At a conference where governments negotiate the future of the planet, why are some of its most consequential conversations labelled “side-events”? As COP31 approaches in Antalya, these platforms are not simply conference extras. They are increasingly necessary spaces where voices beyond the negotiating table can shape priorities, build alliances, and test ideas that may become tomorrow’s policy.
There is an irony in the term “side-event”. At the UN climate conference, governments negotiate decisions, while these gatherings are placed linguistically and sometimes institutionally at the margins. Yet they bring into the conversation people who rarely have a direct seat in formal negotiations: Indigenous representatives, local practitioners, women-led organisations, researchers, young people, businesses and subnational governments.
That matters because climate change is no longer confined to emissions targets. It reaches into energy security, food systems, public health, migration, livelihoods, and questions of justice. No government delegation holds all the knowledge needed to navigate these intersections. It is that climate governance needs more kinds of expertise, experience, and scrutiny than negotiating rooms alone can accommodate.
Who gets to shape the climate conversation?
Side-events perform a complementary function. They create space for evidence and experience to meet, assumptions to be questioned, and people outside official delegations to put issues on the international agenda.
Their value lies not merely in giving more people a microphone. It lies in widening what is heard and what is recognised as credible knowledge. A farmer describing changing growing seasons, an Indigenous leader explaining ecosystem stewardship, or a researcher presenting evidence on climate displacement can bring dimensions to policy discussions easily lost in diplomatic language.
The Belém Gender Action Plan, adopted at COP30 for 2026–2034, illustrates the importance of recognising differentiated experiences. Its 27 activities and 98 deliverables explicitly refer to Indigenous, migrant and rural women, women smallholder farmers, women with disabilities, women of African descent and environmental defenders. The plan does not demonstrate that side-events produced the negotiated outcome. It does, however, underline why climate policymaking must make room for experiences that broad categories such as “women” or “vulnerable communities” can obscure.
Where ideas find their first audience
Side-events can be testing grounds for ideas not yet ready or politically positioned to enter formal negotiations. Discussions on climate and health, Indigenous rights, equity, emerging technologies, and sectoral transitions can build evidence, connect advocates with decision-makers and establish shared language around issues that may later gain policy traction.
Research identifies a wide range of governance functions for COP side-events: generating and circulating knowledge, diffusing norms, linking people and policy areas, building institutional capacity, encouraging integrated thinking, and developing proposals, practices, products and services. In short, they can connect science and policy, international commitments and local implementation.
A session on distributed renewable energy, for example, may bring together researchers, technology providers, finance institutions, policymakers and community organisations. The conversation can move beyond technology to affordability, livelihoods, gendered access and local ownership. It may lead to a research partnership, pilot project or more practical approach to implementation.
A platform is not the same as influence
There is, however, a danger in romanticising side-events. COP calendars are crowded, and some sessions become exercises in institutional visibility, polished presentations and familiar voices speaking to familiar audiences. Access is unequal: travel costs, accreditation, language and networks shape who gets heard. A platform may widen participation while still reproducing hierarchies.
Nor should a packed room be mistaken for policy impact. Are recommendations documented and followed up? Do partnerships continue beyond the conference? Does evidence reach national policymakers? Are community perspectives reflected in programme design, finance and implementation?
Organisers should judge side-events not only by attendance, but by the quality of participation and what follows: sustained collaborations, accessible knowledge, policy engagement and demonstrable links to action. Better documentation and follow-up can stop valuable conversations disappearing when conference badges come off.
As COP31 approaches in Antalya, side-events should be understood as part of the infrastructure of climate governance not a substitute for formal negotiations, nor a guarantee of influence, but a necessary complement. Negotiating rooms confer authority on decisions. The wider COP space can help build the knowledge, relationships and public legitimacy that make those decisions relevant and more likely to be implemented.
Perhaps the most useful question is no longer why these conversations happen on the side. It is whether climate governance can afford to keep them there.