This Hot Spots series critically examines the global apparatus of climate change governance, through ethnographic analysis of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)’s Conference of Parties (COP)—and beyond. These essays throw new light on climate negotiations from diverse spaces, by examining: institutional structures and practices of international civil servants, delegates, experts and negotiators; the technopolitical work of climate governance models, thematic trends, spatial rhetoric and emissions accounting measures for self-interested nation-states; popular demands to address loss and damage through decolonization, plurinational democracy, and Indigenous knowledge and science; as well as significant absences that expose unresolved tensions between and among environmental justice movements, national governments, and corporate interests. This series features ethnographic narratives bridging these spaces and imaginaries, from the official UNFCCC negotiation zone and the knowledge it produces to parallel climate summits led by Indigenous peoples, environmental activists, and civil society groups. Our ethnographic observations suggest that, far from a unified global voice, the different parties involved in climate negotiations present vital yet incompatible political responses to the crisis, based on uneven forms of inclusion and exclusion in scenarios of just, equitable and sustainable development.