Reimagining COPs: From a Conference of Parties towards a Community of Practice
Outsider reflections on COP25 and some process design thoughts to help reimagine it
As I was packing to head back home from COP25, a question was really puzzling me: is this the best we can do?
What I meant by ‘best’ was both in terms of the lack of ambition seen in the outcome, as well as in the non-generative, polarising, lowest common denominator feel of the process.
This was my first COP (and many of the people I met responded with a quasi-sweet, quasi-patronising ‘aww’) so I set off with the intention to really hold that observation lens and to bring in a mindset of curiosity. With my process design geek hat on I was wondering — is this the best possible process to meet this objective? What would an alternative look like? During the first few days I thought my observations were just me getting used to a new environment and to different community norms, but as the days went by these thoughts were being echoed by voices that were getting louder and louder. As Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists put it:
“I’ve been attending these climate negotiations since they first started in 1991. But never have I seen the almost total disconnect we’ve seen here at COP25 in Madrid between what the science requires and what the climate negotiations are delivering in terms of meaningful action.”
Thinking of this disconnect, here’s some themes I picked up on while I was there and reflections as to what this process could evolve towards if it’s to avoid becoming completely obsolete.
Path-dependent processes lead to path-dependent outcomes
I was really struck by how the legacy of the process (post-WW2, diplomatic, assumption of nation states as unit of change) was hindering the negotiations over complex, interconnected, systemic challenges that require new ways of governing and organising.
However, counter-narratives are emerging around where the locus of power and action lies in the face of inaction from nation states. Many city-led organisations, networks and initiatives put their own stake in the ground over the two weeks, as well as businesses and business-led coalitions. From the people I interacted with while there, there was a general sense that if once upon a time COP was the forefront of change, now it’s evolved into the place where people come to mainstream language and check in on a shared intent rather than drive radical action.
New forms of leadership and organising
Youth, indigenous people, trade unions, women’s movements and groups are bringing in the grief and the emotion of the climate breakdown and it was beautiful and very painful to watch this erupt among otherwise very sanitised and cerebral norms. There was quite an amazing dynamic emerging early in the second week, where in different events and roundtables young people were saying they are feeling tokenised and that their voices are heard but not listened to.
A really strong counter-energy was building up in the second week, which burst on Wednesday. First as young people stormed the main negotiations room and occupied the stage, then joined in by other groups and movements; they were subsequently thrown out with over 200 accreditations being removed — which was even more shocking as it happened on the International Human Rights Day.
Yet again, the people who are already carrying the burden of climate breakdown and have done for years and years demonstrated what new ways of leadership and stewardship look like. Meanwhile, there was a system autoimmune response where the negotiators and technocrats were ignoring them and saw them as inconveniences while paying lip service to messages such as #TimeForAction. The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back, right?
Climate justice and power
Across most of the events I went to climate justice and power came up as key themes (and I went to some wildly different events even if I didn’t always understand what was going on). There also seemed to have been a recasting of messaging around adaptation with so, so many events focusing on the need to integrate mitigation and adaptation while speeding up finance uptake for the latter. Then on the more technical side of the negotiations, I think most others have done a better job than me in making sense of what happened — I particularly enjoyed reading the Carbon Brief summary.
Given all these themes my parting inquiry question was:
How might we design a decision-making process for 25,000 delegates that facilitates a deep connection with the issues and trade-offs, surfaces and embodies tensions, while still enabling convergence for commitment?
Once you acknowledge the grief and emotions that were undoubtedly there it really triggers the people who’ve been socialised to lock all this away and to behave within the social norms afforded by their strict professional straightjackets. Going through this process is very divergent as you’re bringing in many views that are stemming from conflicting worldviews, values and beliefs — so there’s also the question of psychological safety (especially at this scale). This takes time and it’s deeply personal, while the COP format is 2 weeks of do do do, go go go. How can you go deep quickly, and then come back out to figure out the so what, how do you act on this from a deeper shared purpose, what does it mean for national commitments?
I set off with a mindset of curiosity and came back with a mindset of opportunity. It might sound a bit bonkers, but I do sense real opportunity to create better processes and spaces within this process. When thinking of this I was reminded of the work of Etienne Wanger and Jean Lave on communities of practice as social learning systems. In their introduction they mention:
“Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor: a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression, a group of engineers working on similar problems, a clique of pupils defining their identity in the school, a network of surgeons exploring novel techniques, a gathering of first-time managers helping each other cope.”
Of course you could argue that by its very nature COP is a form of communities of practice. But what if we brought more intention to this process?
So what would this alternative COP look like?
I’ve sketched out some ideas and principles below as a thought exercise, although I’m sure they’re not event scratching the surface.
- Start from the highest ambition. Open the week with a visioning process. Use art and design to create immersive, experiential exhibitions to step into our alternative futures. Bring music and theatre into this. Think of the opening day as a huge ambition setting festival. Energise and get people to dream and connect to the humanity that is surely present in all of us.
- Intentionally connect people. This could take so many forms to help build this community of practice — think of the hexagons in a beehive. An easy one would to randomly generate pre-assigned huddle groups of 8–10 people (a mix of negotiators, civil society, UNFCCC, business) which act as your daily huddle group — you meet everyday and check in (even with a basic ‘How are you doing today? What do you want to achieve today?’). Then there could be a more structured rhythm of networking and cross-pollination which could scale up — pair up with another group, then with another pair. What are the patterns you’re all seeing? Crowdsource those with that magical thing called collaborative document editing.
- Blend divergence and convergence. There are 2 weeks and to put it bluntly, the first week could have a divergent theme, while the second week could have a convergent theme. Use that as design principle to inform programming, the types of events and negotiations that are happening. Bring futures and design thinking methods and exercises into the sessions. Do icebreakers at the beginning of negotiations. Bring in skilled conflict facilitators in the second week to resolve trade-offs while not compromising the ambition.
- Create space for grief and anger. The climate is already changing with devastating effects in many parts of the world. Create the space to let this grief in and start the healing process. Design safe spaces (where people can protect their identity if need be) for people to make sense of the emotional and physical toll this takes on all of us. Bring in rituals and ceremony into this.
- Decentralise the side events programming. Invite different communities of practice to curate their own schedules and leave some space for spontaneous conversations that emerge as the key ones that need to happen. Use open facilitation processes like fishbowls and open space. Ask each event to provide a one sentence summary to be fed by the end of the day and share a learning report first thing the next day. Act on that input in the negotiations. Have more flexible room layouts and encourage people to sit in circles more.
- Location and nutrition. Ensure delicious, nutritious, plant-based dishes that highlight local cuisine and suppliers. Support small businesses. Find a venue with enough daylight and access to the outdoors, and if it doesn’t exist, learn from festivals and many other successful large crowd events. Provide enough comfy spaces, napping pods, private and communal areas. Basic one, but provide more plugs and chairs.
- See this as part of a continuous process and don’t allow overtime. As Saleemul Huq points out, allowing overtime excludes those who can’t afford to change their travel plans (more here). Delegates are humans, treat them as such. If we accepted this as a regular coming together and a moment to consolidate communities of practice it’d be easier to encourage these communities to keep collaborating throughout the year and keep things moving and work through the details. Work with the grain (hello dubious use of WhatsApp for delicate negotiations) and what currently works within the COP culture and build on that.
I’ll stop here before I keep going and end up proposing the COP26 takes place at Burning Man instead. Thought exercise aside, I’d love to see how some of these ideas and principles might help inform COPs to come.
Perhaps I’m not alone?
