Emma Hughes

This was our last of COP 25. The day was filled with side events, negotiations, and Greta Thunberg. It was exciting to see how the week ended up and how things began to ramp up for next week. You could tell that there was a time crunch to wrap up the negotiations planned for the week.

I think the most exciting part of the day were the Friday for Future protests and other climate protests. In my opinion, this brought many COP attendees out of a bubble. At least for me, it helped remind me of the main purpose of this week, to provide climate solutions in an equitable manner. It was refreshing to see new groups of people engage in the conference in a nontraditional manner. And, if we’re being honest, it was exciting to be in the same place as Greta. In my opinion, I think a major issue with the COP experience is the accessibility of the conference and the presence of public displays allows for some of these underrepresented groups to be involved in the discussions and possibly influencing the decision making processes.

Zukhruf Amjad

There is a whole new level of tension and excitement in the negotiations room when the negotiations are about to reach the end. The negotiations I attended today took a 180 turn from the slow paced, relaxed discussions of the first two days of this years COP. Emotions ran high, I could see that the lack of sleep and constant work for the past week was catching with up the negotiators and the co-facilitators. It makes sense though, a entire year’s of work leading up to this COP and with the Kyoto Protocol’s timeframe ending next year, you can see the pressure these negotiators are under to reach an agreement. Even with all of this happening, these negotiators are still able to be on the ultimate top of their game.
One of the negotiators that has really stood out for me throughout the transparency discussions is the delegate from Saudi Arabia, who has commanded the delegations and totally made her presence known. As someone who lived in Saudi for a time, it makes me proud on a whole new level to see Saudi women command the international negotiation. Today I mustered up the courage to go to her and say hi, even though her presence in the negotiations made me feel like she would be a very serious person, but I was pleasantly surprised when she turned out to be super nice and welcoming. It was the biggest fan-girl moment I had this COP and it makes me so happy to see young women commanding this space with such grace!

Melinda Melvin

Today was our last day at the COP and it was really sad to leave IFEMA for the last time at the end of the day. Today I attended a mixture of Article 6 negotiations and side events on other topics like renewable energy and REDD+, however the highlight of the day was probably seeing Greta Thunberg’s surprise visit to COP25 before heading to Madrid for the climate march that took place downtown. It was wild to see the commotion around her arrival. Walking up to the crowd I thought there was an event of some sort happening, but she was actually just standing there, no stage or speech. She was mobbed by the press and her fans but flanked by bodyguards/security and it was truly a scene. Once she started walking towards a meeting with other youth activists from Spain, an impromptu parade unlike I’ve ever seen began and the Greta-mania was palpable in the air. Later in the evening, around half a million people gathered in downtown Madrid to demand climate action and protest in solidarity with other marches around the world. We unfortunately were not able to make it but did see some participants later on the metro on our way back from the conference.

One thing that was slightly upsetting to me today was that during a Q&A at a panel event, a regional governor from The Gambia stood up and asked a very relevant question related to the panel’s expertise on policies preventing deforestation. The moderator of the panel took other questions and then directed the panelists (who were all Western) to answer all questions except for his. I was frustrated because the whole point  of research is to assist decisionmakers who implement climate policy, yet when these experts were being asked by a governor for advice on how to prevent illegal deforestation in his jurisdiction, they completely ignored him. This moment also reminded me of the lack of diversity within the UNFCCC institution. Though gender diversity of Party delegations, expert panels, and staff is often discussed, other kinds of diversity I feel are ignored within the system. It seemed counter to the purpose of side events which are meant to build capacity and assist decision makers who enact and implement climate policy.
Shakes Dlamini

My last day of COP25 was eventful. I wanted to make the most out of the day even though I had only slept just a few hours the day before. I went to bed at 4 am and deceived myself that I would wake up on time to attend the coordination meeting for the African Group of Negotiators at 8:00 am. Guess what! my alarm rang at 6:30am and I woke up, got off the bed, took the phone from the desk, returned to bed and dozed away. Just like that my AGN coordination meeting attendance went down the drain. However, I made it to the venue just in time for my first responsibility of the day at 10:00 am, the negotiation session on SBSTA 51 agenda item 5. The rest of my last day at COP25 flew by very fast and it was the most exciting day of the week. Before I knew it, it was 8:00 pm and I was coming out of my last side event of the day and COP25. However, the most exciting part of the day was about to start. The fun time that I had with my classmates was one of my highlights of the experience. Thanks to all of them for being a great cohort to attend COP25 with and special thanks to our TAs Cai May and Corey for all their hard work to make this possible.

Having Tapas for dinner while standing
Churros and hot chocolate for dessert
Yared Hurisa
In my fourth day, I was able to attend two grand events. The first one is ‘Pressing Record on Climate Action: Data Meeting on tracking progress 2020-23. This meeting was organized to aid implementation, bolster credibility, and inform strategies ahead of the next Global Stocktake in 2023. The objective of the meeting was to put in motion a framework towards establishing metrics for tracking progress. This will enable cooperative and individual climate actions to be tracked in such a way that they will ultimately appear on the Global Climate Action portal and be utilized by the broader analytical and research community.The second major event and the associated side events that I have been following up was on the loss and damage. As such, I witnessed that this key issue is being received increased attention on the global agenda. This can be reflected by the several discussions made on loss and damage that continued throughout much of the day. I saw that progress is emerging on the issue with, but some divisions among parties, particularly on finance. Delegates addressing loss and worked into the night.
G77 and China members of the team discussing their position before the meeting
To this end, I got a chance to assist the communication team of the IISD that undertook an event on removing fuel subsidies as a part of emission reduction at the Nordic Pavilion. Apart from the theme of the workshop, this was important avenue to network with the event organizers.