The Presidency’s reputation is shaped long before the conference begins. Listening carefully, travelling widely and showing that you are open to all perspectives will help lay the groundwork for a successful year.

In the year leading up to the COP, the Presidency has an important opportunity to meet with parties, hear their concerns and build relationships. 

Past presidencies emphasised that these early consultations were essential for building trust and getting valuable insights into parties’ positions and priorities. Delegations pay close attention to whether the presidency listens with care, understands their position and treats all countries with respect.

That’s why one of the most important abilities of a Presidency is the ability to listen.

Travelling to visit parties is an important part of this. The French COP21 Presidency made use of their extensive diplomatic network, and dedicated four ambassadors to travel to different regions of the world and meet as many senior leaders as possible.

While this approach is not replicable for all countries (and no presidency can visit every country on Earth), your Presidency can always be open to talk and listen.

These conversations are not about pre-negotiating outcomes. Rather, they’re about building trust, understanding perspectives and setting yourself up for successful negotiations. 

There are also other ways to build trust ahead of the negotiations. 

When Egypt hosted COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh in 2022, it had built up trust and legitimacy with many parties after chairing the African Group of Negotiators in 2018-2019 and demonstrating diplomatic nous in the UNFCCC process over many years.

Investing time and capacity into building personal connections, mutual trust and gaining insights into parties’ perspectives will yield great benefits for you as your presidency progresses. 

Questions to consider:

• Are you prioritising consultation over messaging in your early outreach?

• Have you spoken with all major negotiating groups, including those outside your usual diplomatic circles?

• Are you taking time to understand the political pressures and historical context behind parties’ positions?

Trust during the COP depends on how the process is managed. Parties are more likely to support the outcome if they perceive the process as fair, even when difficult decisions must be made.

Once negotiations begin, the Presidency’s role becomes more visible and politically sensitive. This is when trust built earlier is tested, and when new efforts are needed to maintain confidence across all groups. 

Procedural fairness is especially important. Research suggests that when parties in multilateral negotiations perceive the process as fair, they’re more willing to compromise and more likely to reach lasting agreements.

Parties watch closely to see whether the process is just, whether they are given fair chances to meaningfully engage and whether their perspectives are reflected in the evolving texts. 

Presidencies that earned trust during negotiations made sure that all regions were consulted, that changes to text were explained and that parties had time to react and respond. They also supported facilitators to manage difficult conversations with skill and consistency. This all takes time and the Presidency team must be ready to invest a lot of it.

The trust you’ve built up with key people ahead of negotiations can help you when negotiations are underway. It can, for example, give you an opportunity to confidentially check in with key people to sense-check how suggested text will land before you formally present it. 

Factors outside the negotiation room have an impact too. If negotiators and diplomats have to wait in long security queues, aren’t provided decent food and drinks to get them through long days and nights of negotiations or don’t have access to decent accommodation, it can create unnecessary friction that carries into the negotiation room. Similarly, the host country’s statements and actions outside the negotiation room, particularly to the media, can influence how the parties perceive the process. 

When a draft agreement was leaked during COP15 in Copenhagen, it significantly damaged parties’ trust in the Danish Presidency since the draft text had not been prepared in the transparent manner many parties expected. Experiences like these show that once trust is lost, it can be hard for the Presidency to recover. 

Questions to consider:

• Are you creating opportunities for all parties to engage meaningfully in the process?

• Is your team sharing information in a timely and transparent way?

• Are you making it clear how different perspectives are being considered, even when not fully reflected?

The success of a COP is influenced by events far beyond the negotiation halls. Understanding the wider political and economic context allows the Presidency to plan more effectively and engage more diplomatically.

Climate negotiations are never just about climate. They’re shaped by the broader geopolitical context. Financial conditions, regional instability, national elections and diplomatic alliances all play a role in how countries approach the COP. 

According to high-level diplomats who attended COP15, the global financial crisis of 2008 had a significant impact on the level of ambition and outcomes in Copenhagen the following year.

Investing in understanding this wider context will mean you’re better able to anticipate tensions and respond with sensitivity. Forums where national and group-level climate positions are discussed in advance — such as G20 or BRICS meetings, or the African Climate Summit, UN’s Climate Weeks and Davos — are important spaces to engage with.

These meetings often set the tone for what is brought to the COP and can provide early signals of support or concern.

As the host country, your job is to understand the context, identify what you can control and adapt your approach accordingly. Look for risks as well as opportunities. Some external events may make certain things more difficult, but they can also create conditions for unexpected opportunities. 

Questions to consider:

• Is your team tracking the geopolitical and economic issues that may shape the negotiations?

• Are you engaging with other forums where countries prepare their climate positions?

• Have you planned how to respond if external events shift the priorities or expectations of key Parties?

Focusing political energy on the critical issues allows the Presidency to guide the year more strategically. These issues often shape how the COP is remembered. 

The Presidency has an important role in identifying the issues that will define the political story of the year. These can be unresolved items from previous COPs or new issues where political leadership is needed. 

Some conferences have a very clear mandate to deliver something specific. At COP21 in Paris, the clear mandate was to deliver an international treaty, which became the Paris Agreement. At COP24 in Katowice, it was to reach agreement on a rule book for implementing the Paris Agreement. At COP28 in Dubai, it was to conclude the first global stocktake. 

For other COPs, the key outcomes are not so clear in advance. Those COPs can be seen as important stepping stones.

The purpose of setting objectives is to create a shared understanding of where progress is most needed and where the presidency can help unlock it. They help guide decision-making, shape engagement and focus ministerial attention.

Whether your COP has a clear mandate to deliver a specific outcome or is more of a stepping stone, you need to set clear objectives early on that are both ambitious and achievable. They must be ambitious to deliver on the mandate of the convention, and achievable so parties know success is within reach. By identifying them early on, you have more time to set everyone up to find common ground. 

While it’s helpful to set your objectives early, remember they’re not set in stone. They’re a work in progress. Everything from national elections to geopolitical shifts, political declarations and extreme weather events can force you to adjust your priorities. 

While you may have to revise your objectives to varying degrees along the way, you need the objectives to create a sense of where you’re heading and how you plan to get there. If a presidency doesn’t know what it wants from a COP, it’s very hard to deliver. 

Some find it helpful to prepare for different scenarios, for example, best-case, likely-case and worst-case scenarios. Your scenarios can also include more detailed variations based on certain factors — such as election outcomes or progress in other multilateral negotiations — you expect will influence the talks. 

Sometimes unexpected opportunities arise during negotiations. Egypt identified an opportunity to push for an agreement on a loss and damage fund at COP27, even though it was not an outcome that was identified in advance. They saw a chance to deliver, and had the agility and skill to seize it.

Questions to consider:

• Does your COP have a clear mandate to deliver a specific outcome?

• Have you defined ambitious yet achievable objectives to guide the efforts of your COP?

• Have you consulted with other parties and the Secretariat to understand where tensions or opportunities exist?

• Are you prepared to manage the different ways negotiations can develop?

The Presidency will always have problems to handle. Arrange meetings, use your diplomatic network and analyse the information parties share to find out what the contentious topics are, what parties need and where they might be willing to compromise, so you can focus on the critical issues and guide negotiations toward successful outcomes. 

At COP, decisions are made by consensus. In order to deliver on your objectives, you need to make compromises possible. That, in turn, means you need a clear understanding of what the critical issues are so you can build a path to a compromise.

In practice, there are different ways you can start identifying a critical issue. 

The first is to visit delegations and talk directly to people (which also helps build trust and connections). The second is drawing on your network of diplomats and ambassadors who already have connections in other countries. The UNFCCC Secretariat can also help you figure out where to direct your attention.

Third, you have the information that the parties share. This includes the submissions parties put down as part of the formal negotiation process, such as nationally determined contributions and national adaptation plans. It also includes the speeches ministers and chief negotiators give in relevant meetings. These are spaces where they tell you what they want you to hear. That means a lot of it is positioning for the negotiations — and may not reflect what they actually imagine being able to achieve in a compromise.

It’s common for a country to ask for more than they actually need in order to accept a compromise. A country may, for example, list ten things they want, but only have four things they need. That’s part of negotiating. 

No party will go home with everything they wanted, but everyone must go home with something that’s important to them. Your role as the Presidency is to identify the critical issues so you can identify spaces where compromise is possible. Details matter as the compromise often hinges on a single footnote, a word or even the placement of a comma. 

As the Presidency, you will always have sticky negotiation points and tough challenges to handle. If you focus on the challenges that have the potential to advance negotiations, you have the right focus.

Questions to consider:

• Are you building a full picture of each party’s priorities through both formal channels and informal diplomatic networks?

• Are you distinguishing between parties' starting positions and the outcomes they genuinely need if they’re to support a consensus?

• Are you focusing your energy and political attention on the issues that have the greatest potential to unlock broader agreements?

A clear and realistic vision helps focus the COP year by creating a sense of shared purpose and belief. A compelling vision and narrative give parties a reason to invest in the success of the COP. 

Presidencies identify the key objectives they want to achieve, the critical issues they need to solve and the way they intend to do so. All of these elements inform your vision of the COP and the stories you decide to tell about it.

Setting a compelling narrative about how you see your Presidency, what you’ll bring and what you want to achieve together gives parties a reason to invest in the COP’s success. 

When parties think the Presidency has the ability to lead the negotiations to success, they have a reason to think it’s worth making compromises. 

If you create the right feeling among the negotiating parties, you create the conditions for constructive negotiations. 

Presidencies have shared their visions differently in the past. Ahead of COP30, the Brazilians published the first of several open letters on March 10, 2025 — exactly eight months before the negotiations in Belém. In the letter, they layed out the vision and priorities of the Presidency, shared reflections on their role and announced specific initiatives like the Circle of Presidencies and the global mutirão.

A compelling narrative requires a foundation of trust and the direction of clear objectives. When that’s in place, you create the belief that you’re capable of leading a successful COP and that the parties can achieve those goals together.

The balance you have to strike is to put forward a compelling vision that's hard for parties to publicly resist, while leaving enough space for those who might see things differently than you to still feel able to meaningfully engage.

Questions to consider:

• Are you giving parties a clear story about what success looks like and how they can contribute to it?

• Have you communicated the vision early enough to shape how parties plan and engage during the COP year?

• How do you want to communicate your narrative? Who needs to hear it and what’s the best way to deliver the message?

• Can you back up your narrative with your own actions and initiatives?

Use key events to mark different phases of your preparation and clarify what you want to achieve in each phase. This can help you keep track of your progress and make sure you’re setting negotiators up for success when the conference starts. 

The Presidency’s preparations often start even before they’re awarded the presidency and ramp up about a year before they formally assume the role. Similarly, the Presidency’s responsibility doesn’t end when negotiations conclude, as it formally holds the presidency until the following COP begins. 

At a very high level, that means you can consider your Presidency in phases that include the time before you’ve been awarded the Presidency, the preparations as a president-elect, the presidency during negotiations and the period after negotiations.

It’s good practice to identify and start working through sticky issues early. Potential solutions and compromises often need a long time to mature. As a Presidency, you need to work with parties to set them up for potential compromises early on so you don’t leave negotiators with too steep a mountain to climb at the COP.  

You can use key events such as the UN June Climate Meetings (or ‘Bonn sessions’, held at the UNFCCC’s Bonn headquarters), the UN General Assembly in September and the pre-COP meeting (which the Presidency usually hosts a month before the conference begins) as markers of progress. Get a clear idea of what you want to achieve in each phase.

After the conference, you will have important work to do on following up on initiatives, maintaining diplomatic relationships and handing over the presidency to your successor. Consider what tools, advice and documentation you can pass on to set them up for success. 

Here are some questions to consider:

• Do you have a clear idea of what you want to achieve in each phase of your preparations? 

• What are your key milestones and markers of progress, both internally, and publicly?

• How are you planning to use key events like the June Climate Meetings, UN General Assembly and pre-COP?

Negotiations tend to move through different phases. Understanding those phases helps you anticipate challenges, manage momentum and respond appropriately to shifting dynamics.

The two weeks of negotiations often move in phases. These phases are characterised by different needs, levels of intensity and mood.

The COP often kicks off with national statements and rousing speeches at the momentum-generating World Leaders Climate Action Summit. 

The first week proceeds to focus primarily on technical negotiations, where negotiators work through the technical details of various agenda items and draft texts. The second week shifts to high-level political engagement where ministers and senior officials arrive to resolve outstanding issues and political disagreements.

Christina Figueres, former Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, has noticed how the mood tends to change between phases, too. According to her, the COP tends to start at an optimistic high with the World Leaders Climate Action Summit, before gradually descending to its lowest point at the end of the first week. The weekend between the two weeks, Figueres says, is often full of frustration and low morale. 

The mood then changes as delegations get out of their “wonky details” and into the political week, starting to sense that solutions are within reach before the Friday night deadline. Toward the end, on Thursday or Friday, the mood dips slightly again as the political tussle to find compromises takes place. Eventually, usually after going a few hours over time, Parties reach a compromise to conclude a process Figueres says must involve some “magic”.

A good Presidency is part of that magic. Don’t expect a smooth ride from start to finish. The truth is that you will have challenges to manage. Whether it’s slow progress, looming deadlocks or sudden opportunities, you need to learn to identify the triggers so you can quickly shift gears and accelerate negotiations.

Things to consider:

• What issues do you have to prioritise early in negotiations? Which can wait? 

• Does everyone in your team have a clear idea of their roles in the two weeks of negotiations?

• Is your team prepared to recognise and respond to mood shifts that can influence the pace and tone of negotiations?

• Are you ready to recognise and respond to criticism of your Presidency’s performance (which is simply part of the process, regardless of how well your team is actually doing)?

The mandate of the Presidency is to serve the COP process on behalf of all parties to achieve the objectives of the UNFCCC. When you take on the Presidency role, you put national interests aside and formally represent the UNFCCC in the pursuit of its aims.

The mandate of the COP is to reach multilateral decisions that accelerate climate action worldwide in order to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that prevents dangerous human interference with the climate system. That’s the aim of the UNFCCC.

The Presidency’s role is to serve this process. COP is a party-driven process where decisions are taken by consensus. That means the Presidency’s role is to help parties find ambitious compromises, without deciding outcomes for them, in order to achieve the aim of the UNFCCC. There are different ways of approaching this.

Some Presidencies have chosen to take a more active role in setting the political tone and guiding discussions. Others have focused on enabling others through process design and logistics. 

The approach often depends on the capacity and capability of the presidency team. More experienced teams with solid knowledge of the UNFCCC process and strong diplomatic networks tend to be more confident in taking a clear lead. Having the internal capabilities to make independent decisions and identify ways to progress negotiations helps, too. 

There’s no one right way of approaching this. The Presidency has the mandate to lead negotiations and be creative in how to best advance them, as long as it acts within its mandate as an impartial representative of the UNFCCC. Sometimes that requires careful listening, sometimes it requires actively intervening to bring parties together and sometimes it requires strong leadership.

While the Presidency can serve the process, it can’t control it. The negotiations inevitably present you with surprises and unexpected challenges that require some improvisation. 

What distinguishes successful presidencies is not the absence of challenges, but the way they respond to them. Improvisation is easier when the Presidency team has confidence in one another and in the process and when parties trust in the Presidency’s ability to act decisively when the moment demands it.

Questions to consider:

• Are you consistently acting in ways that build trust in your role as an impartial steward of the negotiations?

• What negotiation techniques and diplomatic tools can you use to help parties find compromises without trying to control their decisions?

• Is there a shared understanding across the team of what impartiality looks like in practice?

In order of appearance. 

1. UNclimatechange, Flickr (2019) COP25 Closing Plenary. Sunday 15th 2019

2. UNclimatechange, Flickr (2022) UNFCCC_COP27_19Nov22_FinalNegotiations_KiaraWorth-8

3. UNclimatechange (2022) COP 21/CMP11 President and UNFCCC Secretariat

4. UNclimatechange, Flickr (2022) UNFCCC_COP27_19Nov22_ClosingPlenary_KiaraWorth-27

All under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license.