I have just arrived in Katowice, Poland and registered for my 24th Congress of the Parties (COP). I am not sure how many others have been to every single COP. Over the last two and a half decades, a lot has changed. A friend calculated that by spending two weeks every year at the COP I have spent nearly a full year involved in the negotiations process under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. He asked: Has it been worth it?
My answer is that the progress that has been made, though the process has been slow and inadequate. Nonetheless, it is essential to deal with a global problem on the scale of human-induced climate change. Occasionally, as in Paris in 2015, we actually achieve a breakthrough. With the signing of the Paris Agreement, all countries agreed to take action to tackle climate change.
What has kept me enthused, despite the often slow progress, is what I have been doing the other 50 weeks each year, which has been to assist the most vulnerable countries and communities in adapting to the adverse impacts of climate change.
Much of the time spent at a COP feels completely removed from that reality on the ground. But most of what I do at the COPs is try to connect them. As I am not an official negotiator but an advisor to the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group on adaptation, loss, and damage, I spend much of my time helping build the capacities of the LDC negotiators. I am pleased to see that they have become a formidable negotiating group at the COPs over the years.
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