Global climate negotiations have grown out of an imperative to manage the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases (GHG) that intensify the heat-trapping capacity of the Earth’s atmosphere. In recent decades, climate change has impacted natural and human systems on all continents; affecting water resources, shifting species distributions and changing crop yields.1 While this raises the issue of reflecting a non-stationary or unstable climate in current discourse, planning and governance, there are few shared visions of how climate impacts in even the next two decades2 will affect social, economic and environmental systems. Within the bounds of natural variability, a relatively stable climate system has been normative in modern history. Therefore, it is a novel conceptual challenge to identify what factors are most directly climate-related and which are indirectly affected by climate change in our dynamic social, economic and environmental systems. Even for researchers, policy-makers and practitioners who have worked closely with GHG and climate issues for many years, there is a tendency to envision future plans as taking place within a system that is not itself affected by climate change. This challenges the governance of global climate negotiations to develop and adopt mechanisms that reflect how the climate is actually changing and accommodate ensuing regional and national shifts in vulnerability, adaptive capacity and social values. Integrity systems to guide governance that incorporate mechanisms founded on adaptive and humanitarian principles can support ethical stability amid dynamic shifts that will affect nations’ capacity to address their agreed rights and responsibilities.