Naming and shaming.
It’s a theory I learned in my freshman year international politics class. The idea urges outsiders to pressure leaders to make ethical decisions and call them out when they don’t. Mainly used to advance human rights issues, the naming and shaming strategy was a centerpiece of controversy at the United Nations Climate Change meetings in Bonn, Germany in June.
At the Bonn conference that set the stage for the COP 29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan in November, activist groups for business, unions, youth and researchers pushed nations to meet their commitments to the Paris Agreement. Amid dramatic global temperature increases in recent years, the accord seeks to limit temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees from pre- industrial levels.
Activist organizations invoked the naming and shaming approach to pressure diplomats and officials to include their perspectives in official talks, elevate voices often missing from the negotiating table, and consider more diverse perspectives. If the groups are ignored, they threatened social accountability.
Attendance at COP 28 in Dubai in 2023 exceeded 65,000 people, an 80% increase in attendance from the previous year. The summit was flooded by an unprecedented number of observers and delegates. Specially-invited attendees included 9,000 private sector lobbyists, bankers, finance executives, and chief executives of energy companies, such as ExxonMobil.
Observers in Bonn expressed concerns about the decreased space for those supporting the Paris Agreement's goals while the fossil fuel industry's presence increased. With rising demand for observer badges, there was a call for fair distribution, especially to ensure representation from developing countries.
Observers in Bonn expressed concerns about the decreased space for those supporting the Paris Agreement's goals while the fossil fuel industry's presence increased. With rising demand for observer badges, there was a call for fair distribution, especially to ensure representation from developing countries.
Advocates also called for measures to increase meaningful and active engagement with diplomats and officials themselves. One proposal urged establishing more public, formal opportunities for observers to engage in deep dialogue with delegates representing nations.
Difficulty obtaining visas for the conference in Bonn, particularly for attendees from developing countries, drew criticism from delegates. While host countries can deny visas for security reasons, many participants saw these denials as unfair.
Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the UNFCCC which oversees the global climate negotiations, said that he had raised these concerns with Germany, the host country, and emphasized the need for a more efficient visa process in the future.
“The role of civil society is essential to ensure all voices have a chance to be heard, and to hold all of us to the promises that we make" said Stiell. "We will keep playing our part to ensure a safe space for meaningful and inclusive participation.”
Looking forward, increased observer participation may improve conference access, but it would also mean more hotel rooms, international flights, and infrastructure development.
As COP 30 in Belém, Brazil approaches in 2025, capacity challenges are becoming more evident. Sitting on the Amazon River Delta, the city is deeply connected to the world's largest and most biodiverse rainforest. The Amazon rainforest maintains large portions of the world's freshwater supply, sequestered carbon, and biomass, all crucial to Indigenous communities, global temperatures, and the planet's water cycle. However, colonization, deforestation, and degradation pose daily threats to the Amazon, displacing Indigenous peoples, endangering species, and releasing more carbon into the atmosphere.
On top of environmental troubles, the city’s infrastructure is constrained. Home to around 1.5 million residents, 23% have inadequate access to water and 82% have inadequate access to a sewage treatment system. The city lacks hotel and public transit capacity for the expected 40,000 or more conference attendees.
These capacity constraints contradict calls to increase observer access at the conference because they counter the fundamental reasons we have COP in the first place: to mitigate climate change and effectively adapt to its consequences.
Bringing more people, industry, and emissions to a region of the world so vulnerable to environmental degradation and climate change only accelerates these processes, exploiting a fragile ecosystem and an under-resourced city.
Balancing the missions of COP summits with the need for accessibility, transparency, and accountability may call for solutions like allowing virtual access to the conference. A robust virtual platform would enable a global audience and engage a diverse array of participants without adding pressure on host cities and conference spaces.
However, virtual participation has its limitations; connectivity issues, time zone differences, and the lack of direct, in-person interaction can reduce the effectiveness of observers who bring accountability and transparency.
Besides these barriers, a virtual conference option is an easy fix for the larger issue at hand: COP’s unprecedented growth due to attendees who are uninterested in mitigating climate change. At COP 28 in Dubai, fossil fuel lobbyists were seen with observer badges. We can expect the same at COP29 in Baku. Why should observer badges go to individuals disinterested in preventing climate change, instead of activists, students, and researchers who advocate for and study this topic every day?
The applicability of naming and shaming was clear at the Bonn meetings this summer. It’s crucial for activists to share negotiating spaces with decision makers whose choices impact every citizen on this earth. The pressure they impose on our world leaders, the voices they bring to the table, and the information they deliver to the rest of the world help create a balanced, informed, and just negotiating process–one that is essential to fighting climate change.