For those groups and citizens that were unable to find an outlet for their research, opinions, and concerns at the COP15 in the Bella Center, there are, thankfully, other venues in the city able to serve them. In fact, the Bella Center has a capacity of 15,000, and more than 45,000 people have registered so far; in the next few days more and more NGO observers and journalists will be excluded from the Bella center as important political figures arrive for the final sessions. Where can the overflow activists and observers head to? Events such as the Klimaforum.
The Klimaforum can be viewed as a “people’s” COP15. The forum is held in a conference center in the heart of Copenhagen, and is set up similarly to the COP15: booths for assorted NGOs, media events, and constant seminars and presentations jostle for space. The Klimaforum, however, feels markedly different from the COP15. The presentations and speakers are of the same high caliber (there are several crossovers between the two conferences), but the crowd is more varied. Indeed, the protesters in the Bella center were overwhelmingly from developed nations, groups of young Americans, Britons, or Canadians banding together, while the demonstrators at the Klimaforum included groups such as Brazilian feminist activists in jungle-themed costumes. More of the participants at the Klimaforum are involved in on-the-ground organizing and grassroots efforts against climate change, rather than the ministerial and bureaucratic backgrounds of many COP15 participants. The Klimaforum has altogether a more democratic, if frenzied, feel.
Why are events such as the Klimaforum important? At a large event such as the COP15, the terms “least developed countries” and “poverty reduction projects” can become abstractions and convenient language for drafting working papers. It is essential to be reminded of the faces of climate change and development, from the victims of misguided, failed carbon offset reserves in the Amazon, to the NGOs working with biogas projects in Tanzania. The truth is that all of the headstrong and heartbroken citizens jostling around the Klimaforum will be the very ones needed to enact the physical realities of climate change mitigation: reforestation, biofuels development, and renewable energy projects, among others. These are the people that know the messy workings of democratization and the perils of misguided action. Simply put, when political leaders decide to take action on climate change, these will be the people whose brows and backs bear the burden of those measures: they will ultimately decide to carry out the will of the COP. So, why do we need to bother with those who are seemingly not important enough to get into the main event in Copenhagen? Because they are also the citizens who will not accept empty apologies when strong action is not taken.
Check out a wild collection of photos from December 15th, including dancing penguins and Brazilian feminist warriors on Picasa: