COP UN Climate Change Conferences

As government officials and UN delegates discuss international decarbonization plans at the annual Conference of the Parties (COP), a rapper listens in and writes ‘rap up’ recaps of the discussions, taking the stage to perform event-ending summaries that capture the essence of each panel and speech, and energize the participants to work towards ambitious emission-reduction targets.

A series of high-level discussions at each conference helped to lay the groundwork for the Paris Agreement in 2015, and the COPs that followed continued with the necessary but too-slow process of developing the internationally-enforceable mechanisms and terms that will commit all countries to decarbonize over the coming years and decades, to help mitigate the worst ecological, economic, and health costs of global warming.

Working with the Coalition for Rainforest Nations (CfRN), Event Rap artist Baba Brinkman was on site at COP21 in Paris, COP26 in Glasgow, COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, and COP28 in Dubai, performing freestyles and ‘rap up’ summaries and songs from his “Rap Guide to Climate Chaos” show and album, entertaining at high-level panels, conferences, and pavilions around the Blue Zone.

CfRN is a New York-based non-profit that negotiates on behalf of developing countries, helping to slow and reverse their national deforestation trends while preserving and growing the “lungs of the world” in the form of healthy and thriving rainforest ecosystems, and the World Climate Summit occurs each year in tandem with the COP conferences, designed to align industry and finance leaders with the low-emission goals of the Paris Agreement.