COP21 Day 3: Layers upon Layers of Meetings

I wanted to focus today’s post on just how much is happening and being discussed at COP21. While I hinted at this in the Day 2 post on subsidiary bodies, I was able to attend a range of different meetings today and thought this justified a closer look.

Having taken the time to really dive into the different agenda items for today, I can understand even better now why the US delegation sends a small army to every COP.

The COP has a special app, and the agenda section – which is updated every morning with the events for that day – is broken down into exhibits, meetings, press conferences, side events, and events organized by the French delegation (because a little self promotion never hurts). And each section contains several events happening simultaneously. The meeting section in particular contains a range of different events, from regional coordination meetings to breakaway discussions on paragraphs of the agreement text to formal plenary meetings.

A shot from the informal consultation I attended this afternoon.

To make things even more multi-layered, I discovered today that there are also informal consultations that are not included on the official agenda. Not to mention the impromptu, corridor and closed-door meetings that happen within and among delegations. So where do you go and what do you focus on, especially when you’re a small delegation without a time turner so you can attend several meetings at once?

You pick your battles and learn to trust that countries with similar priorities will protect your interests. There’s a reason why the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) has a twice daily coordination meeting. Delegates provide updates on the strategic issues they were able to discuss and other country delegates are given the chance to react and express any concerns they may have.

And so continues my experience at COP21. News and social media this week is going to continue to focus on side events and civil society activities, while delegates are busy providing their comments and, where possible, consolidating options on the draft agreement text prepared by the Secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This revised text is supposed to be ready by the end of this week so that next week, negotiators can then dive into making choices and compromises and reaching a final agreement.