Deputy Director Eliza Mayo, one of our representatives at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, shares her impressions from her first day at COP29 in Azerbaijan.
What can a COP conference mean when the leaders of the top 13 largest carbon dioxide polluting countries (responsible for more than 70% of 2023’s heat-trapping gases) are not in attendance? When OPEC has a pavilion alongside international organizations and networks committed climate mitigation, adaptation, and justice?
How can a COP conference call for climate equity and justice in a host country that is a dictatorship and imprisoned civil society actors, opposition, and press in the lead up to the conference?
What can a COP conference mean for an Israeli environmental peacebuilding academic institute like the Arava Institute while Israel is at war? When it should be obvious to all that with no peace there can be no climate resilience or mitigation?
I have been privileged to come to this as my 3rd United Nations Climate Change Conference. Each time I am overwhelmed by the massiveness of the event, inspired by the rich content and the abundance of caring humans dedicated to making a difference each in their own way, and discouraged by the corporate influences, inherent contradictions and lack of progress.
For the Institute, the COP presents an amazing opportunity to network, learn, present our programs, coalitions, and progress.
Over the next few days I will try to give some insights into the content, directions, disappointments, and hopes of the conference.
