After we’ve been here in Dubai for a few days, it occurs to me that I haven’t seen any children, but today the sounds of playing, their squeals and laughter, are spilling in from the street.

I have been reminding myself to notice, to slow down, and to pay attention. It occurs to me that much of this experience, the way we have been graciously welcomed, the way the city has made conspicuous display of its greening efforts, the giant purple and pink windmills spinning in still skies, is all a sort of theater.

The poor air quality has been challenging for me to navigate. The city’s skyline is obscured each morning by a thick gray haze and by what I suspect is air pollution. This morning, the Air Quality Index read 158, an ‘unhealthy’ level. The heat has been particularly stifling because the venue, Expo City, is spread out, and most days, we have been directed to walk long circuitous routes, cordoning us off into mazes of retractable belt barriers as they try to manage the crowds.

I have been paying particular attention to workers who undertake the daunting task of making all this work, the running of a temporary city within a city with over 110,000 temporary citizens. And what a gorgeous, diverse citizenry on display here. It is moving to hear so many languages and dialects and see traditional clothing and finery from around the globe. I have been heartened by the visibility of indigenous communities and the plentiful panels featuring indigenous speakers and perspectives.

It is perplexing to know how to ‘DO’ a COP. There are so many offerings across a vast campus and gorgeous artwork to take in, and on-site actions popping up everywhere in between. The most grounding experience I have had as a COP newbie was getting some insight into the two spheres of activities happening simultaneously – the business of negotiations and the work of advocacy and education happening all around it.

Yesterday, I observed a few hours of finance negotiations, the slow crawl to total consensus between the 196 parties present here. This is an awesome, inconceivably arduous project – to find a way to bridge all the differences, tensions, barriers, histories, complications, and discrepancies to find a way to total agreement. And then there is this teeming swirl of advocacy, innovation, propaganda, commerce, and pageantry all around it. The proximity matters, I think, as each side sharpens the other, each side bringing the other to clarity.

Rather than brave the crush of people and the heat of Expo City, this morning we had planned to visit The Hope House, a COP28 offsite venue in the arts district, but we discovered when we arrived that the morning’s event had been canceled. So, we set out to see the city, to explore the spice souks, to ride a water taxi, and eat at the famous Arabia Tea House. Seeing these parts of the city was refreshing because this experience, the last week in Dubai, has been, in a word, overwhelming. My experience at COP28 in Dubai has been a deluge of emotions, conflicts, questions, and semi-formed opinions.

Erin Sharkey is a writer, arts, and abolition organizer, cultural worker, and film producer based in Minneapolis. She is the editor of A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars (Milkweed Editions ’23). Erin is a founding coop member of the Fields at Rootsprings, a retreat and respite space in central MN, and co-founder, with Junauda Petrus, of an experimental arts collective called Free Black Dirt. She is the producer of film projects, including Sweetness of Wild, an episodic web film, and Small Business Revolution, which explored challenges and opportunities for Black-owned businesses in the Twin Cities in the summer of 2021. Sharkey has received fellowships and residencies from the Loft Mentor Series, VONA/Voices, the Givens Foundation, Penumbra Theatre, Coffee House Press, the Bell Museum of Natural History, Black Visions, Headwaters Foundation and the Jerome Foundation. She has an MFA in creative writing from Hamline University and teaches with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.

Erin is a Climate Generation Window Into COP delegate for COP28. To learn more, we encourage you to meet the full delegation and subscribe to the Window Into COP digest.

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Learning to “DO” COP