Monthly archives: December 2009

 
Protests outside the Bella Center. Photo: James DeBlasse.

Only two days of COP15 and time is getting scarce. Now heads of states are arriving at the meeting, and while writing I am listening to the president of Mali, Amadou Toumani Touré, telling the 192 other countries about how the desert is spreading over his country.

Tensions

The feeling at the Bella Center is confused and tense. Representatives from environmental groups and organisations are shut out of the meeting, and outside the center there have been protests. Delegates rush through the corridors looking very tired, having been in meetings until dawn. The positions of different groups of countries are still very far from each other.

Meeting Desmond Tutu

But one of the positive things with the meeting is that while leaders are arguing in the plenary hall, people from different parts of the world actually have the opportunity to talk to each other. In these halls, standing in queues and traveling on the bus I get glimpses of what it is like in Mexico, Mali or the Maldives, I can speak to a peasant from Ethiopia, a government delegate from Nepal or an indigenous activist from Canada.
The young reporters that the organisation Plan has brought from Sweden seem to make good use of this fact. Yesterday they met Desmond Tutu, who told them about the horrors climate change means to Africa. Watch the interview here:

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

December 16, 2009

• climate change
• COP15

Journalists crowding around…well, probably only the ones standing in the middle know.

Halfway through the climate meeting, and though Copenhagen is freezing the temperature is rising. Outside the Bella Center people are queuing for hours and hours to register, and now ministers are arriving, taking over the discussions. About 36 000 persons have applied for accreditation to the Bella Center, which actually doesn’t have space for more than 15 000.
Trying to report from an event like this has been described as a journalistic nightmare. There are an immense number of seminars and side events about all possible aspects of climate change, all over the city manifestations are being held to put pressure on the negotiations. There are plenary hall sessions to follow and all the time new rumours about what is happening in the closed sessions.

What seems clear this far, though, is that the proposals that are on the table won’t be enough. According to the Climate Action Network, a network of more than 500 environmental organisations, what is now on the table would lead to temperatures increasing around 3,8 degrees.

But there is also a big pressure from the civil society. Earlier tonight the president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, spoke to people in a sports hall at the people´s climate forum. Greeted as a star, with people chanting “Three five oh” (the goal of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere that the Maldives push as a goal).
– Continue to protest, continue after the meeting, despite all odds, Nasheed encouraged the crowd.

Mohamed Nasheed talking to grassroot activists.

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

December 14, 2009

• climate change
• COP15