Teil 1: Überblick - Psychologie der COPs
Teil 2: Vertrauen
Teil 3: Emotionen
Part 4: Psychological Safety
Part 5: Mutirão and Identity
Part 6: Empathy between Worlds
Part 7: coming soon
Anyone moving between the villages of the Pacific islands and the meeting rooms of international climate conferences feels it immediately: the invisible gap between experiencing the climate crisis and negotiating climate policy. While the sea eats away at coastlines centimeter by centimeter, conference rooms debate commas and wording. Some fight for their livelihoods; others for phrasing.
This distance is not only geographic — it is psychological. It separates experience from decision, emotion from politics. Research calls it psychological distance: the sense that the climate crisis is “not here, not now, not me.” Especially in the Global North, it often still appears as an abstract problem — something that happens to others. But exactly this emotional distance stifles empathy, solidarity, and willingness to act.
Empathy — understood as the capacity to emotionally take another’s perspective — is the psychological foundation of global cooperation. It can bridge the divides between North and South, rationality and emotion, knowledge and responsibility.
Frontline stories make that bridge tangible: A pastor in West Virginia who loses his skepticism after a flood. A young woman from Tuvalu describing the sinking of her home — and still smiling. A polar bear on a melting floe that elicits pity but no connection.
Such narratives turn abstraction into relationship. They reveal what statistics conceal and awaken compassion that can become responsibility. Yet empathy is not a given: it needs spaces that allow emotion without overwhelming people. Only then does compassion become a driver of collective action — and distance becomes closeness.
Between states and regions: Empathy can bridge the emotional distance between North and South — when stories are told not as appeals, but as invitations to shared responsibility.
In diplomacy and facilitation: Empathic moderation creates rooms where emotions are part of dialogue without triggering blame or defensiveness.
In communication: Authentic frontline stories make impacts — and solutions — tangible, turning abstract risks into human experience.
In civil society: Empathy mobilizes — it turns affect into engagement and enables solidarity across cultural and geographic borders.
In moments of shared action: When compassion is translated into cooperation, something rare in global politics emerges — the sense of acting together rather than merely negotiating.
In climate diplomacy this means: Empathy helps us feel, compassion helps us act — and storytelling connects the two into a language that reaches hearts before it persuades minds.
In Loss-and-Damage negotiations — for example at SB62 in Bonn — frontline stories are rarely present. The proceedings are technical, formal, and diplomatic in tone. Emotions find little space between wording debates and bracket discussions.
Yet the few moments when personal stories surface — mostly in side events or hallway conversations — are palpable. When delegates from the Pacific describe villages being relocated for a second time, the atmosphere changes: the room grows quiet; attention sharpens. For a brief moment, strategy gives way to genuine listening.
A formative example was the speech by Yeb Saño, then the Philippine chief negotiator at COP19 in Warsaw (2013). After the devastating Typhoon Haiyan, he spoke in tears about the destruction of his hometown and began a symbolic fast — “until a meaningful outcome is in sight.” His words moved delegates worldwide — a rare instance of empathy transforming diplomatic space.
These moments show: Empathy is not a disturbance to multilateral process but its human foundation. When personal experience enters political language, trust emerges — and with it the possibility of turning rivalry into cooperation.
But such moments are fragile. As soon as the chair resumes, rationality returns — often as psychological self-protection against overwhelm. That is why deliberately designed spaces are needed: narrative formats, moderated dialogue zones, and empathic facilitation that do not leave depth to chance.
Empathy is powerful — and vulnerable. It can build bridges or trigger resistance depending on whether it is experienced as connection or overwhelm. In international negotiations — where power, history, and emotion intersect — empathy is often overlooked yet remains a central psychological factor for trust and cooperation.
Empirical studies show: emotional connection is one of the strongest psychological predictors of engagement — stronger than knowledge or threat alone.
Empathy as a bridge to action: Perspective-taking increases support for climate policy and humanitarian measures — even across cultures (Pearson & Schuldt, 2018; Swim & Bloodhart, 2018).
Compassion over guilt: Compassion correlates with donations, activism, and support for structural measures without triggering defensiveness (Lu & Schuldt, 2016).
Empathic narratives: Stories that connect emotion and action produce narrative transportation — the psychological immersion that strengthens openness and trust (Mai & Sikorski, 2025; Morris et al., 2019).
Participation and co-design: When frontline communities tell their own stories, relevance, cooperation, and ownership grow — key drivers of international acceptance (Rigon, 2025).
Immersive empathy: Virtual perspective-taking (VR) can reduce distance and measurably boost empathy, especially in education and policy communication (Mado et al., 2021; Markowitz & Bailenson, 2021).
At the same time, research shows: empathy is sustainable only when coupled with options for action, safety, and shared agency. Otherwise it tips into overwhelm or withdrawal.
What does this mean concretely for climate diplomacy? How can delegations, chairs, and facilitators structurally enable empathy — as part of professional practice and institutional culture?
Empathy can be integrated into the multilateral routine of climate diplomacy — not by replacing structure with emotion, but by bringing humanity into the structure. Much is already possible if presidencies, chairs, facilitators, and partners deliberately use their room to maneuver.
1. Make frontline voices more visible:
Personal testimonies can be anchored in side events, high-level dialogues, or opening segments — e.g., short “Human Impact Statements” before technical sessions. This creates narrative evidence without changing the negotiation mandate.
2. Sensitize facilitators to psychological dynamics:
Pre-COP or SB briefings can include short modules on empathy literacy, psychological safety, and trust-building — akin to gender or culture briefings.
3. Use storytelling in dialogue and review formats:
In the Global Stocktake, Santiago Network dialogues, or LCIPP meetings, stories can serve as data — for instance as a “narrative evidence annex.”
4. Foster emotional safety:
Short ritual openings — music, moments of silence, words of appreciation — can strengthen atmosphere and trust without disrupting formal procedures.
5. Actively include intersectional perspectives:
Panels and dialogues should deliberately bring together voices from different social groups. LCIPP or the Youth Constituency can develop trainings and exchange formats.
6. Promote immersive experience spaces:
Pavilions or cultural zones can use VR experiences, art, and interactive storytelling to bridge distance.
7. Think of empathy as part of multilateral professionalism:
In the long run, diplomacy needs a new competence profile: psychological intelligence and emotional self-regulation as professional standards — a cultural shift from policy literacy to human literacy.
Empathy is not an emotional luxury but a governance competence. It can be cultivated, trained, and institutionalized — as part of the professional infrastructure of international cooperation.
Empathy is not a “soft” factor but a hard resource for trust, legitimacy, and cooperation. It translates scientific insight into human understanding — and thus into political feasibility. When politics systematically integrates empathy, its internal fabric changes:
Psychology provides the tools — from perspective-taking to trauma-informed facilitation. It creates conditions under which empathy does not manipulate but empowers.
An empathic diplomacy would not be sentimental but strategic: It would encourage listening before deciding. It would conceive of power as relationship, not control. And it would make politics human again — without losing professionalism. Perhaps the transformation of international politics does not begin with new institutions, but with the way we listen to one another.
In short: Empathy is the social infrastructure of global cooperation. When it succeeds, something emerges that goes beyond politics — a consciousness of shared responsibility. Or, in the words of Mutirão: We act because we are connected.
Janna Hoppmann is a psychologist and Mercator Fellow for International Affairs. She has worked for many years at the intersection of psychology, climate, and politics – including with governments of SIDS states, international NGOs, and currently in close exchange with the COP30 Presidency. With ClimateMind, she brings psychological insights into international climate negotiations, into the work of delegations, and into transformative dialogue formats.
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