Author: Vanessa Santini Gomes

Last year, I remember sitting on the floor waiting in Toronto for my flight with my friend Luna (who introduced me to this climate diplomacy world and was part of the Practicum cohort in 2023) reading and processing COP28 outcomes. I remember getting excited that “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner” has been cited in the COP outcome document, the Global Stocktake (GST). I felt our actions the whole week were powerful and I even concluded that holding COPs in a petrostate is not a dead-end for a year of climate negotiations.

But then, COP29 happened, and it failed us as I haven’t experienced before (but I am sure this happened before in the COP’s history). The goal of COP29 was clear: to mobilize at least $1 trillion dollars from public or concessional money (grants) to support not only the energy transition (a fair and just transition) but also adaptation, and loss and damage for developing countries. But negotiations landed far from that. We left COP29 on Sunday with an agreement of 300 billion dollars coming from mixed sources without much transparency regarding developed countries’ responsibility in this scenario.

Many developing countries, especially LDCs (Least Developed Countries) and SIDs (Small Island Developing States), stated from the beginning that they couldn’t accept such a deal because the lack of compromise among developed countries was costing their communities. But they were pushed to accept such a number so the world would not see COP29 as a failure.

But it was.

The Paris Agreement is loud and clear: it is the developed countries responsibility to guarantee the world is fighting climate change because they are responsible for emissions. But they are not taking true accountability. How long will we be able to wait for the next COP to get a true resolution?

For the past year, all I have heard when I say I am from Brazil is people’s excitement about what will come out from COP30 at the heart of the Brazilian Amazon. But after such a difficult COP29, I wonder if Brazil will be able to reach everything people are expecting. Brazil has indeed already included the goal of raising trillions for climate finance next year, but will one single COP deliver what none of the 29 past ones did? Will the fossil fuel industry keep attending and shaping the climate change agenda as it did in the past years (with a delegation of around 1700 people in COP29)? Is the 1.5 degrees still within reach?

What I have realized inside the negotiation rooms following Loss and Damage negotiations is that there is a huge power imbalance between parties. LDCs and SIDs are raising their voices and needs, but even so, their demands are addressed only if they are in the interest of the most powerful parties.

For Loss and Damage, for example, there was a huge discussion on how the mechanisms to offer support to communities on the front lines are inaccessible for a lot of countries because of language and technical barriers. After a week of conversations about how to improve and review the mechanism, with the barriers to developing countries clear, we still didn’t have a drafted text and the presidency was pushing negotiations to end on Tuesday night of the second week.

What will it take for developing nations to be heard? What about their realities is not clear? We don’t have the luxury of time anymore.

I don’t have an answer to most of these questions and I think this is a reflex of how the process is: uncertain and sometimes unreliable. But as I have told before in my previous blog entries, we keep fighting because this is our only option. We keep fighting because we see the injustice and we value people.

I want to end my last reflection with my favorite chant of all from the climate movement (read this singing!):
“When the heat gets high (2x)

And the people rise (2x)

Can’t you hear us sing (2x)

It’s the end of fossil fuels (2x)”

Until COP30!

For this blog entry, I wanted to share a little bit of the experience of COP on the ground. Indeed, each COP is unique, but it does have tons of similarities – and by your second COP you will be able to notice that. I have been thinking about what I should bring to this blog post that might be most useful to young people taking this class and going to COP or any student reading these blog posts. I have also taken a sneak peek into previous blog posts and realized that there is no single COP experience.

In my previous blog post, I told a little bit about what YOUNGO is (If you haven’t read it, take a look https://sites.duke.edu/duketotheunfccc/2024/11/24/salam-from-baku-the-stadium-is-set-for-a-196-countries-battle/). Being at COP can feel like you are out of the place because we are 1) young and 2) inexperienced (if you are attending for the first time and doesn’t know what the heck is the EAU dialogue). I found my place with other young people at COP in YOUNGO (hint: it is okay to be young and inexperienced). From week 1, I sat and participated (almost) every day at the spokes sections from YOUNGO that happen at 9 am every day. YOUNGO has working groups for all the issues being negotiated at COP and I had the chance to join them and learn about the development of the topics as days went by. I also had the chance to learn about opportunities to contribute with YOUNGO, like speaking opportunities and statement writing.

YOUNGO is far from perfect, but it feels like home. At the end of the day or whenever I felt overloaded or lost, I would stop by the Children and Youth Pavilion and stay until YOUNGO’s daily policy brief. I always found the friends I made since COY19 there.

By this time (end of week 2), I don’t think I can give a run down on all the things I have done. But I do want to touch on my work with WWF International. I supported them by following mainly Loss and Damage, a topic that I was somewhat familiar with, but learned deeply about during my first week. I was lucky to have such a great client who gave me all the support to understand and follow negotiations. But you can also find similar support inside YOUNGO as I have cited before. If I can give you any advice about COP, choose a negotiation track to follow, find young people following it through YOUNGO, and sit in at least one negotiation section every day.

Networking and the events in the pavilions are important and interesting, but this is something you can explore the whole week and day and in other places that are not necessarily inside COP. This is your chance to truly understand what is going on at COP behind closed doors, how decision-making is being made, and what are the contributions and strengths of each party. YOUNGO has a seat at the table of these negotiations as well and, as a young person, you can help shape these discussions.

I have spent most of my time at COP with these young people when not sitting in the cafeteria with WWF negotiators. Even when I was following loss and damage for my client, I was still sitting with my fellow young people from YOUNGO and learning with them. Since COP28, this has been my safe space for exploring COP. And there is nothing that makes me more hopeful than surrounding myself with these people.

Hello directly from COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan!

Whenever I told people I was going to Azerbaijan they would make a funny surprise face and check if they were listening right. I also have never imagined being in Azerbaijan before. My journey here started almost a week before COP started because I attended COY19, the Global Conference of Youth on Climate by YOUNGO (the official Children and Youth constituency inside the UNFCCC).

Every year before COP, COY happens in the same country as the UN Climate Conference and is a space for young people to meet and plan for the next two weeks of advocacy and so much work. So I had almost one week to adapt to Baku: the cold streets, the “salams”, the groceries in Azerbaijani, and the unfamiliar faces with caring and familiar smiles.

Before even COP started, I found people who felt like family early on.

Every night, we would leave the COY venue to have dinner and discover which restaurant had the best-fried eggplant (if you ever go there, please try this!). I also had the chance to meet the team I was going to work with in person as part of the client component of this class one day before COP in a much more informal environment. I am a volunteer for the negotiations team of the WWF International. After that, I also attended my first CAN (Climate Action Network) alignment meeting which was a nice reminder of the things we achieved last year in COP and the the things we wanted to achieve.

Different from most of my peers, this is not my first COP. But this is the COP I am most prepared to be here. I attended COP28 in Dubai as well and this was my first experience in this space. I had a really significant experience last year and I bring so much of it to this year. I learned to navigate this space in a huge venue with at least double the number of participants we have this year.

My first impressions of COP29 were regarding the venue. The entrance was not different from what I had already seen last year, excluding the fact that we could hear some traditional music from Azerbaijan at the entrance and we were greeted by kind young volunteers. But as you step into the security, you realize we are in the middle of a vast, cold, empty stadium with a strong whiff of petrol. The tents are built in a way that you can see sunlight in a few spots, but mostly you enjoy artificial lighting in a closed shoe box. And most importantly to note, the action spaces were too small and too limited. Actions were the most important aspect of my experience last year and this broke my heart to see. I wonder if this was built for this purpose: to impede big civil society actions to happen. Is it even safe for civil society to protest inside this venue? I don’t know.

But even without sunlight, the overly hot heating, and the limited action zones, we are all here listening, acting, observing. We will fight despite the limitations because there is no other option.

Keep tuned for more blog posts from us in the next few days and some updates directly from Baku stadium featuring 196-country climate scrum during the Biggest Game of the season!

Salam!

Vanessa