My Experience at the CIVICA Honours Seminar at Sciences Po: Negotiation Skills for Climate Policy

I walked into the CIVICA Honours Seminar at Sciences Po with a fairly clear sense of what I expected to learn. I assumed the focus would be on data, climate-related negotiations, and structured approaches to decision-making. While all of these elements were present, they were not what ultimately shaped my experience or my thinking.

What stayed with me most was the central role of trust, and how easily it is taken for granted in conversations about data and policy.

One of the most important insights for me was how often outcomes are shaped by factors that are easy to overlook. Attitude, timing, trust, and the cost of not reaching an agreement can matter as much as, if not more than, formal mandates or numerical advantages. In interconnected systems, negotiations never occur in isolation. Reputations move across networks, decisions accumulate over time, and actions taken in one context influence possibilities in another. What might seem efficient or strategic in the short term can quietly undermine credibility and cooperation in the long run.

This also led me to reflect on the role of individual behaviour in collective settings. Ego and personal gain may produce immediate wins, but they rarely hold up in complex networks where relationships and accountability extend beyond a single interaction. Curiosity, restraint, and the ability to listen carefully often prove far more valuable. Knowing when to share information, when to pause, and when to say no requires a level of judgment that goes beyond technical competence. Negotiation, in this sense, is less about control and more about understanding the ecosystem in which decisions are made.

A particularly thought-provoking discussion focused on the role of AI and bias. The idea that AI systems often reproduce the same assumptions and biases as their human designers served as a reminder that technology does not eliminate flawed judgment. Without critical reflection, it risks amplifying it. This reinforced the broader theme of the seminar: tools and frameworks are only as effective as the values and awareness that guide their use.

By the end of the seminar, it was clear that I had not learned a formula that could be applied mechanically. Instead, I had learned how to ask more precise and meaningful questions. Why should a negotiation take place at all? Who genuinely needs to be involved for the process to be legitimate and effective? When is the right moment to engage, and what are the underlying issues beneath stated positions? Most importantly, how can a process be designed so that it remains stable during implementation, rather than collapsing under pressure?

Early in the seminar, I began to see that data itself is rarely the core issue. Governance plays a much larger role, and even that becomes ineffective if information is communicated without considering the people it is meant to reach. When data fails to connect with lived realities, it loses relevance and credibility. Mistrust, in that sense, does not emerge because people reject facts, but because they feel disconnected from the way those facts are framed, prioritised, or imposed.

This perspective reshaped how I understood transparency and credibility. They were not discussed as abstract values or moral ideals, but as practical conditions that determine whether decisions endure beyond the moment they are made. Without trust, agreements may appear sound in theory yet struggle during implementation, where real-world constraints and human relationships come into play.

Over the course of the three days, my understanding of negotiation shifted in a fundamental way. I had previously thought of negotiation as a skill that could be mastered through technique and preparation. Instead, it came to feel more like a responsibility, one that requires awareness of long-term consequences rather than short-term outcomes. Effective negotiation is less about securing a favourable position and more about designing decisions that can be sustained over time. This reframing placed greater emphasis on understanding people before addressing problems, recognising relationships before asserting positions, and respecting process rather than responding to pressure.

Beyond the academic content, the experience was deeply shaped by working alongside a diverse group of students from Paris, Madrid, Berlin, Warsaw, and Milan. Each participant brought different cultural contexts, institutional backgrounds, and ways of approaching problems, which often led to moments of friction as well as insight. These differences did not slow the learning process; they strengthened it. Disagreements forced greater clarity, assumptions were challenged rather than reinforced, and perspectives I might not have considered became central to the discussion. Working in such a setting highlighted how negotiation and collaboration are inherently relational, shaped by history, context, and communication styles as much as by formal structures.

Looking back, this is a seminar I would strongly encourage for anyone working at the intersection of policy, data, sustainability, or leadership, especially those who are uncomfortable with easy answers. It is particularly valuable for people who are expected to make decisions in complex, uncertain environments, where technical knowledge alone is not enough and where outcomes depend on judgment and long-term thinking. For students who want to move beyond frameworks and genuinely understand how decisions play out in real systems, this seminar offers the kind of learning that stays with you well after it ends.

by Megha Amudhan