COP stands for "Conference of the Parties." It refers to the annual meetings held by the countries that are signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The primary goal of these conferences is to bring together world leaders, policymakers, scientists, activists, and other stakeholders to discuss and negotiate global efforts to combat climate change.
Each COP meeting is numbered (e.g., COP21, COP22, etc.), indicating the specific session or edition of the conference. These gatherings serve as crucial platforms for countries to set targets, negotiate agreements, and make collective decisions on climate-related issues, including emissions reductions, adaptation measures, finance, and technology transfer.
The outcomes of COP meetings often result in agreements or protocols that aim to address climate change on a global scale. For example, the Paris Agreement was adopted at COP21 in 2015, where nations committed to limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
COP meetings play a significant role in shaping international climate policy and fostering cooperation among nations to tackle one of the most pressing challenges facing the world today.
The global community is facing a pressing climate crisis, putting people and ecosystems at risk with severe consequences already being felt worldwide.
The Resilience Hub serves as a central gathering place, uniting individuals with diverse perspectives and experiences to exchange knowledge, collaboratively devise solutions, and spur decisive action. As the primary pavilion for climate resilience and adaptation at COP, the Hub strives to take the lead in discussions and shape the agenda around resilience. Its goal is to prioritize locally-informed, equitable resilience solutions for both people and nature within the COP process. Additionally, it seeks to amplify the voices of the most vulnerable and climate-affected by integrating Regional Hubs into the Resilience Hub's programming and delivery.
Annually, the Resilience Hub attracts thousands of participants from across the globe, engaging both virtually and in person. Launched at COP26 in Glasgow, it marked the first instance where climate resilience had a physical presence at a COP. In the buildup to COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, the Resilience Hub conducted a series of Regional Resilience Hubs to ensure a broad spectrum of perspectives and best practices on resilience were highlighted, influencing the COP agenda.
Looking ahead to 2023, the Resilience Hub will make a return at COP28 in Dubai, UAE, with a renewed mission to expedite the necessary ambition, action, and investment required for adaptation and resilience. The focus extends from the present into the next decade, aiming to address urgent needs from now through 2030.
According to COP:
Why Resilience?
Resilience is the ability to persist, adapt, and transform in the face of shocks and stresses.
Around the world, we are seeing more and more catastrophic climate impacts each year, particularly in the Global South. By 2030, it’s expected that four billion people will be at risk of climate impacts.
Without sufficient resilience planning and policy-making, communities, cities, countries and entire regions and ecosystems will continue to face the devastating effects of the climate crisis.
We must protect those most vulnerable to climate impacts and address losses and damages – the need to compensate those most affected by the destructive impacts of climate change that cannot be avoided either by mitigation or adaptation – which are exacerbating global inequity.
To keep the goals of the Paris Agreement within reach and deliver the Sustainable Development Goals, we need to halve emissions this decade, rapidly increase resilience and build adaptive capacities, putting people and nature first.
RESILIENCE HUBS are community-serving facilities augmented to support residents, coordinate communication, distribute resources, and reduce carbon pollution while enhancing quality of life. Resilience Hubs use a physical space – a building and its surrounding infrastructure – to meet numerous goals, both physical and social. Resilience hubs are an opportunity to efficiently improve emergency management, reduce climate pollution and enhance community resilience. These spaces also provide opportunities for communities to become more self-determining, socially connected, and successful in the long-term.
Resilience is never complete, nor is a Resilience Hub. By nature, Resilience Hub components will evolve over time to align with changing climates, contexts, and hyper-local needs and assets. Identifying core ‘base’ hub components in addition to longer term ‘optimal’ and ‘ideal’ site elements helps to move away from a ‘check box’ approach by identifying a pathway of incremental steps for site implementation.
