An innovative and transformative conference of the parties
In 2015, « Make it Work — Le théâtre de négociation » reunited 200 international students for three days and one night to negotiate, as global delegations were about to do during the COP21, on the challenges of climate change. One major difference is that several of the students were invited to represent delegations outside the UN model such as oceans, soil, youth, internet and so on.
Also, even if a delegation had a common position, there could be internal differences between the various entities within the delegation. For example, the French delegation included entities with interests as diverse as the French Ambassador for Climate Negotiations, the energy multinational Areva, the Paris City Council, French Polynesia, and the Climate Action Network.
This experimental framework enabled these newly formed delegations to break, and play, with the codes of a UN negotiation format: asymmetrical signature agreement, ghost articles, meeting space free of territorial delegations'logic.
"At the end of the second day of negotiations, we realized we were arguing on the wrong matters. We were negotiating about amounts of greenhouse gases emissions instead of our vision of the world and what we want for the future.
The negotiations turned on the next morning, when a group of delegates, frustrated by the failure of finding a consensus, stopped negotiating to gather in a separate room and tried to build on creativity and a different way of thinking."
– Declaration of entities n°1
Even though they couldn't reach a perfect consensus, the students themselves were clear about the limits of the exercise and the true value of the experience:
"It is not about having a global VISION, it is about experiencing and having a global will to move forward, change, reflect upon ourselves. Something all the entities did, in different ways.
We could not manage to agree on a common vision of the future, since we don't even have a common vision of the present. The diversity of our perceptions and our concerns prevent us to agree on a common vision but constitutes our common richness"
– Declaration of entities n°1
Results of an international negotiation in the hands of the youth
The students produced collaboratively a 30 pages long text containing consensual visions of the future, common solutions that delegations committed to apply, and a toolbox of solutions and declarations endorsed by only certain entities.
Some quite ambitious elements emerged from these negotiations like the creation of a status for climate refugees, the establishment of a carbon market by 2050, a moratorium on Arctic mining from June 2016...
You can find in this document the whole production of the students. The introduction is in French but the formal texts, result of the negotiations, are in English. Read the results
And here are two particularly striking extracts to take you deeper into this work:
"Article 22
Climate refugees' legal status
All Parties recognize that climate refugees as people were forced to leave their homes and communities domestically or internationally because of the effect of climate change. All Parties collaborate to assist the international and domestic migration flows and population displacement regarding those climate refugees according to their capacities and situation. This legal status is linked to and protected by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)."
"Endangered Territories
Article 35
Pathway to Article 22
A working group on climate refugees shall be set up under the guidance of UNHCR that will address the issue of refugee resettlement and aid internationally and domestically.
The proposed instrument will deliver further definition on climate refugees according to scientific data. It should then create obligations to international community to deal with both prevention and remediation of the climate change refugee problem."