Some say French food helped win the Paris climate agreement. Inside


GLASGOW – Conventional wisdom says good food and drink can grease the road to a good deal.

The organizers of the international climate summit held in Paris in 2015 took this very seriously. Naturally, being French, they claimed that their warm baguettes, buttered croissants, and poulet à la persillade washed down with French wine helped secure a major worldwide deal.

It’s hard to miss the contrast in Glasgow. What’s on offer here: Beef ramen, venison hot dog rolls and “neeps and tatties”.

And after 13 days of back-to-back sessions, some late-night negotiators took matters into their own hands.

On Thursday night, a pair of Canadian negotiators were walking back to their windowless room with boxes of Dough Ball pizzas in their hands. Some members of the American delegation resorted to buying bread, peanut butter, and jelly at a local market and then collecting sandwiches to keep them afloat throughout the summit. An Algerian negotiator was sticking to plain pizza from the on-site restaurant.

“This is below standards,” said Algerian negotiator Athmane Mehadji. “The best dishes are from the Mediterranean.”

It’s hard to say whether a strong menu will make a good deal.

But a 2016 research paper on gastrodiplomacy found that eating together improves social interactions between those who eat together, not to mention less hierarchical displays of dominance and submissiveness.

In other words, pleasant behaviors were found to increase during meals compared to other times.

The conference area features a cafeteria, a bar, and a series of ‘grab and go’ food stands that are open until dinner time. On Friday, a few were open all night as the negotiators prepared to stay indefinitely.

At lunch the other day, two observers from Ecuador walked around the Conwy restaurant, examining the options. They went to the podium that called themselves the Scottish Pantry. They had never eaten the Scottish national dish, haggis, and did not know whether it was vegetarian or not. (Haggis is made from sheep’s heart, liver, and lungs, but the cafe also offers a vegetarian version.)

Paul Hannibal Sevilla Tinajero, a state official from Ecuador, looked at the menu board.

“I don’t know ‘neeps and tatties’ either. “I don’t know those two words,” he said. (The menu explained it was turnips and potatoes.)

“Can it be okay?” He asked. He said he’s an adventurous eater. But then he settled on the fish and chips, which he said he had tried before.

US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg bought himself haggis for breakfast during his visit to the summit this week and said he liked it. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Instagram to launch Scotland’s cherished soft drink, Irn-Bru. It is bubble gum flavored and is also known as a hangover cure.

The menu boards at the top prominently displayed the carbon footprint of each dish. Scottish beef ramen with pickled root vegetables had 3.0 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents, while a root vegetable stew with pearl barley and marinated cabbage had 0.1 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents.

There are a lot of root vegetables. It’s not surprising, because 95 percent of the food served at COP26 is from Britain, and the summit organizers said it was “mainly sourced from Scotland” and seasonal.

Vegetarian options are available at the venue eateries, from tempura broccoli to woodland mushroom risotto and a selection of sandwiches.

The food offerings at climate peaks are very diverse. The 2019 summit was held in a Madrid convention center with little to no fast food chains in place. There was an open-air pisco sour bar at the 2014 summit in Lima, Peru.

Mohamed Adow, an activist with Power Shift Africa, who has attended many of these international climate summits, said the food offerings did not sweeten diplomacy as they did in Paris this year. “A hungry man is an angry man,” he said. “You start this process with good nutrition to get the deal you need. We didn’t experience that here.”



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