Written by Henry McGhie, Curating Tomorrow, henrymcghie@curatingtomorrow.co.uk

This year has seen not one but two ‘COPs’ (Conference of the Parties), the big meetings where governments monitor their progress towards international agreements. In early November, COP16 for biodiversity was held in Cali, Colombia. In the second half of November, COP29 was held in Baku, Azerbaijan. These big meetings get a lot of press attention, but they are rather poorly understood and are not always reported that well. If you think the COPs are where the leaders of the world get together to hammer out the world’s future, the reality is much more humdrum. By the time countries gather together, they have usually made up their minds on their negotiating positions and not much will change from there on. COP has also become too big and has many ‘layers’ to it. For the climate COPs, there is the Blue Zone, which you need to get a special accreditation to enter (referred to as a ‘badge’), and within that there will be really big plenary events and smaller side events that everyone with a badge can attend. There are also lots of negotiations taking place, inside rooms, that you often can’t access as well as a mass of pavilions, mostly from countries and in some years, businesses. Outside the Blue Zone, there is a public-facing Green Zone that the public can access (sometimes it is in a museum, as it was in 2021 when it was in Glasgow Science Centre). When the climate COP is on there is also a lot of activity going on outside of COP itself, mostly organized by civil society groups, and also by businesses. So, when people say they’ve ‘been to COP’ it can mean a few different things.