The Sink or Swim Project

If you’ve been following my work for a while, you know that the annual UN Climate Conferences (COPs) aren’t exactly glamorous. They’re inspiring, stressful, frustrating, hopeful, exhausting, and energizing all at once.

Here at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, I’ve been working for the small island state of Palau, and the conference has, true to form, been all of these things rolled into one, and I thought you might find the daily details of what happens at these unique meetings interesting.

My work this year has had me deep in the weeds of climate finance negotiations, the alphabet soup of COP, where terms like NCQG (New Collective Quantified Goal), SCF (Standing Committee on Finance), GEF (Global Environment Facility), GCF (Green Climate Fund), AFB (Adaptation Fund Board), FRLD (Fund for responding to Loss and Damage), and Article 2.1(c) (all finance acronyms/terms) get tossed around like everyone was born speaking the unique United Nations language that intends to save Earth from burning. These discussions ultimately decide whether frontline communities, including small island states like Palau, will actually receive the financial support they need to survive a warming planet. Palau and developing nations like it around the world contribute nearly nothing to the cause of our climate crisis, yet are subject to its warming oceans, elevated temperatures, and rising sea levels in alarming, disproportionate ways that place their nations and the people who live there at dire risk. So yes, the stakes are high… and the hours are long.

Daily Schedule: 8 AM – 9 PM (or Later)

Most mornings start with a quick breakfast eaten while scrolling through overnight draft negotiation texts and tracking which paragraphs have magically appeared, disappeared, or multiplied. By 8:00 AM, I’m heading through security on my way to the Alliance of Small Island States’ (AOSIS) morning coordination, where small island nations coordinate their positions on different agenda topics to align as a larger group of 39 countries.

After that, and maybe grabbing another cup of coffee, it’s time to sit through, some days, four or five negotiations in a row (Article 9.5 transparency, the Standing Committee on Finance (SCF), Global Environment Facility (GEF) replenishment guidance, Adaptation Fund negotiations), and so forth. Each one with its own tone, tensions, and tiny battles hiding in the footnotes.

It is during these meetings that you hear nations argue over whether the COP will “invite,” “request,” or “urge” countries to contribute to a fund (yes, this matters). Developing countries will fight to keep language, ensuring that all developing nations, not just a select few, have access to the funds they need to protect themselves. Developed countries will insist on deleting paragraphs that micromanage the fund’s Board. Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and Least Developed Countries (LDCs) will try to hold the line on adaptation finance and the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance (NCQG) target. Everyone will bracket everything (bracketed text is not agreed upon or official until the brackets are removed).

By late afternoon or, on many days, evening, the room temperature is usually warm (or unusually cold this year, especially for Brazil), the coffee is flowing, and the interventions start getting pointed. Sometimes even loud. In the hallways, leaders, negotiators, diplomats, and civil society huddle to strategize and support one another in a battle whose stakes are, in many cases, survival. These are the moments you realize international climate diplomacy is equal parts politics, persistence, and people.

This is the COP rhythm: intense, purposeful, and powered by caffeine, urgency, and a belief that we must do better.

A Rare Day Off: Breathing in Belém

The annual COP meetings take place over about two weeks, and participants work six days straight, taking off Sunday. Amid the choreographed chaos of COP, on my one day off, I wanted to step into a different world and spent the day at Parque do Utinga, just outside Belém, wandering along leafy trails surrounded by the symphony of the Amazon Rainforest. And honestly, it was magical.

Amazonia, long a symbolic, hopeful location for this COP meeting, is stunningly beautiful. As I strolled through Parque do Utinga, monkeys were swinging overhead from tree to tree, butterflies the size of my hand drifted by like living confetti, and birds of every color imaginable were saying hello in, I assumed, Portuguese from the canopies or while wading in tall grass. As far as you can see, there is an endless array of plant life, vines, flowers, and towering trees so tall that they reminded me exactly what we’re fighting for inside those windowless negotiation rooms back at the conference center.

For a few hours, I wasn’t thinking about brackets or paragraphs or whether “mobilize” should be replaced with “channel.” I was thinking about the Amazon, about places like Miami and Palau, about our ocean, about the ecosystems and people whose lives depend on these negotiations landing in the right place.

Why I Keep Coming Back

The work is long, and the days are longer at these conferences. And yet, moments in Parque do Utinga and in the plenary when countries stand up for justice, equity, and survival in the only international climate forum we have on earth remind me why I do this and why I love doing it.

Communities like mine in South Florida don’t have the luxury of waiting for perfect politics. Neither do SIDS, LDCs, or anyone living on the frontlines of rising seas, intensifying storms, and unbearable heat. No matter the hours or the imperfections in the process, we have no choice but to continue fighting until we solve this ever-so complex global problem.

And so, it is. Aside from the travel, long hours, and nonstop challenges of trying to get nearly 200 nations to agree on how to fix and finance the solutions needed, I plan to keep showing up. Whether tracking paragraphs, translating jargon, endlessly negotiating, or pushing for real financial answers to protect those most vulnerable, and all the rest that happens in a blur at a COP. The work is worth it for places like Miami, small island states like Palau, and, most certainly, the “lungs of the Earth,” as the Amazon has been called, to thrive, let alone survive.