The Pre-COP27 cycle of workshops will align with efforts to advance the work of Parties and non-Party stakeholders toward successful climate resilient development, including adaptation, nature restoration, and the overcoming of loss and damage. The sessions will be 90 minutes each and will provide an integrative exploration of themes across disciplines, highlighting major challenges and strategies for navigating the uneven landscape of climate policy and practice.

Session 1 – The Process

Thu, Oct 13 – 8:00-9:30 am EDT (12:00-13:30 UTC)

The United Nations Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiating process is complex, multifaceted, and advances new international law relating to climate action, by consensus decisions among 197 Parties to the Convention.

This session will take you through the details, including the distinct segments and constituted bodies, through which the process works, as well as critical moments in the history of the process and an examination of the complementary roles of distinct categories of participants.

Instructors and discussants:

• Opening remarks: Joe Robertson – Executive Director, Citizens’ Climate International

• Kelly Sims Gallagher – Professor of Energy and Environmental Policy, Co-Director of the Center for International Environment & Resource Policy (CIERP), Director of the Climate Policy Lab, The Fletcher School at Tufts University

• Quamrul Chowdhury – Lead Negotiator for the LDC Group

• Review of participant categories, complementary roles

• Moderated discussion to follow

Session 2 – The Stakes (hybrid)

Tue, Oct 18 – 9:30-11:00 am EDT (12:00-13:30 UTC)

Climate policy and politics can often seem like an abstract discussion about incentives, data, and highly specialized expert analysis, but the climate system connects to nearly every aspect of human experience. Consensus scientific findings tell us a world of 2ºC of global heating will be far more perilous and chaotic than one where global heating is limited to 1.5ºC.

In this session, we will examine both the details of IPCC reports on the Physical Science, Vulnerability, and Mitigation, and we will explore connections between those findings and the prospects for sustainable wellbeing, including issues of macro-fiscal stability and experience at the human scale.

Instructors and discussants:

• Rachel Kyte – Dean of The Fletcher School at Tufts University

• Joe Robertson – Executive Director, Citizens' Climate International (in dialogue with Dean Kyte)

• Bill Moomaw – Professor Emeritus of International Environmental Policy, The Fletcher School at Tufts University

• Susan M. Natali – Arctic Program Director, Senior Scientist, Woodwell Climate Research Center

• Moderated discussion to follow

Session 3 – Global Crisis Response

Thu, Oct 20 – 8:00-9:30 am EDT (12:00-13:30 UTC)

Our historical moment is being defined by multiple converging crises. The United Nations has established a Global Crisis Response Group on Food, Energy, and Finance, to track and address the dangers inherent in this moment of multicrisis, and to ensure emergency response measures are designed to align with long-term sustainability and resilience imperatives.

Two leading members of the Global Crisis Response Group join this session, to help participants understand how multidimensional crisis connects to the climate challenge, and to the issues and tools on the table in this year's climate negotiations.

This session will include presentations and insights from:

• Rachel Kyte – Dean of The Fletcher School at Tufts University

• Vera Songwe – former UNECA Executive Secretary and UN Under-Secretary-General, Co-Chair of the Food System Economics Commission, Non-Resident Senior Fellow at Brookings

• Carlos Alvarado Quesada – former President of Costa Rica, Professor of Practice of Diplomacy at the Fletcher School at Tufts University

• Erin Coughlan de Perez – Friedman School at Tufts University, focusing on Adaptation and Human Disaster Response

• Moderated discussion to follow

Session 4 – International cooperation to create fiscal space for climate action

Tue, Oct 25 – 8:00-9:30 am EDT (12:00-13:30 UTC)

Climate disruption destroys value, erodes future economic opportunity, and depletes resources. The urgent need for public sector response to extreme events and slow-moving disaster scenarios, like prolonged drought and its ripple effects, can lead to resources needed for climate resilient development being directed instead to climate impacts.

This session will look at new strategies and tools that are emerging to help nations invest in recovery while responding to crisis, and to create added fiscal space for overall climate-smart transformation.

This session will include presentations and insights from:

• Karl Burkhart – Co-Founder and Deputy Director, One Earth

• Jessica Hellmann – Institute on the Environment, University of Minnesota

• Joe Robertson – Executive Director, Citizens' Climate International (on Article 6.8 "non-market approaches")

• Moderated discussion to follow

Session 5 – The COP27 Agenda(s)

Thu, Oct 27 – 8:00-9:30 am EDT (12:00-13:30 UTC)

This session will center on an annotated outline of the five broad agendas that together will make up the COP27 UN Climate Change Conference in Sharm el Sheikh.

The provisional agendas map out the topics, draft text, and negotiating spaces, through which the 5-part global climate conference will make consensus decisions and shape international climate policy and law.

This session will include presentations and insights from:

• Selamawit Desta – Climate Vulnerable Forum program lead, GCA

• Binyam Gebreyes – Senior Researcher, Climate Change, IIED

• Isatis Cintrón, CCI Board Secretary and Regional Coordinator for Latin America, and climate scientist, on public engagement

• Quamrul Chowdhury – Lead Negotiator for the LDC Group

• Moderated discussion to follow

Session 6 – Navigating Complexity

Tue, Nov 1 – 8:00-9:30 am EDT (12:00-13:30 UTC)

Climate diplomacy is inherently multidisciplinary work. Atmospheric chemistry and geophysics connect to data systems, food systems, macroeconomics, and the prospects for local development and sustainable prosperity. The viability of nation states may depend in coming years more on climate disruption dynamics than on any other individual or shared challenges.

In this session, we explore the multidisciplinary approach to climate diplomacy, the art and strategy of mutual gains negotiation, and some of the complex interactions to watch for as the process plays out.

This session will include presentations and insights from:

• Marcelo Mena Carrasco – CEO, Global Methane Hub; Professor, the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso; former Environment Minister for Chile

• Mieke van der Wansem – Senior Associate Director of Strategic Initiatives, International Training, and Partnerships of the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy (CIERP) at The Fletcher School at Tufts University

• Rishikesh Bhandary – Assistant Director, Global Economic Governance Initiative, Global Development Policy Center at Boston University

• Closing Remarks: Rachel Kyte – Dean of The Fletcher School at Tufts University

Read the Session Summaries