Overview
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. It established the legal framework within which countries negotiate climate commitments, set up the principle that developed nations should take the lead on cutting emissions, and created the Conference of the Parties as the treaty’s governing body. Almost every country on Earth has ratified it, 198 parties as of writing.
The Conference of the Parties, known universally as COP, meets every year in a different host city. It is simultaneously a formal intergovernmental negotiating session, a platform for thousands of side events and civil society gatherings, and one of the biggest communications events in the climate calendar. For a communications specialist, COP is both a source of real policy outcomes and a media spectacle that requires careful navigation.
The UNFCCC Secretariat, based in Bonn, Germany, manages the process between COPs, tracking national commitments, facilitating technical work, and organising the logistical machinery of the annual meetings. Its work is largely invisible to the public but essential to the functioning of the whole system.
What COP Actually Decides
COP produces negotiated decisions, formal agreements among member states. The most consequential outcomes from recent COPs include the Paris Agreement (COP21, Paris, 2015), which established the legally binding framework for nationally determined contributions (NDCs), and the Glasgow Climate Pact (COP26, Glasgow, 2021), which for the first time explicitly called for the phase-down of unabated coal power.
NDCs, Nationally Determined Contributions, are the climate pledges each country submits under the Paris Agreement. Countries are required to update them every five years, with a ratchet mechanism designed to increase ambition over time. Tracking whether NDCs are credible, whether they add up to the Paris targets, and whether governments are actually delivering on them is a major preoccupation of IPCC scientists, NGOs, and investors alike.
Four topics dominate almost every COP negotiation cycle: NDC ambition, climate finance (particularly commitments to developing countries), loss and damage (compensation for climate impacts that can no longer be adapted to), and carbon market rules under Article 6. Progress on each of these moves slowly and unevenly, which creates sustained communications demand for organisations trying to explain what was actually agreed versus what was promised.
COP26 and the Finance Turn
COP26 in Glasgow in 2021 was notable for the prominent role played by the financial sector. GFANZ, the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, was launched at the event, representing a moment when the finance industry positioned itself as a central actor in the climate transition rather than just a spectator. Mark Carney and the Tragedy of the Horizon was a key architect of that moment, serving as the UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance.
The $100 billion per year finance pledge, made by developed countries at Copenhagen in 2009, resurfaced at Glasgow as a point of contention. Developing nations pointed out the pledge had not been met. This created the political space for a new, larger collective quantified goal on climate finance, negotiations for which continued at subsequent COPs.
COP as a Communications Event
COP generates enormous media volume, much of it imprecise. Announcements made in the “COP presidency” zone, the official negotiating halls, carry legal weight. Pledges made in the “Blue Zone” side events or by private sector actors at the many parallel forums do not. Communications professionals working in this space need to understand the difference between a negotiated COP decision and a voluntary commitment published on the margins.
The tension between genuine progress and performative ambition, sometimes called Greenwashing, is particularly acute around COP. Organisations announce net-zero pledges, new alliances, and funding commitments at the event precisely because the media spotlight is brightest. The Science Based Targets Initiative and similar bodies exist partly to provide a credibility filter for those claims.