Access Denied: UN begins restricting entrance to COP15, Delays among negotiations

Photo Credit: Aaron Thom (edited)

I started this post from my host’s flat because I wasn’t able to go to the Bella Center.  Fortunately, I will be able to get a secondary pass soon, which is now required to gain access to the Bella Center.

What exactly is going on?  Beginning on Tuesday, December 15, the UN will begin restricting access to the Bella Conference Center to something like 12,000 participants.  Based on an email another member of the WSC-SD received, this number will decline to 7,000 on Wednesday, 1,000 Thursday, and finally 90 Friday.  Essentially the conference center will be closed.

Why?

According to multiple sources, over 45,000 participants have been accredited to attend COP15, or roughly 30,000 more than the Bella Center was designed to hold.  Some rumours say that there are security concerns simply from overcrowding, but there is also the possibility that the organisers were afraid of an unplanned eleventh-hour protest or large rally inside of the Bella Center among the NGOs.

So how exactly does one get into the conference now?

As of Tuesday, not only is the original delegate identification required, but a secondary pass as well.  The secondary passes were distributed among the contact points of each delegation, and most delegations received passes for approximately 1/3 of the number of total delegates in their party.  Right now, MIT has one pass that we are sharing among us students, and Katherine Dykes, a Ph.D candidate and representative of MIT’s Walk the Talk and Energy Club, received it for Tuesday in order to attempt to register for her first entrance to the conference.

As you can see in Lindsay’s Post , registration has been quite hectic however, and many participants were not even able to get in to register.  For tomorrow, we will be working on relaying the pass between us, and Kat Potter , another MIT Ph.D who is here representing Sustainability@MIT and WSC-SD.  Based on what I know so far, individuals with tickets to attend the youth briefing with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will be granted access, and I fortunately am among those ticket-holders, so in theory I should be able to access the Bella Center on Wednesday.

What else is not going according to plan at COP15?

Monday morning, some of the WSC-SD representatives had intended to observe the official COP negotiations, which the general public can observe seated in a plenary area in the rear of the negotiation hall.  These negotiations were temporarily halted, however, due to a boycott by developing nations over the framework of the Kyoto Protocol.  Latest developments indicate that talks have resumed.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 at 1:03 pm and is filed under Policy & Governance, Student Reflections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.