Katowice COP24 Sunday December 2

Today was a long, both slow and action-filled day with lots of firsts.

Actual happenings

We arrived to the big convention hall around 9:30 am and there were faces that looked the part of just about every culture that I could imagine. It is the international climate change conference, but still humbling to see such a wide variety of people so unlike me.

The opening plenary for the conference was supposed to start at 10 am and at 10:02 they came out and said that it would be running an hour and a half behind without any explanation. So we just hung out, and got more familiarized with what was coming for a bit. At around 12 pm they finally came out and started.

It started late because there were some last minute agenda proposals that they ended up saying would not be considered for the time being.

I heard that the Africa negotiating group added something to the agenda a few days ago, so last minute a few other negotiating blocs thought they could do the same. Kind of ironic they didn’t recognize anything.

Basically, the rest of the day, they opened up the different negotiating and working bodies of the conference. Lots of procedural and logistical stuff, but the COP, CMP, CMA, SBI, SBSTA, and APA all opened up, discussing their agenda and what they would be focusing on during the conference.

They basically just talked about things like officers, what they’d be working on during the next few days. The APA has an agenda item 3, for example, focused around emission mitigation that discusses the NDCs, transparency and clarity of the NDCs, and accounting for them.

The agendas were all online so you could follow and countries had the chance to interject throughout each session if they wanted.

Then, at the end, each negotiating bloc had a few minutes (many went over their allotted time frame) to discuss some of their overall thoughts and views in relation to the conference and climate change.

The way negotiating blocs works is that countries with similar stances and that often are from similar locations or have similar circumstances (like being an Island State) will join negotiating blocs to be more forceful, collaborate and there are other advantages. Countries can be in more than 1 and each bloc has different guidelines. The Arab States is a bloc, for example, with 22 Arab countries.

Then NGOs and a few other sectors of people got to speak, like those representing indigenous peoples.

Highlights/most compelling stuff

• During the opening of the SBI, Ukraine spoke up and from what I collected, they said that they had land being occupied by Russia that was unfair to count towards their emissions numbers. The US and Canada spoke up agreeing and Russia spoke saying that their occupation of Ukraine land was irrelevant basically.
• Brazil was set to host the next COP, but backed out a few weeks ago, so they announced that they’ll need a new country and hope to have it figured out by the end of this conference. Supposed to be in the Latin American region, although there have been times in the past when the host country isn’t the designated region that rotates. Interesting with Brazil’s new president set to come into power

Overall thoughts

• All the opening bodies caused today to be a bit slow and procedural. Although, it was cool to see the stage being set for the conference
• There were tons of people there and I expect even more tomorrow. Awesome that they have come together from all over the world to form 22,000 total
• Interesting question emerges of how much will actually be accomplished over the next two weeks. There is a massive investment — 22,000 people let’s say attending only 1/2 of the conference on average for 8 hours a day = 11 days*22,000*.5*8 = 968,000 man hours. And these are some really smart, high-up people. Not to say the conference isn’t worth it, but it’s at a serious cost, not to mention the financial one for many people and organizations.
• Anytime I’m around such diverse people, I remember how small I am which is both good and bad.
• Most of the conference took place in English which made me feel spoiled and also made me think how important it is that I should be able to speak Spanish
• The food there was surprisingly tasty
• Lucky to be here and excited for all I’ll get to learn and experience. Much more on tap tomorrow :)