Each year, climate change negotiators meet in locations around the globe, to discuss and take decisions on how best to tackle climate change. The working tools for the negotiations are negotiating texts, based on written proposals submitted by governments. At the end of a negotiation, the Chair of a meeting will bang his or her gavel to declare that a decision, or a new treaty, has been adopted.
The Conference of the Parties (COP) is the supreme decision-making body of the climate change process. It brings together all the “Parties” to the UNFCCC (the governments that have formally joined the treaty) to take decisions on how to implement the treaty and promote climate action. Climate change negotiators meet at least twice a year, in locations around the globe, to discuss and take decisions on how best to tackle climate change and to review the progress made so far. Through the end of 2019, the Parties had taken more than 763 formal decisions aimed at implementing the UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement.
Credit: UNFCCC
The climate change negotiation meetings have grown significantly through the years. At the first session of the INC in 1991, there were 415 government delegates. By COP 21 in 2015, that number had grown to nearly 20,000.
The "UNFCCC Story" gallery has a section related to the negotiation process, with artifacts related to those processes. Artifacts include original credentials issued by Parties, a replica of the green leaf gavel from COP21, and draft negotiating texts and original submissions from Parties.
