Our Story

In the cold winter weeks of December 2009, the world gathered in Copenhagen for the biggest summit in the history of mankind. They had one goal of existential importance. The near-to 200 countries had to negotiate and agree on a global treaty to fight the greatest threat to the human species – climate change. In a spectacular showdown, the summit crashed in the last night. It cost the world six precious years of climate protection until countries sealed the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015.

 

Along with millions of others, we were deeply disappointed with this outcome and the effects on our planet. We wanted to find out why this historic opportunity was not seized. Years of research later, the answer was clear: negotiations before and at Copenhagen were not handled in the best possible way. It was the opposite — key best practices from mediation and facilitation had been neglected. This turned into our mission: to ensure that all future summits would follow state-of-the art negotiation design as a minimum criterion for success.

 

So, successfully supporting France for the Paris summit in 2015 became our first lighthouse project with tangible impact, and a global climate agreement as an outcome. This spirit keeps us going to create better negotiations on the global challenges of our time!