Kevin's Blog

I got to say that being on a bus for 24 hours is quite an interesting experience. You almost forget what it is like to not be on a bus. Even so straight off the bus to Copenhagen things has been non-stop. I quickly realized that the scale of what is going on here is massive. The vast number of people who have flooded to the city during the conference is far beyond what I would have expected. And at first a lot of it was quite overwhelming. This was partially because my lack of knowledge about what was going on. I was quite new and needed to get a substantial update on what FoE had been doing so far. This probably could have taken up to a year if it wasn't for everyone's help to do it in just about one day.

the bridge in the bella centreFrom what I have been told a lot of things had been going on during the first week. Early last week there was a large response to a new draft prepared by the host country Denmark that was leaked. It was immediately met by outcries from developing nations who felt that it attempted to eliminate the Kyoto Protocol (KP), which is what currently holds nations accountable to make emission cuts. The preservation the Kyoto Protocol has undoubtedly been the big issue for the last few days of the conference. The U.S.A and the EU have made clear intensions to get rid of the Kyoto Protocol and to write a single new treaty, which would mean that holding Developed countries to the legally-binding emission cuts would be up in the air again. It was this issue came up again Monday. After the talks suggested that one of the end results of the conference would be to destroy the KP, Africa group expressed that they were very unhappy with Kyoto targets being removed. Before any of this had happened it was decided by FoE to do a demonstration in the Bella Centre. Early that morning, as the news of the African group was saying came out, it was decided that the theme of the action was to declare support for the move and to demand that KP, and specifically the targets set out, were to be kept. Due to the great timing and organization the action was a great success and it was clear that there was considerably support from people in the centre, and within seconds the media were already everywhere.

Meanwhile the UNFCCC decided to limit the number of observers attending the conference starting on Tuesday until it was only 1,000 today and only 90 on Friday, a fraction of the number accredited. This only further infuriated members of the observer groups who were already disappointed about the progress of the talks. The result was a large turnout for the Climate Justice Now and Climate Justice Action demonstration which occurred on yesterday, where approximately 2,500 people attended. Images and videos of police violence outside were being streamed out extensively as well as reports of the police keeping approximately 200 people inside who were attempting a walkout. Although I wasn't part of the demonstration I was trying to get into the Centre that morning and I saw first-hand some of the force police were using on people who were not even near the actual demonstration. People were pushed back onto the metro and not allowed to get off at the nearest open stop (the Bella stop had been closed) even though they were taking no part in what was going on.

It has been quiet in the Bella Centre lately. Information about what is going on in the conference has been limited, almost non-existent, particularly because for the last two days almost no member of FoE has been able to get in. With the exclusion of civil society from the conference it is becoming more worrying that the result will not be an agreement that represents the public interest.