As a first time COP attendee, it’s almost impossible to wrap your head around the many moving parts that make up the UN climate negotiations. The venue in Marrakech is not only hosting the UNFCCC parties that meet annually to assess progress on dealing with climate change (the COP), but also parties meeting about the Kyoto Protocol (CMP 12), various subsidiary bodies for technical advice and implementation (SBSTA 45 and SBI 45), the ad hoc working group on the Paris Agreement (APA 1.2), and now (since it was ratified on Nov 4) meetings of the parties to the Paris Agreement itself (CMA 1). That’s not to mention: a whole High Level Segment (this week) where heads of state and UN leaders make statements about the above proceedings; hundreds of side events in both the blue (accredited) and green (civil society) zones; thousands of organizing meetings; approved actions; massive amounts of media; etc.
To make matters more complicated, our SustainUS team in Marrakech has spent a lot of our time and energy on issues entirely outside (physically and in terms of the issues) the COP22 itself – trying to uplift local political environmental justice struggles, joining parallel initiatives in and beyond Marrakech, discussing what a Trump presidency means for our movements back home, and working on deep community building within and beyond our delegation.
Focusing on these other priorities means that our COP22 SustainUS team has (intentionally) shifted away from policy tracking compared to past delegations. But we still have to keep tabs on key discussions and decisions so we can respond and engage with them. With so many moving parts, the question becomes – how do we do it?
By way of long-winded introductions, I introduce Storify updates from Climate Justice Info! I’d like to thank our friend Nathan Thanki for regularly translating days of mind-numbing negotiations into creative, witty and irreverent updates from a climate justice perspective.
As a first time COP-er, these story updates have been an awesome resource.
They also include great links to help you strategically delve deeper into the fray. So if you find TWN updates or CAN’s ECO Newsletter too boring, check out Climate Justice Info’s Storify.
That’s right, this blog post is not actually going to tell you what’s been going on inside the negotiations at COP22. Why re-invent the wheel, right? When it comes to telling the story of negotiations inside the actual COP, I think Nathan does it best.
Of course, there are loads of other media outlets here doing what media does and pulling out important moments from COP22 for their national audiences. I recommend Democracy Now for engaging video coverage, and The Guardian is always a safe bet. It’s a little ironic to be sitting at a laptop inside COP22 listening to Democracy Now talk about COP22 – but hey, they do it right! There’s some nice coverage of Sunday’s climate march in their show from Monday.
