Written for RIAS Quarterly, Mhairi outlines her experience at COP 26 back in 2021.

Turning a corner onto Argyle Street I was greeted with the largest formation of law enforcement I have ever seen. A sea of yellow hi-vis jackets, the long line wound its way down the road until the horizon snuck it out of view. Moving through the crowds I eventually found the temporary turnstiles and tall metal fencing that now ringed the somewhat disparate buildings that form an ‘events’ region on the edge of Glasgow’s west end: the Blue Zone had arrived.

After many solitary hours in queues, security checks, and a fresh admission photograph taken against a Plexiglas screen, I moved forward through the temporary plasticized canvas tunnels linking the buildings together grasping my lanyard: I was in – into what exactly, remained to be seen. 

Upon entry an exhibit immediately caught my eye: several tall steel gabion cages standing like pillars contained piles of fabric illustrating the vast quantity of textile waste generated globally every year, from the design and capturing of the raw materials, through production, distribution, retail, in use and finally at end of life. A staggering 67.76 million tonnes of annual material discard – enough to fill the volume of the world’s largest building, the Boeing Everett factory in the USA, 38 times over. Fast Fashion has taken hold.

Into the mayhem: crowds of people wove their way around me with that collective purpose unique to large gatherings – everyone seemed to have a destination and moved with resolve, as if they had been there for days and already figured everything out.

Inside the SECC the layout was perfunctory; as I wandered along row after row of delegates’ pavilions, some open-plan, others shielded by an assortment of screens, I heard snippets of promises of ‘a greener future’, powered by ‘low carbon alternatives’ to fossil fuels, ‘supported by Governments’ – I felt apprehensive. Knowing that we need more than big energy ‘solutions’ offered by big business I searched for alternative narratives. Trying to discern real action in amongst the climate noise made me feel anxious and at times overwhelmed.

The first was a day of way-finding and exploring, punctuated by moments of art as climate awareness, which provided some much needed calm and solace, despite their often vivid representation of the problems bearing down upon us. I stood mesmerized by a display of shifting sands that seemed to lift out of its two-dimensional digital frame – part of an augmented reality art trail created by Art + Resilience that represented Turner’s 1842 ‘Snow Storm – Steam Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth’ – a painting which partly represents the human effort to overcome the forces of nature – and which served as a reminder of the ever more frequent extreme weather conditions currently experienced around the globe.

Late afternoon, on my way out of the Hydro, passing underneath the over-sized digital globe suspended beneath the tubular gantries and stage lighting, I passed by a countdown – a ‘live’ timer displaying how many millions of tonnes of CO2 were being created as these talks and events proceeded. Making a mental note to check it tomorrow, and with the taste of climate guilt in my mouth, I walked to the station and boarded the train home with mixed feelings.

With yesterday’s sentiments still echoing in my mind, I started my second day intent on discovering and learning, and I was not disappointed. I passed by the ‘Resilience Lab’ and then settled in; perched on a ledge at one side of the space I became transfixed. The morning was filled with various sessions on resilience, around themes of translating reflection into action, and alternative ways to change collective mindsets. A proposition was made: “all stories of the future are science fiction stories”.

A participatory session held by an author culminated in a surprise creative writing exercise. For three minutes the small booth, demarked by slender engineered timber fins, fell silent as pencils moved across paper, and we committed to defining our personal vision of a utopian future in the form of an uninterrupted stream of consciousness. Unencumbered by the bureaucratic and legislative reality of working life, we dreamt, imagined, and described, without pause, a world that we would be proud to call home. It was energizing and liberating.

A second exercise entailed active listening: turning to the stranger next to us we shared our hopes for the future. A young Thai student described to me a desire for the world to reject extractivist attitudes, and for more care to be given to our shared planetary resources. The phrase ‘there is no planet B’ rang in my mind as she spoke.

The inspiration continued: Ms. Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, a Chadian activist and geographer, as well as an advocate for indigenous women’s rights, described that her native language has no separate word for ‘environment’ – there is no articulation of the distinction between people and planet. All are part of the same ecosystem – an inextricably inter-related whole – and so all must be treated with care and respect. She analogized healing the body with the scars we are creating on the natural world. Continued destruction and decimation of our planetary systems must be halted immediately; ecologically regenerative solutions must be found for actions that currently create climate injustice and devastating pollution. 

Having since met some of my fellow RIAS representatives, the day was rounded out by a session at the Nordic Pavilion on the Scottish Government’s proposal for ‘20-minute neighbourhoods’. Themes of community empowerment and nurturing agency within people to engender support and investment in their localities were discussed by representatives from Glasgow to Sweden and culminated in a strong message from one resident “we cannot do it all on our own, but together we can”.

I finished the evening with a brisk and cold walk along the Clyde, culminating in an ACAN exhibition at the New Glasgow Society gallery on the High Street. Once again, themes of hope, resilience, and personal agency rebounded. Climate confessions clung to the single glazed shopfront on post-it notes – many were centered around personal lifestyle choices reinforcing for me a thought that had been growing in my mind throughout the day: when faced with large scale problems that we cannot completely control we must make any changes we can within our own sphere of influence: for architects that domain is larger than we might believe.

Another day began, and I gravitated towards the Cryosphere Pavilion, which quickly became my home away from home for the rest of the week, learning about the technical, political, and economic context of peatland and wetland preservation. Descriptions of the mapping techniques illustrated the variability of the geology, whilst a lack of funding makes the scale of the necessary mapping exercises a vast task for the relatively few involved. Combined with horrifying statistics on Arctic coastal erosion, this gave me a direct insight into the cause and effect of the global scale of our climate issues, and a sense of our privileged position within that process.

Receding coastline in some regions between 1955 – 1974 had been around 0.4m/yr; between 2007 – 2015 the same section was mapped as receding by 8.8m/yr. Listening to two young indigenous women describe the depletion of Alaska’s cultural heritage and sense of place caused by warming sea temperatures and the associated problems was visceral and brought tears to my eyes. Cause some emissions over here; wreak devastation over there.

Hearing our own Scottish Government Head of Peatlands and Land Quality Unit, Ben Dipper, describe the absolute necessity of restoration, and expand upon the resource we have under our very feet in Scotland was a potentially positive counterpoint. With destruction and draining of peatland responsible for 10% of our national CO2 emissions it is such a valuable resource that we cannot afford to continue to waste. Discussing these issues with a friend that evening she concluded “it’s like we’ve been given a giant present and we’ve just thrown it in the bin”. The physical restoration is relatively quick and straightforward; by contrast the political and economic enabling process is slow and cumbersome – years to facilitate projects that only require a few months on the ground. I felt despair as I thought about the brief moments of time in which we are undoing a carbon sink that took millennia to develop.

When leaving at the end of the second day I checked the climate clock: 115.667 million tonnes of CO2 had been released into our atmosphere in under 24 hours. 

The week provoked mixed impressions; however, my lasting feelings are more positive than I initially expected. I listened and learnt from people with ideas and courage, who care about our planet and communities, and who have vast technical skills and cultural knowledge. I am holding on to the humbling memory of hearing the first-hand experiences of others from around the world who are enduring the impacts of our decisions so poignantly as a constant reminder that we can and do have agency: our choices have meaning. The same friend shared with me a quote from Maya Angelou recently: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”