The tag word for my experience at COP15 is: unexpected. From the moment our group arrived we were confronted with surprises: no registration for already accredited participants that Monday afternoon (of the second week), day-long waiting in freezing temperatures the next day, virtually no non-governmentals allowed inside for the rest of the week… and beyond this subjective dimension the unexpectedly low-ambition outcome of the COP. Although after the November APEC meeting in Singapore it became clear that a legally binding agreement was out of reach, many had believed in a more significant result. The near-record number of heads of state present had also supported hopes. However, the Copenhagen Accord was to fall abysmally short of what climate science demands.

Judging from my first hand experience, the disastrous organization and the more than disappointing outcome have one thing in common: overload. Waiting outside the Bella Congress Center with thousands of other people of the most diverse climate related backgrounds as well as seeing the Danish capital flooded with climate experts from all over the world gave me a sense of the vast scope. With 45,000 officially accredited persons (plus thousands of non-accredited ones) in Copenhagen and a conference center that could accommodate only 15,000, the conference organization had failed. This huge number of participants is a direct consequence of the overburdened and badly organized agenda: Emission reduction targets, development, financial assistance, R&D & innovation, technology transfer, intellectual property rights, economic transformation, trade, REDD…

What became clear to me at the COP is that the current global climate change governance process is far from sufficiently mature to be capable of producing acceptable outcomes. The question that I took home from the Copenhagen chaos is how to redesign the process to effectively address each one of all these interlinked issues.

Labels: Climate Change, COP 15