The new text of the Draft Paris Agreement dropped at 21h on Thursday at the UN climate summit. From the word cloud above, you can see that it's an agreement that shall develop into a party. And where nations should take action to meet, adapt, build, support, and implement! 

There was a frantic rush for printers and the document center as delegates, observers and press scurried to take in the new document, which COP President Laurent Fabius said was the second to last text, aiming to finalize tomorrow into the "universal, legally binding, ambitious, fair, lasting agreement that the world's waiting for. I think we'll make it."

Analysis by my friends at parisagreement.org (below) shows that we're down to just 48 brackets, or points of contention. The Parties are now hashing these out in a closed-door "solutions indaba", to the disappointment of keen observers. 

While we wait to see what will emerge in the morning, you can see a helpful ongoing analysis of the text evolution (what's in, what's out) at the Deconstructing Paris blog, and catch up on who's said what at the negotiations (that were open to observers) with accuracy, insight, and funny GIFs at the Google doc run by COP21 heroes @LaingHamish and @ryanmearns. For the full GIF-based reaction to COP21, try Leehi's ParIsThisIt?  

I'm excited and honored to be attending the climate summit in Paris as an accredited observer from Lund University. This is where nearly 200 countries will come together and aim to reach an agreement about how to change the path we're now on (a business-as-usual world headed for +4-5°C) to a more sustainable world that avoids the worst impacts of climate change. 

This will be my first time attending the United Nations climate negotiations, and I am looking forward to learning more about the process and how to make my research more relevant to policy, as well as to serve as an advisor to the Youth in Landscapes initiative at the Global Landscapes Forum, and take part in the Anthronaut Experience- a virtual reality hackathon with scientists, artists, designers, and virtual reality experts to make climate science narratives a 3D experience.

As I'm busy packing my bags, I'm gathering reading material for the 16-hour train ride to Paris. Here's what I'll be reading up on: 

General background: 

• The Road to Paris blog curated by my friends and colleagues Denise Young and Johannes Mengel at the International Council for Science is a good place to start- see the highlights here. 
• Seven key issues to be addressed at the Paris climate summit, by my friend and former labmate Simon Donner. 

Current perspectives: 

• Both Nature and Science have special issues devoted to the history of the talks, and what's at stake.
• The current issue of the Economist also features the Paris talks on their cover. 

Preparing for attending the meeting: 

• The COP21 Information Hub is a good place to start for official info on schedules & logistics. 
• Side events schedule
• Science-related events, curated by Johannes and Nora at ICSU 
• Help for Multilateral Environmental Agreement negotiators who encounter problems from Foundation for International Environmental Law & Development - helpful, plain language overview of how negotiations work, and what to do in situations such as "A more experienced negotiator bullies you" or "negative media reports about your country." 
• Guidelines for civil society participation at UNFCCC 
• RINGO news- Lund University is part of the "Research and Independent Non-Governmental Organizations to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change." RINGO hosts a daily briefing at 09:00. 

Keeping up with the negotiations in real time:

• During the meeting, the Earth Negotiations Bulletin covers the previous day's events and where the negotiations now stand on their website and through Twitter.

I'll be following and Tweeting to the #COP21 hashtag, and also posting under the #LUCOP21 hashtag for members of the Lund University delegation at the COP. Please follow me on Twitter and let me know if you have any questions about the meeting, I'll do my best to answer! 

Our analysis showed the words ‘carbon’, ‘climate’, and ‘change’ are all among the most used words for science, business, NGOs and G7, but not the religious statements, indicating a technical and problem-oriented approach among these groups. The word ‘Earth’/’global’ shared similar ground between religion, science and NGOs, indicating a political or philosophical outlook shared by these groups. Surprisingly, religion and science shared the word ‘human’ among their most used words, indicating a shared worldview seeing people as both the cause and the solution to the problem of climate change.  

In the beginning of the study we hypothesized that there would be words that would be found among all categories, but as the figure shows, there was no word that all five sectors used most commonly. However, the existence of these statements still sends a strong message that the international community - from religious groups to businesses and from scientists to NGOs - wants their leaders and policymakers to focus on stronger action, leading to solutions to tackle human-induced carbon emissions driving climate change in Paris. At the same time, the religious perspectives highlight the social values these choices represent, and how fundamental they are to our way of life.  ​

This post summarizes research by Marius Sandvoll Weschke and Kimberly Nicholas presented at the Transformations conference held in Stockholm, October 2015. ​

Read an interview with Marius about this work in the Finnish newspaper Kyrkpressen here.