My CCOP Origin Story (and some random fun)

COP28 Travelogue

Today was an official day of rest for COP28 in Dubai. There were no meetings, and none of the official spaces were open. And it also marked the transition between the week 1 and week 2 cohorts for the CCOP program I’m part of. I don’t have a lot of other news to report today, aside from riding a camel and going dune bashing, so I thought I’d tell you a little more about CCOP.

This is the full group for the Christian Climate Observers Program (CCOP) at COP28 in Dubai:

We had a group dinner tonight at an Arabic tea house to mark the transition between weeks one and two. Half of the people were here for the first week of COP and are going home tomorrow. The other half arrived a day or two ago and will be staying for the next week. I’m in that second group, so I haven’t experienced the official COP proceedings yet. Tomorrow morning I’ll be taking my credentials to get permission to enter the “Blue Zone” where all the official stuff happens.

Last summer I was at a conference in Toronto and met Lowell Bliss, who gave a talk about climate change and our duty as Christians to care for Earth. I talked to him afterwards, because I was looking to connect with more people involved in climate work. He then introduced me to the organization he co-founded, CCOP. We ended up have a zoom call with a couple of the other CCOP leaders, and they invited me to be a part of their group this year.

CCOP is actually a coalition of non-governmental organizations that have been officially recognized by the UN as observers of the COPs. When you are granted that status, you get a certain number of “badges” (usually 3 or 4) which are the official credentials that let you into the Blue Zone. Those partner organizations donate their badges to CCOP, which then has an application process for people to come with them to the COP. So this year we are a group of about 40 people. CCOP particularly looks to bring emerging leaders from all over the world to be part of the experience. BioLogos (the organization I work for) has now applied to be official observers, and so we hope to contribute to CCOP being able to bring more people to future COPs.

We stay together in a hotel. (I thought it was going to be a youth hostel, but turned out to be a 1 or 1.5 star hotel where we all have roommates… but it’s fine. I’ve stayed in worse hotels!). We have breakfast together and then a devotional time together as part of our “base camp”. CCOP is very intentionally a discipleship experience for young people. And then everyone has to develop a personal communication plan for how they will inform and motivate their communities to take responsible action for the planet in the name of Christ.

This is Hannah from Mexico City who was part of the week 1 group. She was excited to meet me, because she listens to my podcast, Language of God. These are moments that I feel like a C- (or maybe D-)list celebrity, which is kind of funny, because the other girls she was with were like, “Hannah, who is that guy you’re so excited to meet?” and she says, “That’s Jim Stump!” and her friends go, “Oh… who’s that?”

Tonight at the dinner, there were inspiring speeches from the leaders and people who had been here for week 1. I’m really excited to see what tomorrow will be like as I get into the business end of this trip.

It was funny to have the rest day of the COP be my first real day in Dubai. The only rest I need is from jet lag. But I set my alarm to wake up on time to meet the group who was going on a desert safari. Our first stop was a camel ranch where we got to mount a camel and walk back and forth a little. This is me with Brian Webb, one of the CCOP leaders (and an unnamed camel).

Call me Jim of Arabia

After the camel experience, we went dune bashing. I wasn’t clear what that was, but had in my mind that we’d get into four-wheelers and drive out across the sand dunes. But no, we stayed in the four-wheel drive SUVs that picked us up at the hotel, and they drove out across the dunes at high speed with the Arabic music turned up high.

The pictures don’t really do it justice, as it looks like an easy stroll through a sandy parking lot here. But inside the vehicles there was a lot of whooping and yelling as we’d go driving into a dune (I suppose “bashing into a dune” is the more appropriate phrase) and the shocks would bottom-out, and the driver would spin the car around and sand would go flying in all directions. Once my vehicle got stuck, and thought we might have to live out there, but the driver said this always happens, and they always get it out. And we did.

Anyway, it was a pretty touristy day. I also walked through the Old Town, which might expect to be old. But in a place like Dubai, there isn’t anything that is old. This was a covered market made to look old where you could buy little miniatures of the tallest building in the world, T-shirts that say “My dad went to Dubai and all he got me was this lousy T-shirt, and Turkish ice cream. I hope tomorrow to start reporting on important negotiations, like whether the parties will agree to a phase out of fossil fuels, or just a phase down.

See you then.