COP: Is this the world’s toughest event to organise?

[CHATTER] Imagine organising the world's biggest wedding. 80,000 people are coming from across the globe for two weeks. Food and drinks need to be served 24/7. And some of the in-laws can't stand each other. If it goes wrong, it could go down in history as the world's worst wedding. Only this wedding is trying to marry money with climate progress. This is what the organisers have to do at the United Nations' biggest event, the COP Climate Conference. And if they fail, the whole world will be watching. So what our climate question is, is this the world's toughest event to organise? From the BBC World Service, I'm Grair Jackson. And I'm Jordan Dunbar. Jordan, you've actually been to COP? Yeah, I was at COP 27 in Egypt. And even though I'd reported on them, it just wasn't what I was expecting at all. It was much more like a climate festival. So you've got people protesting, you've got Indigenous groups, you've got religious leaders. Then you've got big businesses, renewable energy there. So it's like a trade network. Then you've got people having parties on the side, as well as the big news events, as well as all the scientists and the negotiators. It's all happening at once at the same time. So you're just running from thing to thing, trying to grab people. Coolest thing is though, because you're in like a UN zone, you just have world leaders down there and past you all the time. They might be stuck. Yes, oh, it's John Kerry getting a cup of tea. It is not what I expected. I mean, I thought you were going to go for a bigger celebrity. I mean, most people might not know who John Kerry is, but he was then the US climate envoy, wasn't he? Now, one woman who's been to a fair few Cops and organized some is Helen Wright. So back in 2021 in Glasgow, she organized that COP for the British government and then went on to help the UAE organize their COP in Dubai. Since then, she's moved on and she works at a firm called Identity, who sort of specialise in creating these massive events. Hello, Helen. Hello, nice to be here today. Well, you're not organising this year's COP in the Amazon in Brazil. But how hard is it to organise an event like this? Because there are thousands of people going for two weeks. I mean, talk us through how difficult that is. It's quite something. It's, I think, the sheer scale and complexity of the COP is just quite mind-blowing. It's like 30 different big high-profile conferences happening as long with a festival and then you've got media and attendance. And as you say, it's over a two-week period as well. So it's not a two-day, you can focus on that. People are there, they're away from home for two to three weeks. 40,000 to 80,000 we had in Dubai attending this space. And, you know, they've all got different needs, different expectations as well. And I think for me, that's what makes the COP so unique. It's the different stakeholder groups that go. So from world leaders, you've got the negotiators, civil society plays such a huge part. Who's civil society? So civil society, that could be a whole host of different groups. So youth groups, NGOs, so non-governmental organisations, Indigenous peoples. Plus celebrities, they turn up. Plus, oh yes, celebrities love to turn up. And usually last minute as well, so you've got to deal with them. Then you also have all of the world's media. So I think it's around 4,000 media that now attend a COP. A lot of needs, lots of requirements that... Smiling at that, with the knowing knowledge, looking at us like, "Yes, you, you people are difficult." Coffee, selfie spots. I think what was really striking to me is something Jordan was telling me actually before we began. And that is there is nowhere on earth that can host an event like this. There's not a venue built. So you kind of have to build it. And remarkably, you have to do that in maybe as little as six months? Yeah. There's some fantastic conference venues around the world. But it's very difficult to find a venue that actually fits the requirements of the COP. And they're very specific to the requirements. So you may have a really large footprint venue, but you might not have the right amount of meeting rooms or spaces for the climate action to take place, for the pavilions that countries host there. So part of what we do is really think about that temporary infrastructure, the temporary buildings that you would need to be. So one of the facts that I remember afterwards finding out was like, "Oh, wow, that really puts it to the scale." For COP26 in Glasgow, we worked as a Scottish events campus. And it was essentially, we built temporary infrastructure. It was the size of nine football pitches. - Whoa! - Wow! Give me a checklist. We're saying 80,000 people could come, but what do you have to think of? So obviously they've got to sleep somewhere, go through actually what you have to organise for these 80,000 people. Sure. So part of this is informed by the UN. So the UN Framework Commission of Climate Change, UNFCCC, who manage the event. - They're kind of like the client. - Exactly. And the host country works essentially with them to deliver the COP. They have what's called a host country agreement. So this is something that you enter into with them. This sets out all of the requirements. So you're talking 30 meeting rooms and that's two massive plenary rooms, which is probably what you've seen on lots of the pictures. The big nigga if she is shouldn't be in the area. - With the gavel. - Yep, exactly. It's like 1,800 or so capacity, so two of them. You've then got meeting rooms from 500 down to 20 people because the negotiating meetings, they're all different. They all take different formats. So it's important to have the right meeting rooms there. You've got that, you've got a media centre that's set up for all the media so that they can do their quick edits, they can capture their content, they can get it back on all the different time zones as well, because it's nearly 200 countries that are taking part in this. You then have where more of the civil society are, so the climate action spaces. And so there's a number of different rooms and requirements for that and the pavilions, which is what the country delegations and some of the civil society hosts to showcase what they're doing on climate action. So that's kind of the basis of the venue. And then obviously that's the power, it's the water, it's the waste, everything to make that a fully functioning space. And then, as you mentioned, the wider piece, the accommodation, the transport networks, the catering that you have to think about. So visas, you know, that you have to really think about how are the people going to arrive there? So there's a lot of considerations. I'm exhausted thinking about it. Aren't there some like extremely kind of weird, but also specific requirements like the temperature of a room? Yep, that's right. When you've got people there from 200 different countries, everyone has a bit of a different sense of what is a good comfortable room temperature. So you answered, right, let's just make it around 21 degrees so that you've got that consistency across the venue, be that in the Amazon, be it in Dubai, in Glasgow in November. You know, it's you can start to see why that's a bit of a diplomatic approach to it. Let's just make everyone. What happens if it dips down to 20 or 19 degrees? You run to the temperature controller. That's where the events management company comes in and you go and sort out and make sure that you get it back to how it should be. How are we doing today? I think this is a bit cooler than 21. But it's good to know. I was thinking about these nine football pitches of new infrastructure that you had to build, which sounds quite unsustainable, given that this conference is all about sustainability. Why can't you do this sort of negotiation over a video call or a videoconference? Yeah, it's a really, really good question. And understandably, it's asked a lot and a lot of consideration sort of does go in that. It comes under quite a lot of scrutiny. And I think the first thing to say, certainly on 26 and 28 and both from the host country perspective and also from identity perspective, it was about embedding sustainability from the outset. So we would have like an onward life cycle for everything that we're using. So be recycled. Not necessarily recycled. That's almost sort of second or third in the list. You want to be able to reuse. Well, first, do you need it? So you're asking yourself, do we actually need to be putting vinyl prints on the wall? Or could we do that in a more sustainable way? Things like the temporary infrastructure, it's hired and so it's got multiple uses. Throughout, you're looking at more modular designs, which is all quite interesting when you're thinking about how everything can be put together, shipped and sort of sent away and used in other places. But then when something can't sort of be reused, the recycling and ensuring that you're using materials that can be easily recycled as well. I know a concern has been that these cops have been very expensive to attend, especially for poorer nations, which might only be able to send a couple of negotiators, unlike Europe, where they might be able to send 15 or 20 and that means Europe can attend all the meetings. But then the poorer countries might only be able to attend one or two if they're going on simultaneously, right? And that has been a huge criticism that it is just to expect the accommodations expensive, the flights expensive. It is. And I think it's one of those barriers that as a host country, you would try to find solutions for. Obviously it's a big, massive event. So it's about how they can put in place the affordable accommodation, how they can make it as their value for money as possible. But I think the UNFCCC do have, it's called Trust Fund for Participants, and that is provided to certain delegations. That's all managed by the UN, so it's not something that I've sort of been involved in. But I know that they do try to provide support where they can. When you're doing the COP, do you know what the carbon footprint is? Do we now have that information for each one? Is that something that's thought about when they're being planned? Yeah, absolutely. So as part of your agreement to host the COP, part of that is to host a carbon neutral event. You don't want to be leaving that impact. So it's up to the host country to consider how best to manage that. They will look to get an international certification. So there's ISO 2012-1, which is your sustainable event management system, and that's something which both for COP26 and COP28 we very much followed. And that measurement of the carbon footprint is something that is done not just by the UN for the people's flights that they're coming in, which is the biggest carbon. 60% I believe. It is. But also through the delivery partners, and for us as the event management company, we're looking at that for our supply chains as well, constantly recording data so that we can then provide that to the host country who will look at how to carbon offset that to ensure that it's a carbon neutral event. Did you manage in Glasgow and UNE to keep that within it to make it carbon neutral? Yeah. Yeah. If we were working entirely from scratch, what would you do to make the best COP ever? Oh. And would you rip up any paper of the requirements that you have to fulfill? Oh, that's a great question. I think at the core of it, you still need those set requirements because with the COP moving around to different countries every year, you need to have that level of consistency. So I think that part, you can't change. You do have to have some element of adapting, depending on what country it is in. You really have to think about what the local supply chain is like, how you can work with that. So I think some flexibility within the requirements, but at the core, you still need that. Starting from scratch, I would probably say a little bit longer lead-in time, not six months. Six months, it's very much doable as we've proven, but it would be good to have a little bit more time. Part of that for me is actually about how you can ensure that then the legacy is real and that it happens. Because if you can very much plan the legacy at the outset and sustainability that's embedded into your planning, then the event goes far beyond when the final gavel goes down. You're thinking about that longer term impact. Helen, thank you so much for coming in, talking about how complicated this is. Yeah, really appreciate it, Helen. Thank you. Thank you for having me on. It's been great. A reminder that you're listening to the climate question from the BBC World Service. I'm Greg Jackson. And I'm Jordan Dunbar. We've been hearing about how hard it is to organise COP, the World's Annual Climate Summit. But is it worth all the faff? Have they created meaningful change? Let's meet our next guest, Akshah Radi, senior climate reporter at Bloomberg. You're already in Brazil ready to report on the first COP in the Amazon Akshah. Hello. Hi. It's nice to be here. Hi, Akshah. It's great to see you. Now, as we mentioned, we've been talking to Helen about how hard it is to organise these COPs. And there have been a fair few disasters in the past. What have you witnessed? It is very difficult. It is the largest United Nations meeting. It has world leaders coming from often more than 100 countries. And so you have to have a whole layer of security that you have to manage around them. And then, of course, this is two weeks of intense talks going on almost around the clock. The venue is open around the clock. And so you do get disasters. Like in Sharmal shake in COP 27, we had a sewage problem because the pipes burst and you had to deal with that often towards the very end of the COP. Food runs out, coffee runs out, even more importantly, on the venue. And so then you are having to hunt for it or you're having to make sure that you get it from the hotel packed for the entire day before you get to the venue. And logistics matters because you want to be in the right headspace to be able to negotiate, to be able to talk through these thick documents and legal text and represent your country. So logistics is key. Having said all of that, people keep turning up. You keep turning up. So do you enjoy going to COP? Oh, I love it. Where on earth can you find all people of all countries showing up often in their home country dresses? And there are protests that happen at COP from people showing up from all countries. You get viewpoints. You hear languages. There is no other celebration of humanity that I have been to that I know of that happens on the planet on an annual basis than a climate summit. And you know, despite some of the logistical disasters that have happened, there have been some key moments, some key achievements made at these summits, haven't there? They have. And we are going into COP 30. So there will have been 30 events by the end of this year. It is progress, but progress happens slowly. So perhaps the biggest COP is COP 21 that happened in 2015 that gave us the Paris Agreement. And it was a remarkable COP because until that point, it hadn't been the case that all countries in the world agreed that climate change is a problem and that we must address it and then set real heart targets on what level of warming should the world keep global warming below. There have been further events that have happened since. So the Paris Agreement itself was a 15 page PDF written in plain English, giving you a direction for where the world was going. But since then until now, COP meetings were all about making sure that those words could be turned into rules and actions that would allow the world to keep global warming in check. So it COP 26 in Glasgow, we had the first mention of coal and a goal that countries would start to phase out coal. At COP 28 in Dubai, we had a first mention of fossil fuels and a commitment from all countries to transition away from fossil fuels. This is important to note because it might seem silly that after 25 years of talking, they finally mentioned fossil fuels, which are the primary cause of global warming. But at these negotiations, all countries are present, even the fossil fuel producers. And so you need to get them convinced to get them on board to actually have an agreement where people can then go back home and start to turn those agreements into actions. So it's taken a long time, but there have been main achievements. And I suppose the biggest achievement is that the world was on track for about four degrees Celsius of warming compared to pre-industrial times before 2015, before the Paris Agreement was signed. And this year, we are looking at 2.5 to 2.7 degrees Celsius of warming, still too much, but we've shaved off 1 to 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming from the worst case scenarios. And that is the greatest achievement. And even if the progress seems slow and it is slow, especially for the most vulnerable countries, the fact that countries meet every year is an indication that they are at least willing to work towards that problem. Actually, you've been touching on some of the criticisms there, and we've talked about them extensively on the Climate Question podcast too. And the last couple of years, the focus has really been on the fact that fossil fuel companies have been attending in larger and larger numbers. The cops themselves have been hosted by countries who are very fossil fuel rich. We've also talked about the language being very vague in the text, it all being too slow, which I think Greta Thunberg, the activist summarised, is blah, blah, blah. I mean, all this is sort of culminating to this big idea of, do we need to completely transform and reform COP? Yes, this is a conversation that happens almost every year. What is the point of COP? The way COP works, which is by consensus, because Saudi Arabia has blocked voting rules. And so as a result, the only way a COP has negotiating powers is through making sure everybody agrees is a big problem, because that means what you get at the end of a COP is typically the least common denominator, the least everybody can agree on, and not what is needed to actually address the problem. And so I think we just need to think about COP's in two different tracks. From the activist point of view, from Greta Thunberg or other climate activist point of view, the world is not on track. The science is very clear. The world governments meet every year at COP summits and they must listen to the science and listen to the most vulnerable people and act according to their needs. But from the side of governments, they are supposed to go back home to their people and convince their people at home why climate action, which is going to take decades, trillions of dollars, which will in some cases increase price of energy or food for them at home in the next few years is worth having. And that divide between what climate activists want, what the science says we should be doing, versus what the political reality of climate action is continues to collide at COP's year out year in. We talk a lot about fossil fuel companies. Yes, fossil fuel companies show up at COP. They have lobbyists at COP. But we should also recognize that most fossil fuel production happens in state owned companies, happens in developing countries, happens to be providing them with an economic gain for economic growth that they need. And that politics of fossil fuels isn't going away anytime soon. So when we ask COP presidents about this question again and again, we have this language about transitioning away from fossil fuels, their response to us is that, look, it is important that we have a consensus because after we get a consensus, even if it is not the entire plan that science would want us to have, we get a consensus on a plan that will be robust that countries will continue to act on for years to come. So that's very important. And yes, fossil fuel lobbyists show up and Andre Correado-Lago, who I interviewed here in Brazil, who is the COP president for COP 30, told me fossil fuel companies are welcome because they will be economically affected by this transition. And it's important to hear from them, but it is also important to say to them, the science is very clear and the world needs to head towards a place where we start to use less and less fossil fuels eventually stopping. And of course, Brazil is a big oil producer as well and is looking to increase oil exploration and oil extraction. Yeah, this is something that will surprise people because, you know, for the past few years, we have gone to countries which are clearly oil and gas producers. We were in the UAE at COP 28, which is one of the biggest oil producers, Azerbaijan, which also produces oil and gas. And those country hosts came under criticism for hosting a climate conference while having such a large reliance on oil and gas revenues. Well, it turns out Brazil is also a large oil and gas producer. In fact, as we were gearing up to come to Belém, the Brazilian government approved oil drilling off the coast of Belém itself into the mouth of the Amazon. That's where we're going to see offshore oil drilling happening. And climate activists are enraged by this. But this is where the real economy and the real politics of running a country collides with climate goals which are driven by science and are going to affect the most vulnerable countries. And we will see that fight play out at COP 30. Aksha, do you think there's a disconnect between what happens at COP, what people's leaders and politicians are over there actually doing, and what will affect them at home? Do you think there's a disconnect? Do people listening to this actually won't know what has gone on? This is going to be my question to the big leaders coming at COP 30. What are you doing to translate what happens at COP? Which we understand is important. We understand it's necessary that if you're going to change the whole global economy, that you need a plan, you need a step-by-step plan, that you need agreements on all sorts of weird and wonderful things that the economy is made up of. But what is your plan to translate that into words that would show to the people back home that climate action is being done for the benefit of the people back home and not for the benefit of some corporation, whether that's fossil fuel corporation or renewable energy corporations, that this is being done to try and improve welfare for humanity, that is being done to try and avoid the worst climate impacts. We need a new political pact where leaders who show up at COP year in and year out go back home and make clear why they do this. Akshah, are you excited to go to the Amazon, the first ever Amazonian COP? I am. I mean, we should acknowledge that it is Belen, which is a city of two million people. And we are unlikely to be in the forest when we are going to be negotiating. But yes, it is the gateway to the Amazon. I am hoping that we will be able to see some parts of the forest. We understand that there are islands around Belen which are preserved, are conserved, and that you get to get a taste of what the Amazon looks like. But the real Amazon is ours, often a day away from Belen if you really want to experience the depth and the beauty that is the Amazon. And it is not something most people will get to see even though they come to the gateway of the Amazon. Akshah, thank you so much for speaking to us. Thanks so much, Akshah. See you soon. Thank you, guys. See you soon. Bye. And thank you for listening. Don't forget, if you have a climate question of your own, then email [email protected]. The production team were Nick Sindel, Diane Richardson, Jordan Dunbar, Simon Watts, Grace Braddock, Melanie Stewart-Smith, Tom Brignol, Ben Andrews and myself, Greg Jackson. Thank you all of us. Goodbye. Goodbye.