With reference to the United Nations Climate Conferences, match the location where the session of Conference of Parties (COP) was/will be held: Session Location 1. COP 27 A. Belem 2. COP 28 B. Baku 3. COP 29 C. Dubai 4. COP 30 D. Sharm El-Sheikh
- (a)1-A, 2-B, 3-C, 4-D
- (b)1-B, 2-C, 3-D, 4-A
- (c)1-C, 2-D, 3-A, 4-B
- (d)1-D, 2-C, 3-B, 4-A
Correct — D, 1-D, 2-C, 3-B, 4-A.
Read the four sessions as a calendar. COP 27 met at Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt in November 2022, and COP 28 met at Dubai in the United Arab Emirates from 30 November 2023.
COP 29 followed at Baku in Azerbaijan in November 2024, and COP 30 met at Belém, in the Brazilian state of Pará, from 10 to 21 November 2025.
Set that chain against the printed lists and the pairs fall out as 1-D, 2-C, 3-B, 4-A. The location column is printed in the exact reverse of the session order, which is why the correct matching reads as a mirror image.
One secure pair decides this item. The four options each assign a different letter to COP 27, so a candidate certain only that Egypt hosted COP 27 can close the question without weighing the other three pairs.
- (a)1-A, 2-B, 3-C, 4-D — This gives COP 27 to Belém, COP 28 to Baku, COP 29 to Dubai and COP 30 to Sharm El-Sheikh. Each of the four hosts lands on the wrong session.
It is the arrangement you get by running the two printed columns straight down side by side. The location column is ordered newest session first, so reading it in step with the session column inverts the chronology.
Turn the session order around and the option becomes right: it is the correct match for COP 30, COP 29, COP 28 and COP 27 taken in that descending order.
- (b)1-B, 2-C, 3-D, 4-A — Two of these pairs hold — COP 28 at Dubai and COP 30 at Belém — which is what makes the option look workable on a quick scan.
The other two are exchanged. It seats COP 27 at Baku and COP 29 at Sharm El-Sheikh, swapping Azerbaijan's 2024 session with Egypt's 2022 one.
Kept to its sound half, it is the right pairing for COP 28 in Dubai and COP 30 in Belém; stretched across the Egyptian and Azerbaijani sessions, it reverses them.
- (c)1-C, 2-D, 3-A, 4-B — Each pair here hands a session its neighbour's host: COP 27 gets Dubai, COP 28 gets Sharm El-Sheikh, COP 29 gets Belém and COP 30 gets Baku.
The sequence is displaced by one in both directions — 27 and 28 traded, then 29 and 30 traded. That is what results when the chain is anchored to the wrong starting session.
Its opening pair answers a different question: Dubai hosted COP 28, which met in the United Arab Emirates from 30 November 2023.
The Conference of the Parties is the decision-making body of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and it meets annually (the 2020 session was postponed to 2021). Sessions are numbered in an unbroken run, so COP 27, 28, 29 and 30 sit in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025.
A session is normally hosted by the Party that supplies its President, but the two can be separated — Chile presided over COP 25 while Madrid hosted it, and at COP 31 Türkiye hosts while Australia presides.
By convention the presidency rotates among the five United Nations regional groups. That rotation is why consecutive hosts sit in different parts of the world rather than clustering in one region.
The venue is not decoration. A session tends to be remembered by the city that held it and the decision taken there — Sharm El-Sheikh for the loss and damage fund, Dubai for the first Global Stocktake, Baku for the new climate finance goal.
The practical value for a candidate is a fixed timeline. Once the session-to-year link is secure, the city and the headline outcome hang off it, and a matching item like this one turns into arithmetic rather than recall.
- COP 27 met at Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, in November 2022 and agreed to establish funding arrangements, including a fund, for responding to loss and damage.
- COP 28 met at Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from 30 November 2023 and concluded the first Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement.
- COP 29 met at Baku, Azerbaijan, in November 2024 and adopted a new collective quantified goal on climate finance of at least USD 300 billion a year by 2035.
- COP 30 met at Belém, in the Brazilian state of Pará, from 10 to 21 November 2025, at the Hangar Convention Centre.
- COP 26 met at Glasgow, United Kingdom, in 2021; COP 21 met at Paris in 2015 and adopted the Paris Agreement.
- Under a compromise reached at COP 30, Türkiye is to host COP 31 while Australia leads the negotiations at that session.
- The UNFCCC presidency rotates by convention among the five United Nations regional groups, which the run from Glasgow to Belém follows.
The letters run D, C, B, A because the printed location column is in reverse session order. The highlighted pair on its own separates the four options, since each option gives COP 27 a different letter.
- The location column is printed in reverse of the session order, so matching the two lists row by row as they stand produces option (a), which is wrong on all four pairs.
- COP numbering belongs to a particular treaty. CMS COP-13, CBD COP-13 and UNFCCC COP-13 are separate meetings, and the stem's reference to the United Nations Climate Conferences fixes this one to the UNFCCC series.
- Egypt's session is identified by Sharm El-Sheikh rather than Cairo, and the UAE's by Dubai rather than Abu Dhabi; a country-level memory does not always deliver the city the paper asks for.
- Belém and Baku both begin with B and sit next to each other as locations A and B, so a hurried transcription can transpose Brazil's session with Azerbaijan's.
- A four-way matching set can be closed by one securely known pair whenever the options assign that item four different letters — check the first column of the options before working out all four pairs.
- COP 28 straddled two months, opening on 30 November 2023, so tying it to a single month can dislodge the year that anchors the rest of the chain.
The idea turns up in two shapes. The plain one asks for the city that held a stated session, or the session a stated city held.
The other is this matching shape, with a session column set against a location column and the letters to be paired. Some versions match sessions to countries rather than cities, which is a lighter demand; others pair a session with its headline decision or agreement instead of its venue.
A harder variant slips in the COP of a different convention, so the treaty named in the stem has to be read before the number means anything at all.
CAPF_GAI_2024_Q852024The closest relative: the same session-to-host matching device, covering COP 26 to COP 29 against the United Kingdom, Egypt, the UAE and Azerbaijan. What differs is the column and the window — CAPF lists countries where UKPSC lists cities, and UKPSC drops COP 26 to run the chain forward to COP 30 at Belém.
UKPSC_2021_PRE_GSI_Q812021Same commission and the same venue-of-a-session fact, but asked directly about COP 26 at Glasgow with four cities as options. One recalled city answers it; the 2025 item needs four pairs to hold together at once, and covers sessions after Glasgow.
UPPSC_2018_PRE_GSI_Q1252018The venue asked plainly again — COP 21 at Paris — so the underlying recall is identical. It carries no matching and no ordering, and it sits on the session that produced the Paris Agreement rather than on the recent run of sessions.
ESE_GS_2021_Q472021Also a COP venue question, but for the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species rather than the UNFCCC, and answered at country level. It is the useful contrast: each treaty numbers its own COP series, so the convention named in the stem decides which series a number refers to.
UPSC_2025_GS1_Q322025The same session approached from the other side: COP 28 tested through the Declaration on Climate and Health and India's position on it, rather than through Dubai as its venue. Venue is the entry point to a session; what was decided there is a separate body of recall.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The 29th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in 2024, took place at:
- (a)Dubai
- (b)Baku
- (c)Belém
- (d)Sharm El-Sheikh
Answerb — Baku, in Azerbaijan, hosted COP 29 in November 2024, the session that adopted the new collective quantified goal on climate finance.Dubai held COP 28 from 30 November 2023, and Belém held COP 30 in November 2025, so both sit on the wrong side of 2024.
Sharm El-Sheikh held COP 27 in November 2022, two sessions earlier than the one named.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Match the session of the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties with the country that hosted it: Session Country 1. COP 26 A. Brazil 2. COP 28 B. United Kingdom 3. COP 29 C. United Arab Emirates 4. COP 30 D. Azerbaijan
- (a)1-B, 2-C, 3-D, 4-A
- (b)1-A, 2-B, 3-C, 4-D
- (c)1-B, 2-D, 3-C, 4-A
- (d)1-D, 2-C, 3-B, 4-A
Answera — COP 26 was held in the United Kingdom at Glasgow in 2021, COP 28 in the United Arab Emirates at Dubai in 2023, COP 29 in Azerbaijan at Baku in 2024 and COP 30 in Brazil at Belém in 2025.Option (b) reads the two columns straight down and misplaces all four. Option (c) keeps COP 26 with the United Kingdom but exchanges the UAE and Azerbaijan between COP 28 and COP 29.
Option (d) gives COP 26 to Azerbaijan and COP 29 to the United Kingdom, which reverses those two.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Paris Agreement was adopted at which session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC?
- (a)COP 19
- (b)COP 20
- (c)COP 21
- (d)COP 26
Answerc — COP 21 met at Paris in December 2015 and adopted the Paris Agreement, which is why the agreement carries the host city's name.COP 19 met at Warsaw in 2013 and set up the Warsaw International Mechanism for loss and damage; COP 20 met at Lima in 2014 and produced the Lima Call for Climate Action.
COP 26 met at Glasgow in 2021 and produced the Glasgow Climate Pact, six years after the Paris Agreement was adopted.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The decision to establish new funding arrangements, including a dedicated fund, for responding to loss and damage was taken at the session of the Conference of the Parties held at:
- (a)Glasgow
- (b)Sharm El-Sheikh
- (c)Dubai
- (d)Baku
Answerb — COP 27, at Sharm El-Sheikh in November 2022, took the decision to establish funding arrangements including a fund for loss and damage.Dubai hosted COP 28 the following year, where the fund was made operational and the first Global Stocktake was concluded; the establishing decision had already been taken by then.
Glasgow hosted COP 26 in 2021, before that decision, and Baku hosted COP 29 in 2024, where the focus was the new climate finance goal.