Voices in the Desert: Stories from COP28

Dubai’s COP28 was significant for a lot of reasons, not least the physical size of the COP (several square kilometers) and the attendance of more than twice as many as any other COP I am aware of (estimates run up to about 110,000 people over some 15 days). A lot of important policy outcomes flowed from the COP too, including many important for how we ally the water and climate communities going forward.

I’d like to tell some other stories though. Ones you won’t see in any news analysis.

My first story comes from the Water Pavilion in the blue “negotiations” zone. The management of the Water Pavilion was brilliant, serving as a baptism into the world of COPs and the issues around climate policy for hundreds of people. The pavilion leads were especially smart in calling many of us “water envoys” and creating shared spaces for us to talk and learn from each other. I attended one of the meetings — sitting in a grand circle with well-known water experts as well as less well-known delegates who felt drawn to the water theme, almost all at their first COP.

I felt especially humble hearing a woman from Papua New Guinea speak about the meaning of being at a global UN meeting. She spoke with deep emotion about how she was at her first COP. Her work in PNG emphasized working with rural communities and how they managed livestock manure for improved water quality. She said she felt like a representative and ambassador for those communities — absorbing what she could to tell stories of how decisions in Dubai could affect their lives. She wanted to bridge that gap and bear witness to each side. Dubai clearly felt incredibly removed from her home. I felt deeply honored to be around her. I hope she had a good COP.

The second story is one of companies discovering COP. The negotiations happen in the so-called blue zone, where I spent most of my time. But I was invited to participate in a few green zone events. The green zone doesn’t require UNFCCC registration, and is essentially a public facing part of the COPs, going back many years now. In the past, the green zone was often pretty small, with exhibits for school kids. The Paris COP in 2015 had a super green zone, with lots of little booths and events. It almost felt homestyle and informal. This year, the green zone passed into another state. I saw an all-electric full size F1 vehicle parked under glass. Roving crowd-gatherers asked me to attend a session on AI and clean energy. One pavilion where I spoke was a full two stories, with a glassed-in executive meeting room for private negotiations. I felt exotic with my blue zone namebadge and no one else in sight wearing official ID. The actual climate diplomacy of the blue zone seemed very far away.

Indeed, the gap between blue and green zones was more than just a security check and official credentials. Climate change is big business now, for adaptation and mitigation. I think it’s easy to be very cynical or dismissive of what was happening in the green zone if you’re used to the blue zone being the center of action, but I think that may be missing the point. Companies have taken notice that climate is more than an ESG issue. They need to demonstrate — if not perform — that mitigation and adaptation are words that have practical meaning. Some companies sent massive delegations with dozens of staffers. We can definitely expect the corporate presence to grow. And I think COP has become a big place to do business — and to show how you are doing business. I suspect a lot of them will also be called out for the climate equivalent of greenwashing.

My last story comes from a formal debate that was staged at COP between two “teams,” each meant to advocate for or against the statement that addressing current challenges meant that we needed new knowledge or that we already knew “enough” — that lessons and insights from 50 or 100 years ago around water management were adequate to cope with water issues today. The debate seemed especially pointed sitting at COP.

I was on the side stating that we needed to both implement new insights and add to our body of knowledge through research and experimentation. Perhaps predictably, the other side focused on going with traditional and indigenous knowledge.

As a formal debate, the structure tended to be a little gamified. Particularly for the traditional and indigenous knowledge team, I saw them make more rhetorical rather than substantive arguments, trying to “win” rather than persuade. Indigenous knowledge isn’t going to help a modern water utility or irrigation scheme. Current atmospheric carbon levels are roughly at a level that predates the emergence of our species by almost four million years — no traditional or indigenous knowledge can help us with the climate impacts to come. The other side knew this, but made their “arguments” as if Singapore needed to bring in some hunter-gatherers as consultants. The strangeness of that approach became very clear when it came time for the audience to ask both teams questions.

Nine people from the audience intervened. Eight of them were from emerging economies, including quite a few LDCs. Like the woman from PNG, many were from quite rural areas, far from power and influence. I would guess that most of them were COP observers rather than negotiators.

Every one of those eight people spoke against the usefulness of indigenous and traditional knowledge for the challenges they were facing every day back home, whether they were from Africa, Latin America, or the Pacific. One young man from eastern Africa said bluntly, “Screw traditional knowledge. We need new solutions, new science. We need them as fast as possible.” The ninth speaker, also a young man from Africa, was more ambivalent, but only to say that his community and region needed time to adjust — that they could only cope with so much change at once. He was pleading for the climate and for aid to become more attuned to the capacity for his community to adapt.

The solemnity of their words cheapened the debate, especially the idea of trying to “win” the event. What were we trying to win? What did winning mean? These individuals were telling direct, painful, intense stories of their lives, and they were terrified. They were at COP to get answers, to get help. And they were asking everyone on stage to join them.

Those are the voices that still speak to me here in Oregon, a full half a world away. I am still thinking of how best to answer them.

John Matthews

Corvallis, Oregon, USA