Turn the Tide
Teaching Resources for Climate Negotiations and Diplomacy
Project Details
Turn the Tide creates teaching materials that help people refine their negotiation skills to advance climate change action. Our collaborators are researchers, practitioners, and pracademics with a passion for engaging teaching.
Learn more about Turn the Tide
Vision
A World of Empowered Changemakers
We envision a world where individuals, equipped with cutting-edge negotiation skills, drive climate action in their settings—from local administrations to international forums.
Mission
Democratize Access to Negotiation Training
Our mission is to enable individuals from all walks of life to become powerful advocates for climate action through democratizing access to essential negotiation training.
We work with leading researchers and institutions to push the boundaries of educational methodologies, develop innovative teaching materials and new learning platforms to empower changemakers to advocate for and implement climate-friendly solutions.
We want our participants not only to be informed but also inspired and ready to lead tangible change.
Approach
With Negotiators, for Negotiators
Our work runs on a virtuous cycle between practitioner insight, academic knowledge, and real-world impact. What we learn at the table shapes what we teach, and what we teach travels back to the table.
Activity Clusters
Create, Convene and Equip
We CONVENE researchers and practitioners to CREATE state-of-the-art training materials that EQUIP leaders, through targeted workshops, intensive programs, and virtual learning, with the skills to shape climate policy and practice in their own contexts.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Our flagship collaboration is with the Youth Negotiators Academy (YNA), supporting young negotiators to build skills, confidence, and strategy before and during the multilateral negotiations of the three Rio Conventions: climate, land, and biodiversity.
Over the past three years, we have built the capacities of more than 500 negotiators from 126 countries through training, coaching, and on-the-ground support.
Across this work, our role has four pillars:
Design: We develop COP-relevant negotiation curriculum, simulations, and learning tools grounded in real UNFCCC dynamics and practitioner insight.
Train: We run yearlong virtual and in-person trainings for young climate negotiators, focused on negotiation strategy, coalition building, and multi-party dynamics.
Coach: We provide on-the-ground coaching and 1:1 support that helps negotiators navigate pressure, trade-offs, and live impasses in real time.
Enable: We extend negotiators’ toolkit through digital tools, peer networks, learning from senior practitioners, and communities of practice.
In doing so, we’ve built a rich pool of teaching resources that educators anywhere in the world can adapt. Our open source, free to access resource hub offers a dynamic library of case studies, simulations, videos, and instructional guides, making high-quality negotiation training easy to bring into classrooms.
