COP16 Dispatch: Week 2 Open Source and LLMs, Reflections from the Back Row of COP16

"Large academic conferences have not strongly attracted me for years. That, combined with the limited direct overlap between my research and public environmental policies, as well as lack of financial support, has kept me away from attending COP or similar events. Even though my research is mostly question-driven with a primary focus on ecology and evolution, analytical methods have always been an excuse for me to learn from other domains of knowledge.

A multidisciplinary event featuring plenary sessions, talks, discussions, and forums across various disciplines has been on my radar for a while now. Therefore, this time, I decided to join the Lovejoy Center at the University of Arizona and the Ecological Society of America (ESA) delegation to attend COP16 in Cali, Colombia.

I have three takeaways from attending roughly a week of negotiations, talks, and other events. As I have not attended every single session at COP16 (which is not humanly possible)—my thoughts are based on selected sessions with topics summarized by the following keywords: 'biodiversity,' 'collaboration,' 'commitments,' 'tools,' and 'indicators.'"