An excellent guide to the labyrinthine world of COP summits

Climate diplomat
Peter Betts, Profile Editions

Climate negotiators, lobbyists and world leaders will gather in the Brazilian rainforest city of Belem next month for this year's UN climate summit, COP30.

For anyone who has been to a COP summit or tried to follow it from afar, these meetings can seem downright confusing. Dozens of parallel negotiation tracks are taking place simultaneously, replete with arcane agendas and fashionable labels: from “dialogues” and “consultations” to “informal informal” discussions.

To the observer, this may seem like a huge discussion, surrounded by its own conventions and having little relevance to the outside world. Luckily, we have the wisdom of Peter Betts, a legendary figure in police circles, to talk some sense into us.

Outsiders have hardly heard of Betts. But as the former lead climate negotiator for the UK and EU, he played a central role in laying the groundwork for the Paris Agreement and leading the negotiations that led to it crossing the line in 2015.

Unfortunately, Betts died of a brain tumor in October 2023, and his book Climate Diplomat: A Personal Story of the COP Conferenceswas published posthumously in August of this year. He offers insider information on what happens at climate summits and takes us through their modern history, starting with Betts taking the helm of UK international climate policy in 1998.

The first thing to make clear is that while COP conferences are often held in far-flung locales, from Peru to Paris, Durban to Dubai, the life of a climate negotiator is hardly glamorous. National teams spend years strategizing and planning their negotiating tactics for the annual two-week summits, only to spend the entire fortnight locked in temporary, windowless buildings, mulling over the finer details.

At COP17 in Durban, South Africa, Betts recalls how delegation offices were located underground in a car park that “stank of petrol and diesel” and at COP15 in Copenhagen, Denmark, the food “consisted almost exclusively of large round buns filled with brown paste.” Clearly, climate diplomats are not in this for a reactive lifestyle; they truly believe this is the best way to solve the climate crisis.

Gradually, as the book progresses, it becomes clear why, as Betts gives a crash course in how the COP summit works, including the rules governing the meetings and the negotiating positions and goals of the various countries.

The wide range of issues is staggering: some countries are focused on securing more financial assistance for development, others want countries to step up and commit to ambitious greenhouse gas emissions reductions, while some simply exist to impede progress and maintain the status quo. Each country is also limited by its domestic politics, financial situation and cultural views.

Amid the chaos, negotiators must find a way to bring everyone to the table and reach consensus—unanimity, no less—on the next steps to address climate change. To call it a challenge is truly a colossal understatement.

Betts writes clearly and often with biting wit, even if there are several insightful sections devoted to, say, the intricacies of multilateral climate finance. But gradually you begin to understand how the COP sausage is created and how its threads line up into a single, balanced agenda in the hope of uniting nations behind a common goal.

Things really come to life when we are taken behind the scenes at major summits – Copenhagen, Paris, Glasgow – and given an inside look at how everything developed. We hear about prime ministers and presidents who “robotically eat cookies” at important meetings, steal the spotlight with unplanned, “harmful” press conferences, hide in VIP areas from their teams and “explode” with anger when things don't go their way.

There is also more than enough gossip about Whitehall powerbrokers to grab the attention of British politicians, as well as some insightful insights into how climate change campaigners have failed – and sometimes even damaged progress in cutting emissions – with their lobbying strategies.

Many people dismiss the role of these summits in galvanizing global action on climate change, arguing that they amount to little more than meandering talk. However, the evidence suggests otherwise: before the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, the world was on track to reach 5°C warming by the end of the century. Ten years later, this trajectory has dropped to around 2.7°C – still too high. but the truly catastrophic fate to which we were heading is far away.

Diplomacy can change the world. In this book, Betts provides unprecedented insight into exactly how these changes can occur.