How to Read Brackets (They're the Entire Battlefield)
COP30 day 16 of 30: Why brackets are the entire battlefield.
Welcome to day 16 of your 30-Day Series!
In this series we’re building from LCIPP mechanics through Indigenous participation frameworks to COP negotiating tactics.
By day 30, you’ll understand how Indigenous Peoples move from values to operative text at the world’s largest climate negotiations. Today we’re talking about ensuring your proposals are reflected accurately in the text.
You did it. You survived the first meeting.
You worked with your allies, and your proposals were captured in some way in the first “iteration” of the text.
But now, the second iteration has been released.
You open the document, find your paragraph, and your heart sinks.
Your words are now trapped inside: [Square brackets]
It feels like a step backward. It feels like your proposal is being rejected.
This is a normal part of the process. Your words are not being rejected but they are being contested. The brackets are not a “no.” They are a “now we fight.”
Understanding what these symbols mean is the difference between defending your position and losing it without a sound.
Decoding the Battlefield
A negotiating text is a living document. It changes every day. You must learn to read its language.
Clean Text: This is any text without brackets. In theory, this means it is “agreed.” This is your goal. You want to see your proposals in clean text in the final document. But beware: “clean text” is not “safe” until the very final gavel.
Bracketed text: Is the most common signal. A bracket around a word, a sentence, or an entire paragraph means “there is no agreement on this.”
It could mean some Parties want to delete it entirely.
It could mean some Parties want to change it.
It could mean it is linked to another fight in another room, and it is being “held hostage” until that other issue is resolved.
Option 1,2,3: his is the next stage of the fight. The facilitators have consolidated the disagreement into clear, “side-by-side” alternatives. This is actually progress. The “range of views” is now “clear and simple.” The fight is no longer “yes/no,” but “which one?” Your goal is to make sure your proposal is one of these options.
The L-Document: This is the final version of the text that comes out of your negotiating stream. It is the “L-document” that gets “translated into all six UN languages” and “forwarded” to the closing plenary for adoption. Your job is to make sure this final document is as “clean” as possible.
The Brackets Are Your To-Do List
Here’s the thing:
The brackets are not a problem.
They are the to-do list for the entire negotiation.
The iterative process is a war of persistence. Your job is not to keep adding new ideas. Your job is to remove the brackets from around your text and to keep brackets around the text you oppose.
You are fighting to make your text “clean” and to delete the “options” that hurt the rights of Indigenous Peoples.
As the facilitators’ job is to seek agreement on paragraphs and resolve the brackets. Your job is to help them by showing them the “landing ground” for a compromise that includes what we need.
How Brackets Can Kill Your Text
The text is a weapon, and brackets are how it is used against you.
Flood of brackets
Sometimes, discussions are getting stuck, and instead of resolving brackets, they are multiplying. This is a sign of failure. It means Parties are adding more options, not fewer.The “Working on the Screen” Ambush
A Party might ask the facilitators to project the draft text on a screen and edit it live. This sounds transparent, but it is a trap if Parties aren’t close to an agreement, with a risk that the process gets out of hand. It is an ambush to add new, bad ideas.Re-Opening Clean Text:
The worst trap is when an opposing Party tries to re-open” a paragraph that was already “clean” and agreed upon. This is a sign of bad faith and a usually major escalation of the fight.
Before You Go
The text is messy. The brackets are multiplying. The formal meeting is getting stuck, and the facilitators are failing to find a way forward.
What happens next? When the formal process breaks, an informal one takes over.
Next we will cover “The Huddle” which is an important, but unfair, meeting at COP.
P.S.: It would mean the world to me if you could share this with a friend!