What It Was Like to Be at the UN Climate Conference
COP26 is over. The Glasgow Climate Pact is finalized.
Like everyone else who followed the proceedings, I have thoughts and feelings on the outcomes. (Short takes for now: 1) Is it possible for something to be both maddeningly unsurprising and immensely disappointing at the same time? 2) It has to be possible to both claim the insufficient wins as real wins without conceding the urgency and agency needed to do much more.)
There will be more to think through and share on the outcomes of COP26. (A few basic recaps are included below.)
But for now I want to respond to what a few people have asked: what was it like to be there?
Here are some of my experiences in the Blue Zone as a civil society observer (I’ll start with a few of the best parts):
— Taking the train into Glasgow and then to the COP grounds and then home in the evenings with new friends from the observer program helped bookend the day nicely. My observers buddies are awesome people and it was fun getting to know their interests and viewpoints. It was super helpful to share our plans and recaps in a group. It would have been much tougher and less fun to be there solo.
— The Scottish folks I met were wonderful hosts. The people I talked to in town were quite invested in the event itself.
— Despite the clear exclusion and access issues of COP26, this was still about as international an event as you can find—the closest comparison may be the olympics. And after a few years of not being in another country or among many folks from other countries, it was refreshing to see and talk with people from all over the world.
— For the most part, the event itself was overwhelming, unwieldy, even bewildering to navigate. Even for seasoned attendees. Some of the queue issues were sorted by week two. But it was still challenging to move into and through the grounds and then find well presented information.
— Held in the enormous Scottish Event Centre, the COP felt like both a political summit and a climate trade show, with countries, NGOs, and businesses hosting elaborate pavilions with scheduled side events all day and—though I didn’t make it to one—culturally specific informal gatherings in the evenings (e.g., French happy hour with red wine, Pakistan holding a watch party for its cricket match with Australia, etc.).
— There are clearly two tracks to the conference—politicians and not—and necessarily so. But at COP26 these seemed to be in different spheres altogether. There were very important and technical meetings behind closed doors. Many of the talks civil society were able see didn’t have any bearing on the negotiations. From what I understand, this is a marked difference from past COPs and really undercuts the purpose of observer badges.
— The contrast was strange; on these grounds were meetings of utmost, life-and-death importance—but these were technical, opaque, and mostly barred to me. And yet most of the open meetings in the Blue Zone were, for all intents and purposes, politically immaterial. The Green Zone, which was open to the public, was a nice change and had some really neat exhibits and talks. But again, it was separated from the actual proceedings.
— It was also an odd power mix. There were plenty of people like me, basically concerned citizens with observer status. There were of course politicians (the U.S. brought an entire congressional delegation in addition to bringing a climate delegation again now that it is back in the Paris Agreement). And there were people there without celebrity status but loads of power (including lots of fossil fuel industry lobbyists). Around Glasgow, I’d see a group of police gathered in front of a hotel or restaurant and just wonder who is in there. Standing in the queues, I wondered who these people were. I wish I would have struck up more random conversations.
— The marketing budget of this thing was huge, which made the UK government host appear more organized than it was in other respects.
— It was not the easiest to find out where to go. Negotiations don’t follow a predictable schedule, so by the second week, observers were chasing fewer and fewer pre-scheduled opportunities; the biggest, splashiest plenaries were in week one, except for Obama’s ticketed speech in week two.
—The people invited to the negotiating rooms knew where to be. For the rest of us, we relied on a combination of apps, websites, some hard-to-read screens, and word of mouth. Our group’s WhatsApp chat was more useful than the official app(s). I drained and recharged my phone’s battery at least daily because it was my constant source of information.
— And of course, COVID complicated things, adding even more logistics to a logistics-heavy week. All-told, the testing situation worked really well. But it took daily time and energy. (Picture our morning group briefings, with half of us sticking swabs up our noses and registering the results online while we tried to plan our days.) On the grounds, as you’d expect, it was tougher to meet and talk with new people through masks. But these complications aside, it is an important feat that the event happened this fall at all. (Though given the historic stakes of this summit, the concerns about equitable access to the event are serious and valid.)
— Being there gave me insight into the process and technicalities and the spirit of the thing and a chance to advocate I wouldn’t have from home. But if I was just after a big-picture understanding of what was going on at COP26, I would have been just as well off following the livestream and Twitter commentariat from home with a large monitor, fast internet, and maskless face so I could see through my glasses.
— Here’s a quick example of the logistics. After Wednesday was done and I’d scanned some articles and chatted with others, it was time to plan Thursday morning. I sifted through a few different sources and put together a plan of events to prioritize. This required consulting about five different programmes, all online.
First thing Thursday morning was to pick up my fit-to-fly COVID test from downtown, the kind of side logistical thing that was important, time-sensitive, and distracting from the main event. It turned out I wouldn’t be able to make it from there to the offsite New York Times Hub in time to use my ticket. So I pivoted to go to the Blue Zone early and hit the open plenary at 10 (I’d bookmarked this days ago). Aaaaand it was postponed because the negotiating progress wasn’t far enough along. Was there an announcement? No, it just wasn’t on the screens. The apps were unhelpful in finding a good alternative. So I did some note taking while waiting for a coffee meeting. It was well after noon before I got to any sort of session.
— On that note, I definitely felt the pressure to make the time count—to make it worth it for me to be there when many others couldn’t be. Time and personal power both seem so limited when it comes to the climate crisis, and they certainly did at COP26. So it was tough to pick what might be most worthwhile. I had to make quick decisions about what to be at and quickly move on from setbacks or missed opportunities, of which there were many. But I was also in position for some really good ones!
— Of course, this was just my experience from within the official COP grounds—the streets and side events were different. Working multilaterally on climate across such different stakeholders is inevitably a messy and flawed human process. So I accept that the overwhelm and stress of the event is part of the price of entry. And it is a necessary price for the most affected and least powerful countries to have an official forum to use their voices, however weighted against them that forum is.
— And these countries certainly raised their voices as much as possible. Very little of Blue Zone business was conducted in an emotional register, so it was especially notable but also heartrending to hear delegates from the Maldives, Panama, Marshall Islands, or other low-lying countries appeal to their colleagues (really, mostly a handful of rich and powerful countries, including the U.S.), pleading for actions that would protect their countries’ futures or recompense them for the losses they face from rising seas. (This was on camera; I have no sense of what this was like behind closed doors.) It was equally sad, as I streamed the closing plenary last night at an Edinburgh pub, to watch many of these same delegates admit for the record how much the final pact sucks and yet they were signing because of how badly their people needed its small wins for now.
— A similar sense of honesty and urgency punctuated the week in the form of stunts around the Blue Zone. These were pre-approved demonstrations, speeches, skits, etc., and were powerful expressions by civil society. This is also what made the People’s Plenary and the march-out that followed it on the last scheduled day such a welcome change from many of the negotiations and plenaries. The frustrations and tensions civil society held throughout the Blue Zone were channeled into marching and chanting and the whole venue had to take notice—while critical final negotiations were underway.
— I relate to how Bill McKibben describes the official COP. In his account of a week one COP event memorializing the land defenders killed in the last year, he writes about all the brouhaha that is part of this annual conference:
“All of this somehow relates to the fight to save the planet, but it’s always depressingly clear that it’s also become a routine, an industry, an ongoing enterprise largely divorced from the scientists and activists who forced this process into existence. On its fringes, however, there are occasionally events that take your breath away.”
I witnessed some of these events and moments myself—a few times in sessions, but more so at the marches and activist forums and in debriefing with my observer friends. And I hope to remember them for a long, long time.
Being at COP26 was highly meaningful even as its results are (not unpredictably) disappointing. I am grateful I got to be there. So many wanted to and couldn’t because of any number of barriers. But I got to go, pay attention, use my eyes and ears to notice what I could, and use the few levers I had. Now I am working to share aspects of the experience with you as a reader, to friends, and to my larger community, in ways that are actually helpful. (To this end, if you are wondering anything about COP26 or what it was like, just reply to this email.)
So was it worth it for me to be there—the time, money, and stresses it took to get there and wear a badge that could have gone to someone else? I believe so. But I’ll keep working and looking for ways to make the answer an even fuller yes.
There are loads of recaps and opinion pieces out there today that I have not read, but here are three I can recommend for now:
The Conversation: “Five things you need to know about the Glasgow Climate Pact”
The Guardian: “Cop26: the goal of 1.5C of climate heating is alive, but only just”
Gizmodo: “Glasgow Climate Pact Has Loopholes So Big an Oil Tanker Could Get Through Them”