There is a team of LRI lawyers in Glasgow that provide hands-on legal support to delegates from poor and climate vulnerable developing countries. While the media focus on big political announcements and the various celebrities that visit the conference, climate negotiators are more concerned with the unresolved technical issues for implementing the Paris Agreement.

Delegates have, for example, asked us to compare different iterations on the draft decision text on carbon markets, about the EU Commission’s proposal for a carbon border adjustment mechanism, the best fit of common timeframes for NDCs into the wider reporting framework of the Paris Agreement, how the governing bodies of the Convention, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement (COP, CMP and CMA) relate to each other or for suggestions on the “operationalization” of the global goal on adaptation.

The LRI volunteers during the first week of the conference were Caroline Mair, a lawyer (solicitor) from Trinidad & Tobago, and Korey Silverman-Roati, the current Climate Law Fellow at the Sabin Center at Columbia University. In the second week the volunteers are: Sarah Hill-Smith, at trainee at Clyde & Co, Daniela Morich a French qualified lawyer with a government and commercial law practice background and Jule Schnakenberg, a law student at Aberdeen university and member of the World Youth Climate Justice Team.

They talk to negotiators and forward their legal questions (if any) to our experts from universities, law firms and barrister chambers. In addition, they have helped us to distribute over 500 copies of our guidebook on the Paris Agreement at the conference. The content of the guide is also available as an App that has now been downloaded to 75 Android and over a hundred Apple phones.