Katowice COP24 Friday Dec 7

Second to last day for me of COP.

Today, I experienced, and felt, the frustrations that come along with COP.

The first negotiation, again on mitigation guidance, was scheduled for 10 am. What must have been 20 minutes before 10, they pushed it back an hour since the chairs (people helping guide the negotiations) had just released a revised text to be negotiated on.

I’m assuming they pushed the 10 am so that parties had more time with the text, although I never received a clarification on that. Either way, it started at 11, and the discussion was wildly unproductive. They spent at least half an hour talking about whether it was even worth having a discussion since it would be more efficient for most parties to just talk informally and work out points since the text was so new.

What ended up happening is something like 4 countries spoke on their opinions, there was more discussion in the middle about whether they should even be talking, and then the hour was up and everyone got kicked from the room.

That was frustrating. For negotiators and facilitators, the reasons I’d think are clear — time is short as is and wasting it on procedural stuff and inefficient use of resources makes you want to pull your hair out.

Even for me, being at this conference where there was so much happening, I got close to nothing out of that hour long session. I could have gone to learn more about the ties between economic development and the environment (which I wanted to check out) and been filled in on this session in two minutes. But, being a part of that frustration felt right and fair.

Then in the afternoon, I sat in on a two hour negotiation of the same issue. This gave parties about 3 hours in between the two sessions discuss informally, reach conclusions on various points and then show up prepared to present the changes they wanted to see to the facilitators that were preparing the text.

Even in this session, it was frustrating. Some parties had polarizingly different views on topics — like some had a key desire to include text referring to the differentiation in developed vs. developing country’s nationally determined contributions, while the US said they wanted zero mention of differentiation.

Sitting through two hours of what must have been 20+ countries sharing their views on everything from core ideas to the change of a specific word was a bit mind-numbing.

Even more, after that session I went into a larger one where the head negotiators from countries were sharing overall thoughts on progress made thus far with the chairs of the entire body (APA) handling not just my negotiation, but multiple others.

In that session, Saudi Arabia said they wouldn’t even be able to negotiate next week if there weren’t substantial changes made. Iran gave current progress a 2/10 and basically every country voiced concerns spanning the entire spectrum.

Although progress has certainly been made, there has been extreme effort put into the progress, it’s very slow, and it seems to me like the progress many countries would hope for will not be able to come to fruition.

It’s good and bad, but experiencing that frustration gave me a different perspective on the conference as a whole.

Fun wanderings

The rest of my day was spent more consciously wandering around the conference and different booths that were set up.

I had done a bit of this before, but not being as aware. After today, I’m more blown away by the scale and diversity present at the conference.

Countries of all shapes and sizes are represented at the conference, fighting for the earth and their own well being. It’s both an overwhelming and special thing.

Highlights/thoughts

• In our constituency meeting this morning, someone said something that stuck with me — if every country were to go home from this conference happy, then something would be wrong. In order to fight against these issues, compromises and sacrifices have to be made that will not necessarily feel the best in the short term.
• Conferences are challenging — I think I had gone into COP thinking that I would easily be able to meet and connect with both leaders and kids my age from all over the world. I have fallen well short of that, and it had been seriously getting me down. Was thinking about it more today, and am beginning to accept that it’s challenging and give myself a bit of a break. First off, many people are at the conference on their own agendas and meeting/connecting with a 21 year old college kid isn’t a prerogative. Doesn’t mean it can’t happen, but when someone is actively trying to do/focus on other things, on top of likely being at least as tired as I am, that adds a layer. Secondly, many of the people are in negotiations, advocating, or running constituency meetings all day long. When most people have breaks, which are infrequent, they want to relax, not network more. To catch someone in that space of being open to connecting requires a bit of luck, timing, and skill. Plus, what percentage of the 22,000 people there will I even be able to connect with and want to? Definitely a real challenge.
• The concept of COP and these negotiations is pretty absurd. Not to mention how challenging the negotiators’ jobs are. I was thinking about it — you have these countries from around the entire world that have sent a few negotiators to stand for the entire country on decisions that are pretty substantial. Countries have to reach common agreements on topics that are so case by case towards this common goal. Furthermore, the negotiators are working extremely hard and often have to care for multiple topics. It seems like they’ve been non stop to the point that has blown me away.
• I think I came into this conference believing that it would be ‘fun.’ I have had a good time, for sure, but it hasn’t been fun in the sense I thought it would be. It’s intense, frustrating, challenging, overwhelming, inspiring, full of learning. Through just following two negotiations I have felt some of the frustration being experienced by negotiators. We’re working on this near impossible goal, doing it with countries that are as different as you could imagine, and you have 22,000 unique voices at the conference that all believe in at-the-least slightly different things. Given that, I think the conference has been tremendously well organized and run, but even still, it only can be to a certain extent. Experiencing this roller coaster of emotions has given me tons of empathy towards the process in general and shed light into where I stand.

Last day tomorrow. Dang