Why You're Starting in the Middle of a Fight
COP30 day 15 of 30: The entire game is about controlling the COP30 starting text.
Welcome to day 15 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.
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So you walk into your first negotiating session. You are ready. You have your allies and your strategy.
You look at the big screen at the front of the room. It is not blank.
Instead, it is filled with a messy, confusing, “draft negotiating text”. This document is the work from the last meeting in Bonn (the “intersessional” held in June). It is the official starting point, and it is already full of traps and opportunities.
This is the text that was “forwarded for further consideration.” This means you are not starting a new conversation; you are jumping into the middle of one.
How you and your allies handle this text in the first 15 minutes determines your success for the rest of the COP.
How to Attack and Defend the Starting Text
This draft is the official “basis for work.” Your job is to change it. Here is the step-by-step playbook.
The Starting Point: The “Draft Negotiating Text.” This text is your battlefield. Everything in it is “in play.” Everything not in it is “new” and much harder to add. You and your allies must have studied this text word for word.
The First Meeting: The “Interventions.” The facilitators (the two negotiators guiding the room) will invite Parties to speak. This is the moment.
To Defend: Your allies must draw attention to the paragraphs or sections that you support. This signals to the facilitators that this text is important and must be kept.
To Attack: Your allies must provide textual proposals to change the parts you do not like. They must be specific.
The “Mandate” to Update. After everyone has spoken, the facilitators will ask for a mandate (permission) to create a new version of the text. This new iteration will be based on the feedback they just heard.
The New “Iteration.” The facilitators will produce a new draft. This new text will be cleaner in some places (where agreement was found) and messier in others (where new options were added). This becomes the new basis for the next round of negotiation.
The Text Dictates the Entire Negotiation
Here’s the thing: The structure and content of that initial “draft negotiating text” dictate the entire negotiation. Everything that is in that draft is considered a valid part of the conversation.
Your first job is to defend what you already won in Bonn. If you are silent, the text you fought for can be deleted.
Your second job is to attack what you want to remove. If you do not challenge bad ideas in that first meeting, you are signaling that you can “live with” them.
It is 100 times easier to defend text that is already in the draft than to add new text.
How to Lose Before You Even Start
This “negotiating text” process is a minefield. Here is what to watch for.
Losing Your “Good” Text. If you fail to defend a key paragraph from the Bonn text, and it gets deleted, you may have to “start fresh at the following session” to get it back in. You can lose six months of work in one meeting.
The “Competing Text” Power Play. A powerful group might try to ignore the Bonn text and introduce their own new draft, claiming it’s “cleaner.” This is a power play to erase all the progress you made in Bonn and reset the negotiation. Your allies must block this.
The “No-Mandate” Stall. Sometimes, Parties will refuse to give the facilitators a mandate to update the text. This is a tactic to “block” progress by keeping the negotiation “stuck” on the old, messy draft.
The “Bad Starting Point.” What if the Bonn text itself is bad? Your allies must challenge it immediately. They must state that it is not a “well-balanced” basis for negotiation and submit their own proposals to be added.
Before You Go
Never walk into a meeting unprepared. Know the “draft negotiating text” better than anyone else. Know what you must defend, what you must delete, and what you must add.
You have survived the first meeting. Your proposals are in. But now the text is messy, confusing, and full of strange symbols.
That’s it for today. Let me know what you think. Next, I will explain “How to read a negotiating text” and what to do when your words get put in brackets.
See you later!