The international community has an expectation for negotiations on the post-2012 multilateral climate regime to be concluded in 2009 so that there will not be a gap when the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period concludes in 2012. The detailed analysis of policy issues in this paper shows that if the new mechanism of SNLTs for developing countries is going to be part of this agreement, and potentially be quite key to help conclude this agreement, there is a substantial amount of effort needed on multiple work fronts. For this mechanism to be sufficiently well framed and developed so it can play a role in the next climate change regime, this effort needs to be initiated by the Parties in the very near term (even if just informally in the first instance).