CHRONICLE; Perhaps it is at the Bus Stop all the Important Things Happen at COP

Much has been written about how no one is here, but when I try to navigate my way through the long corridors here at COP30 in Belém, it seems as if everyone is here.

There are so many panel discussions, so many meetings, plans for future meetings, slideshows and interviews.

^{Text: Lena Scherman}

A lot of things are hopeless, like the payment system at the small food kiosks, where you first have to queue up to top up your local payment card – luckily, I did that on Saturday – and then, with the local card in hand, you have to queue up again to order food and pay.

If you’re unlucky – and I was unlucky – you don’t have enough money left on your card when it’s time to pay. How are you supposed to know? I don’t know. Then you have to repeat the whole procedure: queue up to deposit money, queue up to pay, queue up to get your food. I thought that system disappeared with the Soviet Union.

It’s hot, and the hard-working air conditioning smells like a diesel generator.

But free Brazilian coffee is served almost everywhere, the shuttle buses from town to the COP area work perfectly, and my accommodation happens to be right next to one of the stops.

But none of this has anything to do with the climate conference, does it? Or maybe it does, because it’s at the bus stop that it happens: the conversations (we recognise each other by the badges hanging around our necks), the exchanges of information, the bonds of friendship. But something else happens too, before the panel discussions, after the slide shows and in the coffee queue. Those ‘in-between spaces’ are perhaps our most intelligent area.

There are still many days of negotiations left, and I really hope that they will reach an agreement and sign a document that allows us to hope for a better world in the future. Or maybe they won’t. But a lot has been achieved nonetheless. All those who have gathered here and are talking to each other, providing input and sharing their thoughts – everything that is happening in between the ‘important’ talks and seminars. It is a great achievement that so many people are heading in the same direction and want the same thing. Then I miss the sea. That will have to be the subject of my next column.