Katowice COP24, Sat Dec 8 — my last day

**note, this was mostly written on Saturday, but made a few edits and posting on Dec 12

My last day at COP was today.

Energy

My time at the conference started with an event about energy that I really enjoyed.

From what I have seen at this conference, I’ve realized way more how important energy is going to be both for the economy and environment in the future. It’s also shown me just how much work has to be done and makes me wonder how much I want to/should learn about energy and renewables.

It also emphasized the labor force to me, since shifting to renewables will disrupt industries and labor forces, and if whoever is leading the charge is aware of that and thoughtful about skill training and jobs, some short-term harm could be seriously mitigated (hah).

Someone that runs a massive international hospital network also talked about how they’re pushing hospitals around the world to commit to being 100% renewable.

I’m not sure how much energy hospitals take up, but it got me thinking about how getting 100% renewable pledges exists across so many sectors and areas of society.

Negotiations

The negotiation on common time frames had a 30 min session this morning, working through text logistics.

When that ended, they had a bit more work to do and asked for more time. The SBI granted it and gave them another slot a bit later.

We went to that slot as well.

It was supposed to start at 12:45, so I was in the hallway with the negotiators at that point and it started late.

In the hallway, I could feel both the negotiator frustration and the frustration of the co-facilitator. Seeing that made me feel and realize even more that they’re human and trying extremely hard to navigate these challenges.

Then we went in the room, and Russia came out of nowhere saying they wouldn’t be able to agree if something wasn’t added. So, it was added.

Then, Japan and Colombia raised concerns about the removals of small additions to two paragraphs that came in the final draft but that Saudi Arabia and China opposed. There was some difficult, frustrating back and forth that ended in the text being removed after Colombia conceded and Japan never did, but it seemed like the chairs sort of just ignored the Japan negotiator’s voice at that point.

Seeing that negotiation play out shed even further light into the process, challenges, and frustrations.

Phrasing

It also made me wonder how important singular words were.

Different words in the text signify not just the meaning of the text but send a statement of what parties/countries believe about different topics. It just drove me crazy to see so much energy and effort to deal with these few words that are ambiguous of even having an impact. Another reason I think I could never do this, but I was impressed by the determination, competency and collaboration between parties, generally speaking.

More of this happened later in the day, too, when they were deciding on what wording to use when talking about the new IPCC special report. Most parties wanted to ‘welcome’ the report, while others wanted to ‘acknowledge’ it (for different political reasons, largely related to what welcoming it might imply for oil-reliant economies).

The report, I believe, ended up not even being mentioned in the final text, which frustrated many countries.

At the end, there was also an announcement that they passed the Indigenous People’s Platform, which is a text meant to more thoughtfully take into account the rights of indigenous people and to try and ascertain knowledge from them to better protect the environment.

Indigenous Peoples Platform

After that, someone representing the Indigenous Peoples gave a short talk and then others representing them sang a little song.

I was lucky to be sitting right next to them, and it was a super powerful moment. I don’t know enough of the history of their presence at this conferences or their make-up. But, it made me think about how these are people that have been mistreated and infringed upon by the rest of humanity forever. Having their voices at the table and respecting them (hard to know how much they’re truly respected, although hopefully fully), is a massive step of collaboration and I think is super important in fighting against climate change.

So, it created a feeling of love, family, and collaboration.

Final remarks

We left before the very very end, since it was already 9:30, but as they were closing one of the bodies under the UNFCCC for the last time, the chairs that organized and ran everything spoke for a few minutes. They applauded one another and all those that had helped them do the work they were doing.

It was special to see them do that, since it showed how much they cared and how much effort they had put since the Paris Agreement to continue this fight and push. It gave me a sense of community and love in the room as well as a global collaboration. These were people from literally all over the world coming together to work with each other and bring back policies, ideas, and initiatives to their individual countries to collectively save the planet. It was a pretty special moment.

Next steps

So the point of the first week was to create close to finalized texts (that will likely be known as the “Katowice rulebook”) that will then be passed on during the second week to the ‘ministers’ of countries that come in. So, now, each country sends in higher-up political people that have the authority to make choices, and they will work with one another to finalize what was done the first week from the negotiators on behalf of their respective countries.

That piece started Monday, so we will see what the result is by the end of the week.