After arguements over the text of any potential agreement itself, physical access to the Bella Centre is becoming a key issue on the ground here in Copenhagen. As they say, if you’re not in, you can’t win. And it’s not the big guns who aren’t in, it’s you and me, civil society. More to the point, the NGOs whom the UN have deigned to represent us.

At this point you may be saying to yourself, ‘ah, but why do all these civil society orgs need to be there anyway, just let the political delegates get on with it.’ The answer to that is enshrined in the text of the Rio Declaration. Go check Principle 10:

Environmental issues are best handled with the participation of all concerned citizens, at the relevant level. At the national level, each individual shall have appropriate access to information concerning the environment that is held by public authorities, including information on hazardous materials and activities in their communities, and the opportunity to participate in decision-making processes. States shall facilitate and encourage public awareness and participation by making information widely available. Effective access to judicial and administrative proceedings,
including redress and remedy, shall be provided.

The role civil society has to play here is immense. And we’re being cynically and structurally locked out. Yvo de Boer has today taken responsibility here (trying to track down reference), but that’s not a lot of good to the scores of people who have traveled around the world to take part in proceedings.

Here’s a YouTube clip of yesterday’s queue. It took four minutes to shoot, walking the full length of the queue. We had members of the Stupid Show team wait seven hours in temperatures that fell to zero degrees.

The most galling part of this situation is that it’s going to get worse as the week progresses.

Here’s an overview from @ApolloGonzales:

1) Number of passes
- Tuesday and Wednesday 7000 observers will be allowed in the building as per the current allocation of secondary passes
- On Thursday the allocation will be reduced to 1000 observers only.
It is not yet decided whether this will be done on a tertiary pass system, or by stopping anyone else coming in once 1/7 of any
organizational accreditation has been reached
- On Friday the allocation will be 90 in total

2) Access to the plenary room
- On Tuesday 450 people will be allowed access to the plenary room
- On Wednesday and Thursday it will be 300
- On Friday it will be the 90 accredited people The allocations will be decided by the constituency focal points. [keepfakingit: 90 people! This is going beyond a joke]

3) Booths
At some point all booths in the NGO area will have to come down. It is not yet decided when that will be but likely Wednesday or Thursday [keepfakingit: What the fuck!!! The UNFCCC has had years to plan this. How can they not have this figured out yet]

4) Other space
- The secretariat is speaking to Danish Radio which has big offices nearby the Bella Centre about possible use of their space to transmit what is happening in the meetings

Here’s the state of play after yesterday’s sessions in the Bella Centre.

President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives. Photo (cc) Matthew McDermott

Keepfaking it just about caught the end of the 350 / Bill McKibben / Mohamed Nasheed rally at Klimaforum last night. Wow. Nasheed is now being talked of as a true rock star of the green movement and it’s easy to see why. He has a personal political biography that’s straight out of a Disney movie, he knows how to work a crowd and he’s got some great speech writers on his team. Big thanks to 350 from where I’ve lifted the transcript below. It’s worth noting the relative simplicity of the language, yet the complexity of the issues Nasheed is clearly not afraid to confront head on.  Any why should he be, along with Tuvalu and Bangladesh, the Maldives are first under the climate change bus.

Keepfakingit is always a little weary of the reductionism that leads us to turn numbers such as 350ppm and two degrees into sacrosanct targets. The reality is that the societal change we need is way beyond digestible pseudo-scientific soundbites. But in the hands of a leader like Nasheed maybe these numbers work. If they are used to construct a larger, more inclusive framework. More on this thought a little later in the week.

Mr McKibben, fellow environmentalists, ladies and gentlemen,

Four years ago myself, and many fellow activists, sat in solitary confinement in Maldivian prison cells. We sat in those jail cells not because we had committed any wrong. We sat in those cells because we had deliberately broken the unjust laws of dictatorship. We had spoken out for a cause in which we believed. That cause was freedom and democracy.
There were times, sitting in that prison, when I felt more alone than you can imagine. There were times when I started to believe the doubters, who said the Maldives would never become free.  Sometimes it felt like the doubters were right. The dictatorship had the guns, bombs and tanks. We had no weapons other than the power of our words, and the moral clarity of our cause. Many democracy activists like us had vanished, forgotten by history, their struggle a failure.
But, in spite of the odds, we refused to give up hope.We refused to listen to the voices of doubt and discouragement. We refused to be swayed by those who could not see that change was on the way. And we were right to stand up for what we believed.
We won our battle for democracy in the Maldives.  I stand before you today as the first democratically elected President in the history of my country.
The path to democracy in the Maldives was not straight-forward. It was bumpy and full of turns. But we were determined that no matter how difficult the terrain, we would reach the end of the road. And we succeeded in our cause.
Four years later and a continent away, we meet here to confront another seemingly impossible task. We are here to save our planet from the silent, patient and invisible enemy that is climate change.
And just as there were doubters in the Maldives, so there are doubters in Copenhagen. There are those who tell us that solving climate change is impossible. There are those who tell us taking radical action is too difficult. There are those who tell us to give up hope.
Well, I am here to tell you that we refuse to give up hope. We refuse to be quiet.We refuse to believe that a better world isn’t possible.
I have three words to say to the doubters and deniers. Three words with which to win this battle. Just three words are all I need. You may already have heard them. Three – Five – Oh. Three – Five – Oh.
Three – Five – Oh, saves the coral reefs. Three – Five – Oh, keeps the Arctic frozen. Three – Five – Oh, ensures my country survives. Three – Five – Oh, makes a better world possible.
I am here to tell you that down the road in the Bella Center the Maldives team is fighting to keep Three – Five – Oh in the negotiating text.
They need all the help they can get from you. Please keep supporting them.

And the good news is that we are now part of a growing bloc of nations, all committed to keeping Three – Five – Oh as the central guiding goal of our global survival plan.
These nations need your help and support too.

I am not a scientist, but I know that one of the laws of physics, is that you cannot negotiate with the laws of physics. Three – Five – Oh is a law of atmospheric physics. You cannot cut a deal with Mother Nature. And we don’t intend to try.
This is why, in March, the Maldives announced plans to become the first carbon neutral country in the world. We intend to become carbon neutral in ten years. We will switch from oil to 100% renewable energy. And we will offset aviation pollution, until a way can be found to decarbonise air transport too.

For us, going carbon neutral is not just the right thing to do. We believe it is also in our economic self-interest. Countries that have the foresight to green their economies today, will be the winners of tomorrow. These pioneering countries will free themselves from the unpredictable price of foreign oil. They will capitalize on the new, green economy of the future. And they will enhance their moral standing, giving them greater political influence on the world stage. In the Maldives, we have relinquished our claim to high-carbon growth.

After all, it is not carbon we want, but development. It is not coal we want, but electricity. It is not oil we want, but transport. Low-carbon technologies now exist, to deliver all the goods and services we need. Let us make the goal of using them.

Let us make the goal of reaching that all-important number: three – five – oh.
We believe that if the Maldives can become carbon neutral; richer, larger countries can follow. But if there is one thing I know about politicians, it’s that they won’t act until their electorates act first. This is where you come in.
History shows us the power of peaceful protest. From the civil rights movement, to Gandhi’s Quit India campaign; non-violent protest can create change. Protest worked in the struggle for democracy in the Maldives. And on 24 October, we saw how protests across the world put Three – Five – Oh firmly on the Copenhagen agenda.
My message to you is to continue the protests. Continue after Copenhagen. Continue despite the odds. And eventually, together, we will reach that crucial number: Three – five – oh.

In all political agreements, you have to be prepared to negotiate. You have to be prepared to compromise; to give and take. That is the nature of politics. But physics isn’t politics. On climate change, there are things on which we cannot negotiate. There are scientific bottom lines that we have to respect. We know what the laws of physics say. And I think you know too.
The most important number in the world. The most important number you’ll ever hear. The most important number you’ll ever say. These three words: Three – five – oh. (Three – five – oh) (Three – five – oh).

Treehugger have a good write-up here.

Certainly the theme for Saturday in Copenhagen, if not Sunday as well, was mobilization. 100,000 marching from the city centre to the Bella Centre, location of the climate change conference, was impressive. More impressive was the diversity of the crowd. Both the international mix and range of organizations represented was phenomenal and in our experience unprecedented (we deal with this particular issue elsewhere).

While it led the mainstream news, to concentrate on the Copenhagen march is to miss the point of what is occuring around the world. According to the wonderful people at 350.org, over 3,000 actions took place globally. Take a couple of minutes to check out some of the media on their site. It’s easy for passionate NGO types to overplay these kinds of actions; 50,000 people marched in London last week for The Wave, In isolation that represents a medium sized UK demo. But add that to what’s going on in 100 or so countries within the past seven days though and a scale emerges. A scale that because of its distribution is easy to miss and easier still to ignore.

We saw Dieter Helm this November in London claim, perhaps correctly, that climate change had yet to produce a real political movement, that traditional politicians had yet to be given a mandate by their constituents. Reasons for this are legion, and it’s more than we have time for tonight to go into. However, around COP15 a light is being lit, and that light is illuminating individuals, communities and even whole nations (Tuvalu, the Maldives et al), who previous to now have not had a mainstream media cycle to jump onto. So a question for us in the NGO and media world is this: how do we turn this spotlight into that mandate Helm referred to? What do we do, and what to we tell Tuvalu to do between now the end of COP15 and Bonn, the next time we can reasonably expect international climate change negotiations to figure on front pages.

Another question then emerges. Yes we can keep shining the light, but sooner, not later, we have to throw the torch to our policy makers and let them run with the lamp. I’m recalling here a recent late night dicussion wiht @jamieandrews and @danielvockins. On whom, we asked ourselves, do we concentrate our efforts. Who are the tradionally invisible policy advisors to government and opposition we need to get to. And crucially, what do we give them for the win. For the language we need to communicate with is that of winning and losing in policy and media cycles. That’s what’s going to get the attention of the latter day Alastair Campbell’s, particularly in the UK and particularly five months from an election.

Back to COP15. 350.org and their like have done a huge job connecting the disparate dots all around the world. Using Copenhagen as the center of a web which brings in strands from all over. We all need to keep joining these. This isn’t about Copenhagen. It’s about giving all those who took part in actions over the past 48 hours the ability to mandate their leaders.

BTW, Keepfakingit will be moving on to the numbers beat Monday as the negotiations start to intensify.

[I'll link this up later, too much to do now]

Keepfakingit has been in Copenhagen roughly 36 hours now. It’s the weekend and certainly today, Sunday, there seems to be an intake of breath and an easing off of negotiations ahead of the oncoming storm of the final few days. Will we get a deal? Probably. Will we get a deal that puts us on that gold paved pavement towards a low carbon future? Your guess at this stage is as good as ours. Whether we do or not though there are some seismic shifts taking place in the way civil society’s representatives are tackling climate change.

This is exemplified perfectly by the choice of Mary Robinson as one of the lead speakers at the vigil outside the Bella Centre Saturday. Robinson as former Uachtaráin na h’Éireann (president of Ireland), represents, to some small degree, the world of politics. Robinson as former UN High Commissioner for Refugees represents a UN insider who knows how the system works and climbed to a top level post. And here’s the interesting part. Robinson as Honourary President of Oxfam represents not only a huge NGO, but a social development NGO that now recognizes climate change as the biggest issue facing it and its ilk today.

In Mary Robinson we have someone who spans three hugely important stakeholder groups at COP15. Politics, civil society and those mysterious people in the middle who are trying to tie it all together and broker a deal. The convergence of these groupings is more than timely, it is vital. That the likes of Oxfam, ActionAid and others are now focusing their collective attention on climate change in such a manner represents a big boost to that process.

However, this isn’t enough. Without meaning to be cynical, Oxfam have not eradicated developing world hunger. So as well as smarter NGOs working in unison we need more cross-over figures like Robinson. Imagine the like of Tony Blair or Gordon Brown leaving Downing street and shunning the JP Morgan directorship for an international role running , who surely has lots of time on his hands that he isn’t

And speaking of former politicians who have seen the (green) light, here’s a poem from Al Gore. Good man yourself Al.