As I prepare to leave to Madrid later this afternoon, I am excited for what the next week holds for the international climate community. After so many years of paying attention to what happens at these conferences, I am grateful for the opportunity to attend and watch what unfolds at the COP this year. In 2019, it seems like the energy around climate action has accelerated as we see more and more evidence of climate change having drastic impacts on ecosystems and communities around the world.
During a time of increased social and civil unrest in countries around the world, climate change and adapting to its effects has crystallized as a key policy issue for all governments to address for their constituencies. Since 2015’s Paris Agreement, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has served as an important venue for those governments to demonstrate the progress they are making, urge others to keep up with their pledged commitments, and shame laggards who are not doing enough.
This year, movements like Fridays for Future, the Sunshine Movement, Extinction Rebellion, and others mobilized young people to take to the streets and demand their governments to take action on climate change for their sake and for the planet’s sake. People around the world have found these movements and figures like Greta Thunberg inspiring, and are motivated to identify ways to make personal changes to “do their part” for climate change. However, as the 1.5C report by the IPCC last year, the magnitude of the situation requires broad, sweeping changes by all large actors to produce the kind of emissions reductions we need to limit the harmful effects posed by climate change.
While it is relatively easy to just demand climate action from those with power to do so, it is an entirely different thing to figure out exactly which policies are going to be effective and which are going to be politically viable. Learning about the COP negotiations over the past 25 years and which issues have stymied progress towards agreed-upon greater ambition, I have begun to realize how difficult this policymaking can be on a technical level. Many areas of climate policy, whether carbon pricing, an emissions trading system, climate finance and transparency, or assistance for adaptation in least-developed countries, are extremely difficult to agree upon when there are so many stakeholders with diverse interests involved. I hope that this week at the COP, I gain a deeper understanding of how these disagreements and diverging positions get negotiated in this international forum so that I can understand how to better advocate for climate policies at home. I am sure that it will be a steep learning curve and an overwhelming experience with so many different kinds of organizations present, putting on events on all kinds of issues related to climate change. But I look forward to a good outcome and continued ambition at this COP in preparation for the next phase of the Paris Agreement in coming years.
