Looking back on the past 5 days, I would say that it was the most concentrated period of learning on climate-related topics I’ve ever experienced. There were three main ways I spent my time at COP27: open-door official negotiations, official side events, and pavilion events.

I spent a bit of time following the negotiations, especially on Monday and then the last two days. While they were interesting to an extent, I found that they moved very slowly and got bogged down in small details. Furthermore, I came to realize how much background knowledge and technical understanding you needed to truly comprehend what was going on in any given negotiation I did appreciate the chance to sit in on negotiations, and to get a first-hand perspective of the procedures behind the big announcements that arrive at the end of COPs. And although I found the dialogue interesting at times—for example, when I got to see negotiators from India, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil attempt to convince negotiators from the US, Norway, small island states, Canada, and Australia to push the finalization of a document titled “COP27 overarching decisions”—I learned that I am more interested in tangible climate policy solutions that can be implemented at the local level. Therefore, I spent the majority of my time at official side events and pavilion events learning from a range of experts, policymakers, advocates, and businesspeople.

On Day 1, I heard from US legislators about how they are bringing their constituents into the climate movement. “Show, don’t tell” was a piece of advice from Rep. Christopher Rabb. Later, I learned about the potential of green hydrogen in the context of the maritime shipping industry—they have set an ambitious goal of having 50% of shipping activity run on green hydrogen by 2050, and they stressed the importance of policy to align supply-side and demand-side stakeholders. After that, I made my way to a different pavilion to for two events on the potential of carbon-dioxide removal (CDR) strategies and on US climate policy post-midterms. Finally, I went to an event hosted by the US Conference of Mayors on the intersection of social justice and climate policy in cities. My highlight was hearing Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf talk about how she uses both data and personal stories of her constituents to design innovative policies. For example, after looking at data on how EJ communities are more dependent on cars than other communities and hearing from community members about why, she implemented a policy she termed “Universal Basic Mobility” which granted them free access to many different modes of transportation: bikes, scooters, trains, and busses.

I learned just as much over the next couple of days. The theme of Tuesday’s pavilion events was energy, and I learned so much about green hydrogen, scaling up existing renewable energy and storage technologies, and nuclear power. I also ended the day at what became my favorite pavilion: the climate justice pavilion. There, I attended a panel discussion on approaches to Loss & Damages funding, moderated by Manish Bapna, the CEO of the NRDC. I heard from Dr. Saleemul Huq from Bangladesh as well as Dana Ahmed, a youth activist from Sweden. On Wednesday, I attended a slew of official side events on sustainable urban resilience in cities, where I learned about new urban climate policy ideas for mitigation, adaptation, and climate justice. Later, I attended events on the importance of community knowledge as well as policies to create “zero-waste cities”. Finally, on Thursday, I heard about nature-based solutions, as well as attended an amazing presentation at the Resilience Hub on using evidence-based indicators of resilience—essentially, an area’s ability to survive and thrive amidst the likely effects of climate change—to design local policy.

Overall, I valued my experience at COP27 for a number of reasons. First, it was an amazing opportunity to be in the same space as 44,000 other people who were passionate about the same things I was. I met so many cool people, had interesting conversations, and got to be in the presence of people like Brazilian president-elect Lula da Silva, US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, US Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry, and many other high-level government officials and businesspeople. Second, I learned so much about energy & climate-related technologies, urban policy, and climate justice—I was exposed not only to novel policy ideas, implementation strategies, and experienced advice, but also to useful resources that I will be able to reference in the future. Finally, I learned a lot about my own interests. As I watched the negotiations, had conversations with people, or attended events, I found myself thinking about how I could apply what I was learning to climate policy at the local level. I found myself fascinated with cool, innovative approaches and lost in thought about implementing them in my hometown of Boston.

I had such a great learning experience at COP27, but I would be remiss not to mention the major outcome of the convention related to Loss & Damages—I will reflect on this in my next blog post!