I had the opportunity to talk to an American who has attended Conferences of the Parties (COPs) going back to at least 2016 in Marrakesh.

I was able to get some insight into how the American delegation is put together. In general, the delegation is headed by the office director out of the State Department’s Office of Global Change (or a stand-in if they’re unable to attend), who leads strategy and engagement with the UNFCCC Secretariat. From there, two different groups generally get pulled into the delegation based on needs: first, negotiation portfolios go out to members of the office, who are generally assigned either alone or in pairs to specific items on the agenda; second, there’s a major interagency component, with technical experts from other agencies brought in (e.g. EPA leads in IPCC, NOAA in climate science and USDA on agriculture). Delegations were particularly heavy on these interagency experts between Copenhagen and Marrakesh as the Paris Agreement was being hashed out.

While delegation strategy is an internal matter, I was able to get the gist of what the delegation looks out for over the course of the COP.  During the first week, when the overall course of negotiations is being laid out, most of the negotiation is done in formal negotiation sessions—and the big issues of concern are usually procedural, rather than substantive (for instance, a country might try to slow-roll the negotiation schedule to block serious discussion on a topic, or stop the chair from starting informal negotiations later in the week). Those procedural hurdles are often tough to overcome since the system works on consensus. During the second week, when negotiations are often less formal and often go for 12+ hours a day, concerns become more substantive. All of these topic “curveballs” get discussed in daily delegation meetings.

On the party groupings topic, I was surprised to learn the degree of engagement that the American delegation has with the Umbrella Group, formally the only party grouping that the U.S. is involved with. Per my conversations, the U.S. usually convenes with the Umbrella Group daily (after a quick delegation catch-up session post-6 a.m. wakeup), to coordinate strategy—this is led by whoever chairs the Umbrella Group, currently Australia. While the U.S. engages with other groupings, including the E.U. and the EIG, these daily meetings are the core of the delegation’s engagement with party groupings. In the case of plenary sessions on specific days (or the closing session) the UG will also sometimes make a unified statement—but given differences in opinion many statements often come from individual members instead.

I also got a good overview of the experience of attending the COP, with the conference split into the Blue Zone—where negotiations take place, some more public and some with more limited access—and the Green Zone, where both Parties and non-Parties set up pavilions and other exhibitions. The U.S. has in the past had a pavilion that showcased technology (including an interactive globe that showed various climate patterns and structures) and panel discussions to supplement the formal work going on.