“Do you get to speak at the conferences? Do you get access to everything? Do you get to see them make actual policies? Wait, why’d you go then?”
These are just a few of the questions we get when someone asks about our research and, in all fairness, we too asked these questions when we started remotely observing global climate negotiations. Our first-hand experience has shown us, however, that despite the importance of access, what it looks like varies greatly across the different forums we participate in.
While the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) guarantees the opportunity for non-governmental organizations to register as “observers” under Article 7, Section 6, it is vital to remember a few things. Most importantly, observer status does not equal active participation. Secondly, the UNFCCC is not the only place that sets agendas and makes policy relating to global climate change.
Article 7, Section 6
Access Experiences: From UNFCCC to the “Paris Summit”
Compared to other areas of global governance, such as trade politics or issues of peace and security, the environmental arena has been relatively open to non-state participation. This norm of inclusion was codified in Principle 10 of the 1990 Earth Summit Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, which provided a basis for civil society participation and access to information, judicial measures and proceedings, administrative processes, redress, and remedy.
While this is an expectation, our experience reaffirms the simple fact that states are not legally bound by these norms and have great liberty when determining how and to what extent they allow civil society to participate.

Beyond that, when serious climate talks are held outside of the UNFCCC, guarantees and mechanisms for access wane. This was our experience when trying to observe another recent high-level climate event: the Summit for a New Global Financial Pact in Paris, France (aka “The Paris Summit”). This two-day summit, hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, brought together 40 heads of state, a number of heads of international organizations, global business leaders and civil society to address the slow and unsuccessful delivery of climate finance to developing countries.
Unfortunately, despite the efforts of organizers, issues of accessibility were felt throughout the Paris Summit. From limited stakeholder participations, exclusive terminology, and webcasts for nearly half of our planned events not being posted with no explanation, limited access hindered the Summit’s success.
Tackling the Learning Curve
While the UNFCCC takes great effort to make information available via their website and webcasts, we still see many barriers to entry. For example, at both the COPs and the Paris Summit, we noticed a steep learning curve with the delegates’ use of technical climate regime terminology, which created an abundance of acronyms to learn.
Though we had both taken Dr. Gibson’s “Politics of the Global Environment” (IR323) course, which had given us a background on the climate regime, we often felt — at our first COP last November — like we were playing catch up with the participants speaking what at times felt like another language.
For a participant entering the climate negotiations with limited prior knowledge of the regime, it is far more difficult to engage and can be easy to get lost when terms like CBDR/RC (common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities), NDCs (nationally determined contributions), GCF (Green Climate Fund) and GHG (greenhouse gasses) are thrown around with no decoding.
Without consideration for the accessibility of the terminology used in these events, laypeople and those most impacted by the climate crisis continue to face a high barrier of entry in the conversations in which they are most needed. Nonetheless, as student researchers, understanding the talks grew easier and our central mission became increasingly clear with each passing side event.
Hybrid Access For All?
While hybrid access, that is the ability to attend in-person or online, was meant to provide more access for those who are unable to travel or receive observer status, this modality, whether incidental or intentional, often left civil society unable to effectively participate.
The links for most panels at UNFCCC negotiations are open to anyone who wishes to attend, but certain events and in-person attendance require accreditation through the UNFCCC. Fortunately, Dr. Gibson has observer accreditation through an NGO allowing us access as observers, but with limited spots, many of the world’s most critical voices are unable to enter these same spaces.
However, regardless of this accreditation, some high-level events allow only state leaders to enter, ignoring the voices of both experts and those most impacted by the climate crisis.

Although we attended COP27 virtually while staying at the Wrigley Institute for Environment and Sustainability on Catalina Island and watched events in real-time, like much of civil society, we attended the meetings of the Subsidiary Bodies and the Paris Summit from remote locations. Our team members weren’t all in Los Angeles over the summer, so we attended events virtually on our own.
Unfortunately, given the time difference between Germany and various regions throughout North America, where our team was located, and without the ability to collectively engage in the work from a remote location, the struggle was real.
We had to overcome obstacles in communication, such as divvying up who would attend which event, sometimes just moments before they began. Being able to talk to someone you’re doing research with as they sit across the table from you makes collaboration a lot easier than trying to schedule Zoom calls or texting them as you try to coordinate.
With limited ability to collaborate, the team sometimes ended up attending events that may not have been the most effective for our final research aims, and these challenges ultimately delayed the production of our work products for real-time public consumption.
Language Issues…Again
While we have previously documented language issues at the UNFCCC COPs, these issues were even more apparent at the Paris Summit.
Read our previous blog post about the language barrier issues
First, most events and speeches during the summit were conducted in French. While this is appropriate given the summit location, for those attending virtually, there were no automatic translation services, which greatly limited those who could attend real-time and understand the proceedings.
Thankfully, members of our research team had a grasp of French and were able to translate and distill speeches into key points and takeaways. But observers from rural or Indigenous communities worldwide face substantial barriers to being able to engage meaningfully when additional translation is not offered.
Since we were observing from different time zones, with many events occurring very early in the morning, we planned to observe via recorded webcasts; however, the English versions of many of the recordings were not functional. The English version of the opening ceremony, a prime event, was merely silent footage of summit attendees getting out of their cars and walking through the rain for an hour and a half. Further, no political speeches were webcast or translated.
Restriction on Redress and Remedy
When it comes to redress and remedy, this is perhaps the area activists and advocates have the least access to due to the non-binding, voluntary nature of UNFCCC treaties and declarations from one-off meetings such as the Paris Summit.

In situations where a stakeholder was excluded, an expert ignored, or the ultimate decision made was the wrong one, there is little recourse available to non-state parties. Rather than have the option for financial compensation or a legal response, civil society must not only accept the outcome, but also continue to engage in the non-binding regime. They have to continue to show up to the next panel, the next side event, and the next negotiations knowing that their participation in many ways is a mere token.
All too often the perspective and experience of observers is diminished so that when a conference link is incorrectly uploaded or when translation is not provided, there is no redress or remedy to pursue. Whether it is access to equitable responses from conferences themselves or their outcomes, civil society faces far more challenges than the spirit of Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration intended.
Why Meaningful Participation Matters
Though virtual streaming and replay webcasts have allowed for international climate conferences to be more accessible to attendees who cannot fly out to attend meetings in-person, key challenges in technological, language and terminology accessibility remain.
Predictability with replay webcasts and more transparency about canceled or rescheduled events is needed to improve virtual accessibility to the conferences.
As two students with some foundational knowledge of the global climate regime, we were able to follow each summit and conference we’ve attended. We’re lucky enough to understand English and French, the two languages most commonly spoken at such conferences, but attendees from rural or Indigenous communities worldwide face numerous additional barriers to being able to engage meaningfully.

From attending events with terms that would be indecipherable to even some of the world's leading scholars to having no remedy for inequitable outcomes, access is not the same for all those involved. Civil society continues to be restricted by the limits set in place by state actors and the norms of the governmental framework, and this reality hinders the success of the global climate negotiations. Moreover, as society takes a more critical approach to dealing with the biggest polluters, leaders must also look at how the most vulnerable voices are included.
Highlighted in Paris, key issues like tax justice remain absent from conversations led by heads of state, and the importance of the local level stakeholders continues to be overlooked. Without active participation from civil society in global climate conferences, lackluster outcomes will continue to occur.
In every sphere of governance, access plays a vital role in the structure’s ultimate success or failure. It requires that stakeholders at every level be considered and, despite efforts, this necessary level of inclusiveness has largely lacked from the global climate change regime.
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