The Tribune

By JERVON SANDS

Climate change negotiators bear the difficult task of negotiating on behalf of their nations to safeguard lives and livelihoods and ensure equity in global climate change response. In these important discussions, they must first create value that appeases other stakeholders and then seek to claim a sufficient chunk of that value to secure the future of their countries.

Last week, the Bahamas Climate Change Youth Ambassadors engaged in the inaugural Commonwealth Youth Negotiation Training hosted by the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Australian High Commission in London, UK.

Participating in this training afforded us a crucial understanding of the UNFCCC negotiations ecosystem ahead of our upcoming engagement at the UNFCCC COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan this November. We also had the opportunity to connect with other Commonwealth youth from around the world who are involved in climate change work in their respective countries.

Owing to the excellent tutelage of our capable instructor Dr James Fletcher, former Saint Lucia Minister with responsibility for Public Service, Sustainable Development, Energy, Science and Technology and founder of the Caribbean Climate Justice Project, we are entering the UNFCCC COP arena with the essential toolkit of a climate change negotiator, the three P’s: Preparation, Patience and Persistence.

Climate change negotiations have a history that goes even further back than the first COP which convened in April,1995 in Berlin, Germany. Preparing for any UNFCCC COP process requires extensive knowledge regarding the precedent set by previous COPs and the relevant historical information pertaining to items on the agenda.

For instance, this year’s agenda features the New Collective Quantified Goal for Climate Finance (NCQG) which is meant to build on the precedent of COP 15 held in Copenhagen, 2009 where parties from the developed world agreed to contribute $100 billion annually to developing countries until 2020.

This was re-negotiated at COP21 in 2015 as a part of the Paris Agreement. It was agreed that the commitment, though not yet met since introduced in 2009, would be extended to 2025 with the intention of introducing a new goal that builds up from a floor of $100 billion since it was determined that this figure grossly underestimated the needs of developing countries.

Preparation is significant because operating at the COP with a knowledge deficit and limited negotiation skills ensures that your party will fail to influence the decision-making process.

Imagine negotiators from a developing country party entering this COP without sufficient knowledge of climate finance and its history within the COP process. They would be ill-equipped to secure the necessary amount of funds that would be distributed under the new finance goal.

Another key component of preparation for a COP is knowing the position of your country or negotiating group well and knowing the position of all other parties and groups even better. A skilled negotiator walks in the shoes of those with opposing views or aims then strategizes how to appease all appetites and also feel satisfied.

The key to this approach is the second P, patience. It is rare that a negotiator walks away from a COP having achieved every goal exactly as planned. Creating sufficient value in negotiations for each party to agree and achieve consensus takes time. It usually means that claiming enough value for yourself does not happen for several years.

Each COP contributes to the overall goals of various parties and in order to eventually achieve those goals the final P, persistence, is crucial. Small Island Developing States have only in recent years had the luxury of celebrating in the aftermath of a COP because they persisted for decades until finally an outcome document like the Paris Agreement – which includes the key temperature threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius and an article concerning Loss and Damage – was adopted.

Please stay tuned for upcoming articles on topics related to climate change impacts in the Bahamas. You can also get updates on more of our work by following us @bccya.242, @cceaubahamas, & @sdgunit242 on Instagram.