterated the terms 'adequate ' and 'predictable' (see ENBvol.12 no.344 p.2,no.610 p.2,no.611 p.2). The AOSIS argued that the failure to mitigate emissions had deepened the need to increase measures for adaptation (See ENBvol.12 no.225 p.1,no.257 p.1 & p.2,no.258 p.2,no.259 p.2,no.290 p.1).
Although LDCF was created, the developing countries repeatedly pointed out their difficulties in getting funds released from it. In the 10 th and 11 th COP, many LDCs reiterated these difficulties; this resulted in the generation of NAPA to facilitate a smoother release of the funds for the LDCs. LDCs have been preparing NAPAs since 2001 (Klein & Persson 2008, 5). Soon it appeared that funds for NAPA projects were insufficient, and the developing countries argued that the allocation for them should not be restricted to NAPA alone (ENBvol.12 2009: no.450 p.1). The persistent complaints of the LDCs resulted in the creation of NAP, designed explicitly for the LDCs. Despite all of this, LDCs had never found it easy to access the fund designated to them, a problem that constantly haunted them (see, for example, ENBvol.12 2012: no.661 p.1).
The most significant breakthrough secured through the regrouped developing countries' intense framing was the creation of the AF and its derivative, the AFB. The creation of the AF was a highly significant development as it signaled a way to escape the domination of the rich countries by establishing a mechanism of self-sustaining funding to be derived from the 2% share of the proceeds of the CDMs, which was expected to increase incrementally with the excelling of the projects. International organizations suffer from two major hurdles to their effectiveness-military and financial resources. The creation of AF signaled a promising institutional innovation to overcome the second of these (compare Klein & Persoon 2008, 9;Grasso 2011, 363;Ciplet et al. 2013, 63). AFB induced high expectations of the developing countries in need of funds. It was designed to be managed by the CDM executive board to finance 'concrete adaptation projects' with particular attention to the LDCs and AOSIS (ENBvol.12 2000: no.162 p.3). Sorkar (2019) elaborated how the funding mechanism and policies evolved during the two decades of the negotiations under the UNFCCC where the AFB served as the precursor for the most important funding institution "the GCF" and how the developing countries, with the leadership of the emerging ones, could impart their share in designing the new institute and its future policies.
The rhetoric framing of the developing countries succeeded in creating action frames with regard to new funds such as: LDCF, SCCF, AF, NAPA, NAP, and AFB. However, though new action frames were generated, their practical implications were tedious. The difficulties under the Sorkar LDCF, for example, led to the creation of NAPA and NAP, but they still could not overcome the hurdles due to an absence of fund contributions. It appeared the same for the most promising one too, i.e. the AF; the next subsection sheds more light on this.

Copenhagen-Cancun COPs, the peak of success for adaptation funding
The 15 th COP in Copenhagen is often portrayed as an utter failure (compare Dimitrov 2010, 818). This may be somewhat true concerning mitigation issues. However, the current work finds that the Copenhagen COP and the 16 th COP in Cancun mark the pinnacle of whatever modest success the developing countries could achieve with regard to funding.
Paragraph 3 of the Copenhagen Accord mentions that the developed countries shall provide adequate, predictable and sustainable financial resources, as well as transfer technology and build capacity, to support the implementation of adaptation actions in the developing countries, with particular attention to LDCs, SIDS and African countries. Article 8 of the Accord is, to date, the most explicit declaration about funding, which mentions the creation of a fund amounting to USD 100 billion a year from the post-Kyoto climate action period (from 2021). This figure of pledges could not be exceeded so far, and the funding provisions of the Paris Agreement are basically founded on this. However, this most explicit declaration has been weakened by the subtle wording that the developed countries collectively commit to the goal of USD 100 billion. These are slippery terms since if a 'goal' cannot be met, there are endless options for excuses. The foundation for failure has been furthered by using the notion of 'collective commitment' without providing any hint regarding how the funding requirements will be assigned to different developed countries which have been found profoundly divided during the negotiations and have a history of failing to meet their commitments. The Copenhagen pledge of USD 100 billion a year later facilitated the establishment of the GCF in the year 2011, the most important financing institute created to date on climate funding. The GCF is assumed to play the most vital role by facilitating finance for both mitigation and adaptation.
Presented below is a chart reflecting the funding status of the four major climate funds 7 : The paltry size of the AF is likely to be dwarfed by the GCF (Moore 2012, 41) and is already drying up due to halted CDMs (Fridahl & Linnér 2016, 107). As such, although both GEF and GCF remain the financial mechanisms in the Paris Agreement, GCF is already the leading funding institute and can be expected to consolidate its preeminence in the coming days (Author's interview).
In this way, the rhetoric framing for the new funding institute ultimately yielded action frames under the ambit of the GCF. The GCF reflects the interest of the developed countries and, to some extent, the emerging countries who are at the forefront of the technological innovations for green growth. The most promising success of the developing countries, more particularly the affected ones, thus, has been profoundly diluted.

THE EVOLUTION MECHANISM OF THE FRAMES
The simultaneous content and frame analysis in the previous section led to a historical mapping of the developments on adaptation funding issues. Using the assumption of connecting dots, as hypothesized in the method section, this section delineates the evolution mechanism of the frames. It also serves as a summary of the previous section.
As explained, the issue of adaptation funding was mostly absent from the discourses until the 5 th COP. Up until then, the funding issues with regard to the NCs of the developing countries were basically on the table. The reports of the IPCC woke up the developing countries, and, since the 6 th COP onward, they collectively intensified their rhetoric regarding funding for adaptation. This storm of regrouped developing countries' framing efforts apparently overwhelmed the negotiators of all the camps. This resulted in a deadlock, which, for the first time, and to date the last time, necessitated a second phase of a COP. The second phase of the 6 th COP generated action frames orbiting around three funds, which are: AF, LDCF, and SCCF.
The actors thenceforth contested on the operating mechanisms and policies of these funds. The contestations yielded the derivatives of these funds, which are: NAPA, NAP, AFB, and GCF. The creation of AFB and GCF mark milestone innovations. The 13 th COP, in Bali, almost ground to a halt due to opposing frames on different issues, amongst which AF was one of the most prominent. Ultimately, this severity of contested framing resulted in the creation of AFB which is one of the most significant outcomes not only for climate issues but it also bears the potential to serve as an example for other similar issues in the coming days concerning global collective commons (Compare Sorkar 2019, Moore 2012). The 15 th COP, in Copenhagen, is portrayed as the most conflicting one and was regarded as an utter failure. However, the stalemate in Copenhagen facilitated the creation of GCF in the next COP, which is probably the most significant institutional innovation in the contemporary world after the Bretton Woods Institutions. In the end, the Paris Agreement devised a smart way to favor developed countries. It diluted the obligations of the developed countries' public funding provisions and presented an ambiguous 'great prospect' of funding, which will be generated by the private sector. The experts have criticized this prospect as a 'blank check' or 'empty shell'.
From this summary, four connecting dots of emergence and evolution of the frames, as assumed in the method section, can be noticed. First, the actors conceived their logics, which were latent in their primordial mental schemata and permeated to the action frames. Second, the actors' rhetoric framing of the action frames orbited around the logics shaped by their primordial schemata on the respective issues. Third, the contested framing efforts reached deadlocks (for example, in The Hague, Bali, Copenhagen COPs). Fourth and interestingly, every time a deadlock occurred, a new action frame emerged with some innovative components that mostly accommodated the concerns of the emerging and developing countries. The above process was repeated over and again. This phenomenon is revealing to understand how contested issues are framed-up and evolve in a multilateral negotiation setting and how they finally produce an outcome.

AN EVALUATION OF THE OUTCOMES
The plausibility of the second hypothesis, on the assumption of the connected dots in the evolution of the frames, has been established in the section above. However, the first hypothesis appears to be only partially valid. It is clear that the framing of the issues was the sine-qua-non for the sustenance of all of the issues, and the salience for a particular frame was the determining factor regarding their traction. However, the act of framing alone did not guarantee the sustenance of all of the issues nor their relative significance. For example, the attempt to establish ODA as part of climate finance has been thwarted by developing countries. A highly logical scaling-method, the vulnerability index proposed by Bangladesh was able to acquire little support from the countries apart from those most-affected ones, and was not even welcomed by the G77/China group (compare Ciplet et al. 2013, 60). It has utterly failed to sustain. These are the shreds of evidence that, despite having strong logics, if the frames of the less powerful countries were unsupported by the emerging or powerful developed countries, they failed to sustain in the process.
As the third piece of evidence, though the action frames concerning financial additionality, AF, LDCF, and SCCF could secure their reference in the text of the Paris Agreement, the qualitative content analysis in the previous sections explained how the recipient countries fell into illusory pledges and how the affected countries ultimately became the main contributors of their adaptation costs. If the donors simply fail to contribute, what can the recipients do? The lesson is that regardless of the level of vulnerability, no country should expect others to solve its problems but, instead, should try to address the problem itself while remaining obsessed with the logic of historical responsibilities.
The fourth piece of evidence, the creation of the AFB, signaled a meaningful achievement for the less-developed countries. It created a path for the generation of the new institutional mechanism, which was followed when the GCF was created. However, the GCF has, in a subtle way, diverted the focus. In the case of the AFB, the main focus was adaptation fund. The most vulnerable countries were supposed to be the key beneficiary of it. In the case of the GCF, although a 50:50 ration for adaptation and mitigation is mentioned, in reality, until 2016, the GCF has extended 41% of its funding to mitigation projects, 32% to cross-cutting projects and 27% to adaptation projects 8 . Indeed 27-30% is the percentage that is received for purely adaptation funding from the GCF. There is no timeframe for achieving this 50:50 ration, which is a loophole which is being exploited. The GCF funding for adaptation is designed for mega projects of so-called "global benefits", from which the most vulnerable countries may not receive comparable benefits, as was the case for the AF. Most importantly, the funding prospect of the AF has fallen drastically as the profit from the CDM projects hit the ground and also due to the diminishing number of projects. Thus, the GCF is more conducive to serving the interests of the powerful countries, both from the developed and emerging camps, and its activities regarding adaptation have also been made amenable to the interests of these powerful countries. In this subtle way, the interest of the major powers, both from the developed and the emerging camps, has acquired prominence at the expense of the less powerful and most vulnerable countries.
In view of the above, we can conclude that the framing of the issues was an essential condition for all of the issues that secured traction through the negotiation process, but framing did not alone form a sufficient condition since it is evident that the fates of the cruciallycontested frames as well as their relative significance were determined by the powerful actors.

CONCLUSION
The developed countries, from the very beginning of the UNFCCC negotiation, signaled that the most vulnerable countries would receive financial support to combat the challenges of climate change. It has been illustrated in this work how the pledges remained elusive all along, and that this situation continues to date. We have elaborated on how the issues related to adaptation funding emerged, evolved, and attained traction or failed to do so. The application of the concept of framing proved to be rewarding in identifying the logics of the actors and detecting how they permeated through their deliberations. It also demonstrated the power of the actors, which was disguised in their negotiating statements.
Framing process proved to be a sine-qua-non for the sustenance of all the issues; however, it alone could not sufficiently explain the remaining puzzle regarding why only certain crucially-contested frames prevailed while others failed. This work has indicated that the powerful actors played a decisive role in determining the fates of the crucially-contested frames as well as what will be the implications of the frames during the implementation phase. Further detailed work is required to explore this conundrum.
The pathway developed in this study can serve as a pioneering tool to illustrate the development of other issues related to climate negotiations as well as other such global processes, like the negotiations of the World Trade Organizations and other multilateral negotiations under the UN and other international organizations. The negotiators of Bangladesh may craft their strategies based on insights drawn from this study.