By Carol Somplatsky-Jarman, Friday, December 11
Buzz, buzz…. Buzz, buzz, buzz…
I hear an intermittent buzz of Bill’s Blackberry, which goes off (accompanied by a flash of red light) every time an email comes in.
It has been like this for more than a week, long before we arrived in Copenhagen.
It is Friday, December 11, and we are preparing for a typical day at the Bella Center. We have arrived to get the Daily Program, Part Two, checked off the side-events that have made our list of finalists.
“Climate Justice from Copenhagen: Sharing the Global Effort Adequately and Equitably: with Christian Aid," definitely.
Wangari Maathai (Nobel Peace Laureate for her work with the Greenbelt Movement in Africa) talking about her work, on the list.
“An Integrated Science and Policy Approach for Real Impact, IIASA and TERI” by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis I think is a pass.
The emails keep coming in. The International CAN(the international environmental NGO umbrella group) is now at noon, not 2:00pm. (Tough luck for folks not on a Blackberry). The US CAN meeting will take place at 5:00pm in the Piet Hein room (our rooms are all named after famous Danes, and with each with a little biography lesson near the door—Karen Blixen, who under the pen name of Isak Dinesen wrote Out of Africa; Victor Borga, the famous comedic pianist who left Denmark just in front of the Nazis in 1940; Niels Bohr, Danish physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, an expert in quantum mechanics and atomic structure who was also a member of the Manhattan Project). For those like Piet Hein, we read the biography. (Danish scientist, mathematician, designer, inventor, writer, and poet, who joined the Danish Resistance in World War II and whose poems became anti-Nazi graffiti across Denmark*). An email announces the Sierra Club meeting at 6:00 in the same room.
Bad news at the US CAN meeting—for the first time in COP history, the meeting will be restricted severely next week. These meetings have always been restricted to people who are part of official delegations, who have been chosen, and whose names have been submitted months in advance. On our first day, we registered and had to present our documentation proving our delegation membership. We received our official digital badges that check us into (and an interesting new twist this year, out of) the Bella Center each day by a local police officer wielding a digital scanner (therefore our whereabouts are known at all times).
We were lucky that the lines were short on Thursday, the line was only about 30 persons long and took only ½ hour. And since we are long-time participants, we were both able to skip the lines for pictures since ours were already on file (mine from COP-8 in Delhi, 2008).
However, US CAN officials announce that starting next Tuesday (DEC 15), each registrant will need both their digital pass, and a second one numbered and issued to their delegation. These are not transferable within your delegation, but not between delegations, and once your delegation’s quota is filled, OOPs, no more members allowed in the Bella Center.
This announcement is so far outside our known experience that we do not even absorb what we are hearing. It takes reinforcement from our delegation leader for the message to sink in. We may be out of luck in terms of attending the meetings after the second Monday.
The VIPs will be arriving then, and for the first time, UN officials want to restrict the number of people at the UN Climate Change meetings. Three years ago, Kofi Annan, former UN General Secretary, walked right through the entrance past official delegates and NGO representatives, close enough to touch.
No More. All the NGO member delegates are abuzz. People talking about how many members of each delegation will be allowed. A specific number of new entry cards will be issued. Therefore, in addition to our official digital registration badges, those so honored will need to show one of these special entry cards as well. When your group’s allotment is filled, no more members can enter the site (it seems, even with another group’s NGO card). Much gnashing of teeth, all speculating on who will get in, who will not.
We must wait for the weekend when our representative picks up the sealed envelope (it feels like the Academy Awards and the sealed envelope certified by some accounting firm).
*Sample WWII Grook (poem) from Piet Hein:
CONSOLATION GROOK
Losing one glove
is certainly painful,
but nothing
compared to the pain,
of losing one,
throwing away the other,
and finding
the first one again.
Translation: Fellow Danes, there is something greater than the loss of freedom. It is collaboration followed by liberation. The Danes understood perfectly.
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