Article begins

This piece is the introduction to a collection of Anthropology News articles on Climate Governance. Click here to read other articles in the collection.

As a graduate student attending a climate meeting for the first time, I did not know what to expect. I hustled down a street in Katowice, Poland, in the early morning of December 3, 2018, for my first day of the 24th Conference of Parties (COP24) hosted by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). COP meetings are officially where global climate targets are negotiated and treaties like the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Climate Agreement are signed by UN member states. They are also where diplomats, politicians, scientific and industry representatives, academics, civil society, youth and religious groups, Indigenous peoples, NGOs and community members, philanthropists, influencers, and others gather to observe, document, engage with, and inform climate actions (Figure 1).

Credit: Emily Hite

Figure 1.…