Brits and Chels experience a Cop15 conference for the first time…
NZYD were smart enough to register our group a day early, in order to avoid long queues (hundreds of people!) lining up outside Bella Centre, where the official cop15 conference is, on Monday morning! Looking pretty flashy in our official badges, we entered the huge temporary building!
Wow!
Brit and World Ball
Our first view was of a giant room, like a warehouse, buzzing with people. The room was so big it needed its own map. But we soon discovered it wasn’t the only room, the conference was layed out over five or more big warehouses. One is filled with stalls run by companies, research institutes, groups like 350, climate justice fast and project survival which are groups that run campaigns to try and sway the political decisions. We are really small compared to the huge international orgs like Greenpeace etc.
Another has side events and lectures which anyone can just walk into. A few other rooms are especially for plenary sessions and there are some very private rooms that are for negotiations that only official conference delegates are allowed into. After handing our coats over at the official cloakroom, we proceeded to check out everything that was nearby, including the many restaurants, a massive globe, free computers for use by delegates, and a wall with a bunch of tv screens projecting images of climate change news worldwide. And all throughout the whole thing, groups like us were taking action and grabbing media attention. The youth group did a fantastic ‘flash dance’, of which there is a link to a video in our newsletter, yelling out “take action, take action, to get some satisfaction!” which echoed across the main plenary room.
We took note of the fact that there were a surprisingly large number of trees and plants indoors! And we were impressed with the building itself, being created from recycled timber and materials. Despite being temporary,the Bella Centre was designed to be as sustainable as possible. Bella means beautiful in Danish.
In a place like that with 15 simultaneous seminars on carbon Credit systems, Forestry and deforestation policy, China and the G77 group stance presentation… we just end up being swallowed in opportunity. Mahara was saying that with the incredible speakers and people all around us, any other conference would cost thousands of dollars to attend – and I suppose we’ve paid for it in flights and accom etc but – we get in for free. Its like university but with the biggest lecturers from every country in the world.
With that being said – we didn’t actually attend anything today because all that happened was the main opening ceremony (which there was a limited entry to and we weren’t allowed in because we were such a minority. The whole world youth constituency only got 9 tickets.) So instead we scoped out the place – orientated ourselves so we knew where everything was, got a whole lot of free climate books movies etc and also collected all the possible calenders of the side events, protests, meetings. That means that we can sit down and get an idea of what we need/want to be at and when so we don’t miss out on anything.
All in all, our first day at the conference was oh-so-exciting! We both can’t wait for our remaining two weeks here, we could never get bored of this conference! The Bella Centre is quite symbolic of the rest of Copenhagen City, absolutely packed with climate change… from the media and displays, to various artworks and displays, to protests and marches and lectures and interesting things to watch and do!It’s so inspiring!
Lots of love for now, we hope all your projects back home are going fantastically, at this very exciting time of year!
Brittany and Chelsea.
Recycling at Bella Centre
