This past November, UBC sent four in-person delegates to COP30 in Belém, Brazil. As part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), COP is one of the most important climate change forums on the international stage.
International efforts regarding climate-related issues can never be contained to a two-week conference. Most recently, experts have raised concerns regarding carbon emissions in international Arctic waters due to increased marine traffic, passing largely unnoticed amid larger geopolitical tensions fuelled by the United States’ aspirations to claim Greenland. While the need for international climate collaboration is incessant, conferences such as COP set expectations for how ongoing conflicts can be — and ought to be — resolved.
Chunyu Pan, a current forestry PhD candidate researching bamboo-based carbon mitigation, was one of UBC’s chosen COP30 in-person student delegates. Pan’s own academic journey has been complemented with the repeated opportunity of sought-after COP attendance, namely COP29 in Baku and COP28 in Abu Dhabi. I spoke to Pan about his experience.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How does attending COP align with your own research interests in forest-based solutions?
I think it's a mutually beneficial relationship. Global climate change is the foundation of my thesis, and therefore attendance at international climate summits provides me ideas of what global leaders are currently planning. My research is in response to climate change, so negotiations about climate change influence my bamboo research.
COP allows for both in-person and virtual attendance. Do you consider in-person attendance to provide any insight or understanding that virtual attendance does not?
If you are a person that is highly interested in this kind of work, you will have roughly the same gainings from attending virtually. You can very easily search which meetings to attend based on your interests. However, online attendance can still be overwhelming, because there are millions of events happening every day. In the case of in-person attendance, you are devoting one or two weeks to COP entirely, and you will have a better plan for how to use the day efficiently. Also, in-person attendance allows you to connect with people; you can chat with other delegates who are sitting in on the same meetings as yourself, and I would say that the majority of COP-goers are very knowledgeable, and they have a lot of resources. The networking component of COP is top-notch. In-person attendance allows you to partake in the country pavilions — where each country’s members gather and often share gifts with delegates from other countries.
The scenes you describe sound exciting. Do you think it is fair to say that one aim of in-person attendance is to acquire networking opportunities?
Yes, especially for NGO delegates, that could be the case. For me, I attend COP to go to the negotiation room. Even if a topic does not have any formal negotiations scheduled for that year, there can still be several meetings concerning it every day. That is the case for Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which I am most interested in.
As both an ex-intern for the UNFCCC and a UBC observer delegate, what was your specific role?
Because my internship has since ended, I was an observer delegate, so I did not have access to closed door meetings. I attended a lot of meetings on Article 6. I knew those negotiators and secretariat staff due to my internship, so it felt like home, going into that meeting room.
I heard that negotiations would sometimes impel people to go days without sleeping.
Yes, that's very common. The chair or the president will set up a deadline for publishing a text, sometimes, say, by 9 a.m. of that same day, and the negotiators will have to stay up very late — like 4 or 5 a.m. — to finalize the text.
COP30, at least prior to its unfolding, had been described as the Amazon COP; Brazil really wanted to focus on the issue of deforestation. Do you think that attendees succeeded in centring this topic?
It is complex. Take, for example, the Tropical Forest Forever Fund (TFFF). It is tricky, because it technically falls outside the scope of the Paris Agreement, and some would be critical of how this will create complexities for climate finance. Also, the initial aim was to provide $25 billion to help 74 countries with tropical forests. But in the end, I think they only raised $6.7 billion from 53 countries. So, still an achievement, but not of the desired level.
I wanted to ask a couple questions about your experience staying in Belém, as it is a different kind of host city, as opposed to previous cities like Abu Dhabi or Baku. How do you think this year’s choice of location influenced the energy or atmosphere of the conference overall?
I mean, the climate negotiation is going to continue, and the party delegates will still continue to do their work, and I don't think the choice of a city will affect the negotiations themselves by nature. As for general observer delegates, we do have to take care of ourselves more, like finding accommodation or transportation. At COP28, in Dubai, they did more than you would expect; they hosted full expositions and air-conditioned many more rooms, not just the negotiation rooms, like in Belém.
Did you notice any differences in terms of Canada's presence at COP30, in comparison to previous ones?
Canada always has some position in all different types of meetings. This year, Canada joined a carbon market coalition and pledged funds for the TFFF. It also joined the integrated wildfire management. I would say Canada is always doing some work, but probably not enough. For example, I never heard of Canada speaking this year in regards to Article 6.
Having attended three COPs now, do you have any novel takeaways from this specific COP; a new outlook on these kinds of conventions?
I would describe it as being a learning curve. Attending COP28 was my very, very first time, and although I did a lot of homework, it was still a huge, overwhelming experience for me. By COP29, I started to know what to expect; I witnessed Article 6 negotiations and so on. This past year, due to my past internship at the secretariat, I was deeply familiar with the Article 6 process. I knew many of the attendants, and I knew the structure of the decision making. In previous COPs, I could only digest what I had witnessed afterwards. But this specific year, my eyes were open; I could directly think of my own interpretation, my own criticism and my own understanding of the topics.
Given that, what would you say are some strengths and some flaws of COP? What does a convention such as COP provide?
Every year, COP creates more stuff. For example, this year they created a new two-year work program on climate finance and deforestation. Each future COP will have more protocols to discuss, making the process less efficient, especially given that we are not removing any previous ones.
That said, COP is still very important. It’s difficult for the world’s countries to come together, but they still make a fair amount of progress at these conventions. And I would say the advantage of in-person COP attendance is still very obvious. There is a certain communication that exists when people can look each other in the eyes and are present in the same room; it is like we are in the same channel. And this applies to the bigger negotiations as well. It is very important to observe the facial expressions of the delegate, to be able to discern changes in mood. But the real difference of in-person attendance is the ability to sit in the same room and to devote two weeks to working together. It makes everyone treat it as teamwork. When there's no way out on certain topics, the chair of the room will announce a huddle, where people physically get together, very closely, and they will freely discuss. I don't think that the effectiveness of this can be created from online participation.
I was curious about the absence of the United States this year; I'm sure it was felt. Were there any positives to the country’s absence?
I would say China is definitely standing up and leading the work of climate change negotiations. The United States’ absence has created a path for the world to work with other economic powers, such as China and India.
Many have described this COP as disappointing, and as not providing substantial outcomes. How do you feel about this kind of characterization?
Personally, I think one major disappointment is the lack of a fossil fuel transition roadmap, which was one goal of COP30. Also, because of COP’s symbolic host location of Belém, at the gateway city to the Amazon rainforest, there were expectations for greater improvements in deforestation prevention. I think that's the major disappointment. But, I think the president of COP30 promised that he will not disappoint the world on this, and we can expect something this coming year before COP31.
