Chaos at the climate conference
Copenhagen's frustrating, poorly organised climate conference does not augur well for the UN summit in December
By Oliver Tickell, The Guardian, Tuesday 10 March 2009 21.00 GMT
Forget climate chaos, this time it's climate conference chaos – brought to you by Denmark, at the uber-modern Bella Centre on an ill-favoured outskirt of Copenhagen. Indeed it's so modern that half of it has yet to be built, and over 1,000 delegates walking from the metro station to the conference centre were forced this morning on an unexpected 15-minute detour around a vast building site, where new halls are currently under construction for the far larger UNFCCC conference coming up in December.
The world is pinning its hopes of solving the problems of climate change on the forthcoming conference. But to judge by the general standard of organisation here today, the world had better find something better to put its faith in. The conference programme is beautifully produced, but gives no details of where or when specific presentations are taking place. The press centre has over a dozen press officers but just two computers for journalists to file their stories from – and they are mainly used by the press officers. The lunchtime press briefing was firmly locked bang on start time, leaving bewildered journalists who turned up a few minutes late pushing forlornly at the unyielding doors while conference staff tried – and failed – to find a way in. Texts of keynote speeches were mysteriously unavailable, so tough luck on journalists untrained in shorthand, or occupied on other business.
The purpose of the "Climate Change – global risks, challenges and decisions" congress, organised by the University of Copenhagen, is to summarise the current state of climate science, updating the IPCC assessments based on findings published four or more years ago, in order to inform politicians and negotiators at the December event. But it's hard to see how it can serve its purpose as all the most important scientific presentations are overlapping with one another in an astonishing 22 parallel sessions all taking place this afternoon.
This makes it impossible for anyone to attend more than a tiny
fraction of the hundreds of papers to be presented by the world's most eminent climate scientists. More than anything else, this is what has got the delegates fuming with frustration. On the one hand there are a slew of papers on climate tipping points, but what about earth system feedbacks, vulnerability in carbon sinks, changes in ocean circulation, informing the future by understanding the past, cryosphere instabilities and sea level rise? Just to mention five of the 20-odd themes to be chosen from.
Meanwhile Danish climate researchers were grumbling about their government's lack of action on climate change, and its failure to finance vital scientific work – giving the lie to the bullish plenary speeches by Connie Hedegaard, Danish minister of climate and energy, and Helge Sander, Danish minister of science, technology and innovation.
"These fine speeches are all very well, but meanwhile this rightwing government is cutting the funding for climate research and failing to move forward on absolutely vital mitigation measures to reduce our use of fossil fuels," said one researcher. He drew particular attention to Denmark's responsibility for Greenland, an autonomous province of Denmark, whose ice sheet is melting away at an unprecedented rate, threatening a rise in sea level of a metre or more over the course of this century. Yet Danish scientists, who should be taking the lead in researching the dynamics of Greenland's ice sheets and glaciers, are largely left out in the cold for lack of funds.
It is hard not to compare the chaos that pervades this climate
congress with the relative efficiency of the UNFCCC conference – an event many times larger – last November/ December in Poznan, Poland. When the UNFCCC meets back here in December 2009, Denmark had better get its act together. More than ten times as many delegates will hit this same conference centre, complete with thousands of angry climate protestors. Today's sense of confusion and disorganisation could all too easily descend into something resembling anarchy.
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