Trust, listening and reaching an ambitious consensus

Laurent Fabius, President of the 2015 climate conference that created the historic Paris Agreement, shares with CEMUNE how trust may build between facilitators - and how a South African meeting practice called Indaba helped advance the negotiation process in Paris.

This exclusive 18-part mini-interview series marks the latest release of “Summits Unplugged: The Multilateral Negotiations Podcast” of the Centre for Multilateral Negotiations (CEMUNE). We met with Laurent Fabius, former French Minister of Foreign Affairs and masterful negotiator, to discuss in-depth the behind the scenes of how COP21 was run and the work of the UNFCCC Secretariat. With just two weeks to go before COP26 kicks off in Glasgow this year, learn what it takes to successfully negotiate multilateral deals for climate action. In true CEMUNE fashion, we’re “unplugging” a variety of topics, from international law, the differences between COP21 and COP26 and the role of varying actors in climate talks to practical and deeply personal aspects of diplomacy that make negotiating in these contexts such a unique and important challenge.

COP26: 10,000 people negotiate in the name of 7.9 billion people and one world. CEMUNE’s mission is to give each of them the skills to speak and listen to each other.