Your first day at your first COP might very well be similar to mine: exhaustion punctuated by moments of wonder. Fighting through jet-lag, a large part of your first day will be about familiarizing yourself with the venue (both physically and emotionally). You will walk over 20,000 steps as you navigate meeting rooms, transit stops, cafeterias and auditoriums all while your ears pick up on snippets of conversation on climate finance, carbon markets and energy transitions. And just as you start to feel that you have had enough sensory stimulation, you step into the pavilion space.

This is where you truly feel the whole spectrum of cultures that are on display. As my friend Sadie put it, through the concept of an ‘elevated IKEA showroom’, these pavilions will meld culture, geopolitics and messaging all into one.

Having arrived early, most of the pavilions were still applying their finishing touches. As a result, the China pavilion invoked some surprise, both with its relatively immense size and its preparedness in being the first country pavilion to have an event (that too with Noura Hamladji, executive deputy secretary for climate change at the UN). The event was focused on China’s South-South partnership, and all the money it had provided to developing countries for green investments. The message was clear: China was here to lead, an assertion that was all the more important after the election results of November 5th. China’s pavilion stood tall in its contrast with the US pavilion, who were running a day behind schedule and were relatively empty in design and attendance. A RINGO meeting with the US delegation confirmed that they were flooded with figuring out their messaging post-election results, delaying their pavilion.

The pavilions of African nations highlighted their biodiversity while emphasizing the stability of their politics and economy. Zambia and Rwanda both plastered their message of being a stable economy for green investments and climate finance on the front of their pavilion. Economic plans for past and future nature-based solutions and energy transitions were displayed all throughout the African pavilions. With the emphasis on climate finance at COP29, it very much seemed that the African delegations were looking to attract as much investment from all sources of finance.

Lastly, for Asian countries with climate-resilient economies (eg. Singapore, Malaysia, Japan), the pavilions took on a solutions-oriented theme. Technology, urban planning and energy solutions were front and center, with representatives ready to talk in detail about each solution. I found Japan’s pavilion in particular to be interesting – all of the CO2 removal, CO2 storage and battery capacity solutions it proposed were from the private sector (Hitachi, Panasonic etc.). Additionally, it was company representatives who were present, something which was in contrast to the mostly government officials who staffed the other pavilions. Japan’s emphasis on public-private partnerships came through in the technology pitches they made, an emphasis that was similar to the messaging present at the Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand pavilions. This emphasis spoke to the larger attention on obtaining climate finance from public and private sources, presenting a potential direction in which the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) negotiations may be headed.