December 12th, 2015. The newly adopted Paris Agreement makes headlines across the world. 196 delegations managed to adopt a legally binding agreement to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees celsius. It was a diplomatic success that left its mark on the people who participated. 

Alexandre Ziegler, chief of staff of the French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who presided over COP21, and Paul Watkinson, chief negotiator for the French delegation, recount the final days before the adoption of the Paris Agreement, along with Pauline Boyer, a climate activist who demonstrated during the conference. 

For all of them, there was one constant during COP21: little to no sleep.

How do you get 196 delegations from around the world to agree on one document? What kept the negotiators up at night? How do you write up an international agreement when you've barely had a wink of sleep? 

Our guests: 

• Pauline Boyer, a climate activist, ecofeminist, co-author of the Manifesto for Non-Violence, currently in charge of the energy and nuclear transition campaign for Greenpeace, and editor of the magazine Alternatives Non-Violentes.

• Paul Watkinson, currently Advisor to the Minister of Climate Change and Environment of the UAE, contributing to the preparation of COP28, he was also Chief Negotiator and Head of the Climate Negotiations Team for the French Ministry of Ecological Transition.

• Alexandre Ziegler, French civil servant and diplomat. Chief of Staff to the Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2012 to 2016, French Ambassador to India from 2016 to 2019, he has been Safran's Director of International Group and Institutional Relations in France since 2019.

This episode was written, directed and produced by Morgane Anneix, Luca Matteucci and Aurore Laborie, under the supervision of Lorraine Besse.

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