Привет, friend! PLOV here, I mean, Bernard. Maybe. I may not have slept that much in the past couple of days. I ended up having to take some Floor Time yesterday. Snored right through my colleagues typing up their notes from the Bulletin. They were kind enough to let me stay that way. (They were not kind enough to forgo taking pictures.)

Anyways, welcome back to PLOV, and the haze of the final countdown to the COP plenary.

Tomorrow: the final plenary. The past two days: approvals.

The CMS is, at is core, a very long list of migratory animals that need to be protected. To be protected, they are put onto a list which is in the appendices of the Convention. Appendix I means they're in trouble. Appendix II means they're really in trouble.

The objective for a lot of the people who have shown up here is to get whatever species they're fighting to have some sort of protection onto the Appendices. Or else, to push the different countries who are in the room to come up with some Concerted Action to actually take care of the species.

For all of Thursday and all of Friday, the game is: names onto lists. It gets to be a rhythm: the agenda item on, say, the Nut-Cracking Chimpanzee is brought up. Whoever put it on there introduces a document that says some variation of this species is really not doing well right now. The Chair asks for comments. Either no one says anything, or a handful of countries and NGOs raise their hands to speak a variation of yes, we agree, this is important; we need to protect this animal, and we're happy to help. And the document is forwarded to the Conference of the Parties for final approval.

So we report, name after name, protection after protection: the Eurasian Lynx. The Manul. The Straw-Coloured Fruit Bat. It's satisfying, almost inspiring, work, in its own monotonous way. A litany of animals, soon to be under a joined-up net of protection around the world.

Except, of course, they're not. They get onto the list because they're under threat of extinction. You hear reports about animals who are being protected now because they've undergone a depopulation of ninety-six percent in the past thirty years. The Committee admits a species with a hundred and thirty individuals known alive.

The CMS itself gives no protection: it just commits countries to collaborate to protect these species. No one enforces the mechanism other than conservation organizations, government bureaucrats, people who show up to do the work. What Thursday and Friday become are a list of articles of faith.

I'm off note-taking for a while, so I get antsy enough to walk down the golden main hall--past the diorama of the AI-generated dolphin with two eyes on its left side, along the giant snow leopard painted by the Uzbek Banksy, and into to the Falcon room, where budget deliberations are taking place.

The CMS is massively broke. They don't have enough money for their own staff. This year, the Secretariat has asked for some money from countries, which is being received with the same level of enthusiasm as if they'd asked the delegates to donate their pants to pay for dinner.

I walk into the room, sit down on the chairs lined up at the back. No one bats an eye. I flip open my laptop. The people in the inner circle are all looking at a quadrangle of screens lighting up the final budget decision, still in track changes. They're arguing about the word "operationalize". Better than "enable"? I decide there isn't much going on that's worth reporting, other than things seem pretty civil.

Before I can decide to put my things away, though, I feel a breeze and look up. The president of the Convention is standing over me. She has moved in perfect silence on the plush cotton carpet. She is redefining the word loom.

Excuse me, she hisses in my ear. Who are you with?

I tell her. The air between us crackles and starts to taste like ketchup chips. You, she says loudly, so the whole room can hear, cannot be in here. This is a closed meeting. This is for parties only.

Okay! I say. Hadn't been told that. Happy to leave. I put on my best them's-the-way-the-chips-fall smile, pack my laptop, walk out the door.

And you can't report any of this! she calls after me. I look back. Everyone in the room is still staring at the screen-square. They either haven't noticed or are trying to look like they didn't notice.

Out in the hallway, I look at the Uzbek girls who have draped both legs over the arm of a Louis XIV chair, phone blaring TikTok. They look up when I go past, expressions blank as a newly open tab. It takes me a second before I realize they were probably supposed to stop me from going in.

Meeting's almost over. Sunday, Monday: writing up. Then, we head west. In the meantime, keep breaking into rooms, friends. Keep looking dolphins in the eye(s).

B