The Climate Pipeline Project was born out of convenings by Robert Keohane's Balzan Prize in International Relations and Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. 

Initial support for the project has come from Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs facilitated by Dustin Tingley, Robert Keohane, and a range of Harvard based scholars, Brown's Climate Solutions lab under the direction of Jeff Colgan, and a range of generous senior scholars. 

Parallel efforts, such as the University of Washington's Duck Family Graduate Workshop on Environmental Politics and Governance aim to enhance scholars and scholarship by the next generation of political scientists and other social scientists.