What Can We Expect From COP29? 

The Extreme Hangout founder Amber Nuttall shares her hopes for the ‘finance COP’ – kicking off today in Baku, Azerbaijan – with Lucinda Baring.

Interview: Amber Nuttall On COP29

Why did you want the Extreme Hangout to have a presence at COP? 

I’m trying to bring different people to COP and to encourage different voices. The language we listen to at COPs is the language of politics, science and business – three languages many people find incomprehensible. As a result, you find they shy away from the conversation because they’re too embarrassed to admit they don’t understand what the 17th acronym just thrown at them actually means. Or the bits they do understand are so terrifying they feel paralysed and run in the opposite direction with their hands over their ears, hoping their governments will make the best possible decisions on their behalf.  

We want to change that by offering a stage everyone can come and use. To say ‘right, who wants to come and have their voice heard?’ We’ll have panel discussions but also art workshops, fireside chats, live music events, cinema screenings. You have to bring some fun into it. The whole world needs a jolly good injection of joy right now. Not everyone at COP needs to wear a hair shirt, open-toe sandals and carry a hacky sack.  

Who is coming? 

We are hosting more than 1,000 speakers and 21 events. I particularly want to encourage young people to come to the Extreme Hangout and I want us to lead with our social media coverage. Young people are brilliant at communicating and we want them to come and use our space, to interview people who are around, and then help get these stories out. How can the rest of the world understand what is going on or take their own action if they can’t access the stories? 

People coming to our stage include teams from TikTok, the We Are Family Foundation, founded in New York by Nile Rogers, and the One Young World. But we’re also welcoming smaller organisations, such as EcoNews from Argentina, a news site and social media platform, which is fantastic at sharing stories.  

We’ll also be joined by lots of wonderful volunteers from across Baku, mostly young students we contacted via LinkedIn. The Azerbaijani government has closed schools and colleges in Baku for two weeks (I think to help clear the city of traffic) and I want to extend an open invitation to all young Azerbaijanis to come to the Extreme Hangout. We have lots of Azerbaijani voices on the stage too: another important element of COP for us is to celebrate the host country’s culture.  

The next generation are so disappointed in us, but they can help us get it right; their thinking is drastically different to ours, and we have to help them implement it. We’ve all got different lenses and this intergenerational conversation is crucial – the elders have lived through a lot and have wisdom, but today’s youth have a different knowledge that’s essential too. We need much more diversity in the room. 

Do you object to COP29 being held in Azerbaijan? 

It costs host nations millions to stage COP, and there aren’t many who can afford it. Of course, Azerbaijan is not perfect. But the UK isn’t perfect either and there were plenty of people who were unhappy about us hosting COP26. We live in a giant greenhouse. If you start throwing stones, you’ll get showered in glass.  

Can COP move the needle on climate change? 

Tragically, it appears not enough. Do I believe that it could? Yes. But it all comes down to collective ambition – and collective ambition starts with individual ambition. We talk about the need for systemic change, but we cannot wait for systemic change to achieve what we need to by 2030. Everyone has to play a part.  

COP is wonderfully democratic. We have small island nations who have the same vote as the US or China. But if the votes for change have to be unanimous – as agreed in the 2015 Paris Agreement – it’s no wonder the needle only shifts a millimeter each year. We have to ask a difficult question: at what point do we stop celebrating COP’s democracy? Wouldn’t 75 percent of the vote in favour of a certain idea or agreement feel fair, right and good? Maybe everyone’s just too chicken to go there.  

We didn’t get where we are today by burying our heads in the sand. We have a family of nations in the commonwealth that we have unique access to – and a duty of care to. Let’s come together and use some of these small island developing states as testbeds for new emerging technologies, and let’s make sure they benefit from it financially. Let’s speak to people in Vanuatu or Tuvalu, who are literally living with their feet in the water, and let’s find out what they are facing and how we can help. It goes back to ambition again. Organisations like Client Earth are doing the big work, and when governments and large corporations realise they don’t have anything left to hide behind, perhaps then they will mobilise.  

What can we do to help?

We led a discussion during London Climate Action Week about imperfect environmentalists. We’re not telling anybody they can’t ever eat steak again or take another flight. We can all do little bits and acknowledge where we’re not perfect. We will always need those really brave, gutsy people like Boyan Slat or Sian Sutherland, and we need big business and government to take action, but in simply conversing about climate change, we give it space.  

You might find something touches your heart, or a gut instinct, and it could be something really weird or super simple. You don’t have to sign up for all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed at Paris; if you care about little prickly hedgehogs and you decide that life on land is the SDG you can support, that is fantastic. You don’t have to understand the other 16, or even care about them. But if we can all throw ourselves behind something, if only because it’s the right thing to do, that’s enough. The question – and our driving goal at the Extreme Hangout – is how do we unlock that concept in everyone else’s head?  

‘It always seems impossible until it’s done,’ Mandela said, and of course he was right. 

extremehangout.org 

When & Where?

COP29 takes place from 11-22 November 2024 in Baku, Azerbaijan. Find out more at unfccc.int/cop29