Copenhagen: How to turn delegates into protesters

Oxfam activists dressed as polar bears dance at the entrance to the main hall at the U.N. Climate Change Conference 2009 in Copenhagen, Dec. 14, 2009. (Bob Strong/Reuters)

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — The climate summit may have hit a wall Monday, but the organizers did manage to unite conference-goers in outrage at the chaotic security procedures that left thousands of delegates and journalists stranded outside for up to 10 hours.

Belarussian students, Japanese former government ministers, Palestinian development workers, Chinese photographers, Brazilian journalists, Pakistani scientists and U.S. academics were among those unanimous in their condemnation of the United Nations' inability to run an effective accreditation system for the global warming summit.

"The U.N. is not the U.N. anymore, there is no respect for anybody," said a tearful Svetlana Morozova, as she was turned away from the gate by Danish police officers despite having successfully applied for accreditation to the conference.

Morozova, a student and environmental campaigner, was inconsolable, saying she saved for months to pay for the trip to Copenhagen out of her own pocket for the chance to lobby the Belarus government delegation and give a rare international voice to her country's environmentalists.

"It's out of order — the first time I've see such bad management," complained Toshiro Kojima, until recently Japan's vice-minister for global environmental affairs.

Thousands of accredited delegates wait outside the Copenhagen conference, Dec. 14, 2009. (Paul Ames/GobalPost)

Government delegates were given fast-track entry, but in his new position as special advisor to the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, Kojima was forced to join the shivering masses.

"They talk about accountability and transparency and then there's this, with no explanation," he said. "If they are doing so badly outside, you have to ask if they have the same bad management inside."

In fact, behind the closed doors of the Bella Center conference hall, talks were suspended for several hours when developing countries walked out in support of African delegates who accused richer nations of seeking to kill of the Kyoto Protocol, which commits industrialized nations to legally binding greenhouse gas reductions.

Talks eventually resumed, but the delay added to the increasingly frenzied nature of efforts to cobble together the basis of an emission-reducing agreement before the world's prime ministers and presidents arrive for the conclusion of the summit at the end of the week.

Meanwhile, the organizational problems seem sure to worsen as the summit nears its climax. U.N. officials acknowledged that the organization had accepted registration for more than 45,000 people at the conference, which is being held in an exhibition center with a capacity of 15,000.

Delegates had to apply for accreditation online, but once accepted were supposed to pick up their passes at the conference center itself. With the U.N. unable to cope with the descending crowds, they were left in the cold under the overhead railway lines outside.

Shortly before the accreditation desk was due to close at 6 p.m. a U.N. official appeared to announce that those still outside the gates should go home and try their luck the next day. Many had been waiting since the desk opened at 8 a.m.

Shouts of "Shame on the U.N.," and "Let us in," drowned out the official's offer of a "personal apology." He turned his back on the crowd's appeal and walked back the conference center, ignoring calls of "Work late, work late."

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/global-green/091214/copenhagen-delegates-protesters