Collecting stories at COP26

Last fall, WHD Deputy Director Rachel Cardone had an opportunity to interview dozens of delegates at the 26th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP) convening in Glasgow, Scotland. Over the last several months, she has sought to integrate what she learned into how WHD approaches its work.

“I was inspired to find my way to COP26 by someone on a global water policy meeting video call last August,” Cardone said. “It was 4 a.m. for me, and one of the speakers called us to attention and said something like, ‘COP is our last chance,’ suggesting that our window for addressing climate change was closing. She was so earnest and sincere about it.”

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a “code red for humanity” in August 2021, around the same time as that fateful call. A primary objective of COP26 was to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement — a legally binding international treaty on climate change adopted in 2015 — and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change — an agreement ratified by 197 countries intended to prevent human interference with the climate system. Glasgow was seen by many as the last chance for humanity to stave off climate disaster.

“After the call, I kept reading and hearing more people calling it our 'last chance.' I couldn’t seem to get away from it,” Cardone said. “The situation struck me as almost farcical. We were expecting solutions from people who, like the rest of us, had been dealing with the COVID crisis and had been awkwardly conducting business by Zoom for two years. And of course, we’re all staring at the science and experiencing our new climate ‘abnormal’ in our daily lives. What we see is terrifying. My background is in the humanities and policy, and I found the situation fascinating — this disconnect between the seriousness of the climate problem, the monumental expectations we had for negotiators, and the personal challenges we all faced in the midst of a global pandemic. It became somewhat of an obsession, and I tried to reconcile it with anyone I could talk to. And then one morning, I decided I had to go to the COP to talk it over with the delegates themselves.”

Cardone was further motivated by the fact that COP26 was the first global climate summit to feature a water pavilion, hosted by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) and sponsored by various water funders and implementers. The pavilion was intended to raise awareness about the role water could play in meeting the goals of the Paris Accord. With dawn-to-evening programming, pavilion organizers sought to highlight problems and solutions to the water crisis and create a space for discussion and dialogue around how to advance the achievement of water-related development goals in higher- and lower-income countries around the world.

Cardone’s background working on global water issues created a useful entry point: she could focus her discussions on the intersection of climate and water as a starting point toward identifying opportunities for greater coherence in WHD’s work.

“As water sector professionals, we know many of the effects of climate change will be experienced through water, including sea level rise, extreme weather, floods, and droughts,” Cardone said. "And yet, until COP26, the climate ‘sector’ was primarily interested in mitigation through alternative energy sources. The water pavilion offered a chance to explore how experts are thinking about the intersection of climate and water, and more importantly, what they’re going to do about it. Because it’s still nascent and unsettled, it also seemed like a good time to capture delegates’ personal experiences and stories, not just their policy stances or organizational missions.”

The idea resonated with the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation and SIWI, which graciously supported Cardone and Jessica Plumb, an environmental journalist, with credentials and on-site support for interviewing. Armed with a recorder and an initial set of prompting questions, the team went to Glasgow.

What emerged in delegates’ stories ranged from the tragic to the hopeful. A youth activist from Maryland shared how his family home was lost in an extreme flood event — and he might have lost his life if not for an impromptu lunch in the next town over. A PhD student from the Niger Delta in Nigeria shared how, after reconciling with her conscience, she walked away from a lucrative petroleum engineering program to learn about renewables. A fire commissioner in Marin County, California, shared how she’s working to address fire risk in her community from an equity perspective, while scientists from the UK advocated for restoring peatlands as a critical water/climate linkage.

Several interviewees shared stories about their spiritual connections with water, expressed through their cultural practices. Others shared stories about how climate change contributes to intergenerational conflict, in communities and in their own families, as peoples’ personal relationships with water change along with the climate.

Cardone was particularly interested in asking delegates to share stories about what inspired them to pursue their line of work and what continues to drive them today. J. Carl Ganter, of Circle of Blue, an international network that informs water-related decision-making, calls this “the epiphany question.”

“I talked a lot with Carl before and during the conference about what we were doing, and he was very helpful throughout. We agreed that water professionals often have the best stories about what drew them to the work, and it would be fun to share and capture those stories.”

Was Cardone able to reconcile the conundrum that inspired her? 

“I think my hypothesis was correct, unfortunately,” she said. While COP26 generated useful and necessary agreements, the results were more incremental than transformative.

Back at Stanford, Cardone and others are exploring how WHD can contribute at the intersection of water and climate. WHD has historically been known for its work on developing and testing solutions in the water supply and sanitation sectors, primarily in low- and middle-income countries. Climate, while acknowledged as an important factor affecting these problems, hasn’t been a primary focus. Likewise, the issues on which WHD focuses haven’t been at the forefront of climate discussions.

With Stanford's John Doerr School of Sustainability slated to open this fall, Cardone hopes WHD can continue to align with colleagues in Water in the West, a Stanford group formed to address the West’s growing water crisis; the Global Freshwater Initiative, another Stanford group working to develop strategies for promoting the long-term viability of freshwater supplies; and other programs within the schoo to amplify their collective impact on on the water and climate arenas.

Cardone hopes to model this integration by threading the stories and themes collected at COP26 with Stanford researchers, either as narrative stories or a podcast series. She also hopes there is a dedicated space for storytelling to become part of any research agenda, and not just a communications tool.

“The interviews we collected really highlighted how deeply personal and almost visceral the climate crisis is for people who devote their lives to the challenge,” Cardone said. “We are living in an era when there are no easy answers and no easy solutions, just hard choices and tradeoffs. In the midst of all of this, the strength of the human spirit is on display, and it comes to the surface through the stories we tell. It’s deeply unsettling and wildly inspirational all at once. It’s an interesting space for academics to play in — a space we can come to with humility and then to share what we learn in a way that helps others navigate the unknown.”