Dr. Sarah Nash shared her COP28 observation from Dubai

COP28-The Climate Mobilities Pavilion

Day 1 of Week 2 of the COP28, the Climate Mobilities Pavilion.

Sarah Louise Nash*

I have been attending the international climate negotiations on and off for the past eight years, always following the discussions on the links between climate change and human mobilities. That time has seen a steady growth in the attention being paid to the topic, with the number of experts present and the side-events organised increasing by the year. This COP28 has even seen the creation of a Climate Mobilities Pavilion for the first time. The pavilion is basically a room in a small three-storey building a nine-minute walk from the main plenary hall (I checked) that provides a venue for discussions on the links between climate change and human mobilities to take place. And incidentally, they serve very good coffee.

The coffee is important. After many years of having meetings with other experts while sitting on the floor in a corridor, perched on a wall between negotiation buildings, or in an interminably long queue for what seems to be the only coffee cart within miles, we now have a place to congregate, comfortable seats to sit on while we compare notes and, yes, caffeine to help us through the long days (and nights) of negotiations.

This creation of a physical hub for discussions on climate change and human mobilities is as symbolically important as it is practical. It symbolizes that human mobilities are now a stable fixture of the climate negotiations, and that our time no longer needs to be spent justifying the very presence of these discussions on agendas. Hopefully we as a group of experts are done answering the question of what migration experts are doing at COP. This recognition has also freed us up to explore new avenues of work. In previous years there has been one sharp focus of efforts on the part of negotiations where the single reference to human mobilities was contained – one paragraph in the decision accompanying the Paris Agreement, or the work of the Task Force on Displacement that was created as a result – whereas now there is a broadening of attention.

This means that at COP28 there are expert observers from the field of climate change and human mobilities working on all the central discussion at the negotiations. Expertise is growing, and there are countless behind the scenes discussions taking place on how human mobilities fits with these negotiations. If it makes sense to do so, experts are also pushing for human mobilities to be mentioned in texts, or for carefully crafted and hard-won references to be kept in even as negotiations get tough. There are coordination groups, updates, and networks of contacts to be drawn on. And if in doubt, you can always go for a coffee and pick up some new information, ideas, or inspiration.

Dr. Sarah Louise Nash is a senior researcher based at the University of Continuing Education Krems in Austria. She is an expert on the politics and policy of climate change and human mobilities and leads the PHOENIX project’s Cluster 2 on governing climate mobilities. She is currently attending her fourth international climate negotiations at the COP28 in Dubai.