Maja Bugge, a Danish intern in WEDO, tells a story from the Climate Change Negotiations in Copenhagen.
Copenhagen, December 11th -After three hours of standing in line to get an access badge for the UNFCCC COP-15 in the Bella Center on Monday morning, I could not feel my toes anymore. Since then I have met several other young people, interns or students like myself. Squeezing myself through the small door it seems that I am in the middle of an airport; there are sounds of boxes being aggressively put down on conveyers and security people scanning participants, because their entrance caused electronic beeps. Finally, I am through without any trouble, but then the second line greets me. Luckily I engage in a lively conversation with an intern, originally from Boston, from the Swiss NGO AIDA, so the next half hour passes quickly until I show my ID by the counter. The Australian passport-checking man tells me that I am the first problem. Oh, this means that I was not registered properly and what am I gonna do? He then checks me again and he finds a Maja Bagge. No problem. I walk to the third line and get my photo taken quite quickly. I am in, wow!
The sight that meets me is overwhelming, so many people and so many different NGO exhibits. I quickly meet the GGCA booth, great location, and I do a little walk around. WEDO is represented through the GGCA, since we are one of the four founders of GGCA. Soon Rachel Harris shows up and hands me a bunch of flyers for our opening ceremony on Tuesday, and I hand these out in front of the media center. Oh, I connect so well with people, well most of them, from my earlier experiences with promoting events and handing flyers out in random places in Copenhagen. Unlike others I have worked with, climate change-engaged people receive the flyers so warmly. I am surprised by the interest people show in the little postcard in my hand, and I feel great and excited by people’s warm response.
Though there is restricted access to the media center it does not hold people back from interviewing in the main hall. Everywhere you look, you see a camera, and Tai Power Seeff, photographer and video journalist for the GGCA, and I have a hard time finding a quiet place to record the 20 GGCA interviews. Then we find that the Wind Power Works together with the Danish windmill industry has gotten a space at the Bella Center named the Global Platform, which is a beautiful spot to do our interviews.
We appreciate our access to the conference center this week, because for next week only 30 % of each non-governmental delegation will get access. The Bella Center can only hold 18,000 people and the number registered is about 50,000. This will mean that only some of the participants in WEDO’s delegation are allowed in the conference, or that we must take turns. Maybe that will give us some time to explore and enjoy the hundreds of events occurring outside of the Bella Center in various parts of Copenhagen.
Copenhagen has climate change integrated in each commercial, art and cultural event. The art project Cool Globes, where 28 globes are exhibited, has travelled throughout the U.S. and is now in Denmark for this climate change conference. Several musicians are performing all around Copenhagen the next 10 days in their support of having a positive global climate change outcome.
I thought I was coming back to my hometown Copenhagen, but this time with the overloaded metro and the French, English, Spanish, Chinese, Italian and other languages surrounding me, Copenhagen seems just as international as New York City.
