All Images ©Robert vanWaarden

A slideshow from tonight’s vigil in Copenhagen, urging world leaders to rise to the historic occasion and sign a real deal for climate justice.

(Photo credit: Kris Krug)

“I think it might be illegal to have a climate change presentation without a drowning polar bear.” It was day two of the Development and Climate Change side event and behind the young academic from the University of Hawaii, a giant image of a polar bear floating on a tiny chunk of ice materialized on the screen. A “charismatic megafauna,” she called it with irony in her voice. Beside her on the panel, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, former president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, calmly made a note.

It was August of 2007 when I first had the privilege of hearing Sheila Watt-Cloutier speak. I was on Baffin Island in the Eastern Canadian Arctic working with youth concerned about climate change and she gave us a keynote address. Set to the backdrop of the Sylvia Grinnell River, where a fisherman pulled Arctic char from the water, the beauty of the landscape was only surpassed by the grandeur of Watt-Cloutier’s words. Though the basement studio at the Copenhagen Koncerthuse was somewhat less majestic than the park in Iqaluit, the words were no less inspiring.

“In the Arctic,” she said, “we don’t talk about the polar bears.” It was a phrase I’d heard her say before and one that moved me then as it does now. “In the Arctic, we talk about the people.”

It’s a message that haunts those who hear it. You see it resounding in each video clip of melting glaciers and each powerpoint presentation with a polar bear image. You hear it in radio programs and podcast and read it in books on climate change and headlines about endangered species. It is the message that the Arctic is not a wild, uninhabited place, with threatened animals, but a lived environment with threatened communities and people. In Kimmirut and Pangnirtung, hunters are facing unpredictable weather and dangerous conditions on the water. Across the Northwest Territories, ice roads, the arteries of Arctic transportation are melting, further isolating remote settlements. In Tuktoyaktuk, the community is being washed away by rising sea levels and an eroding coastline.

This is the face of climate change. This is the species that is affected by a warming planet. We are the charismatic megafauna.

Civil society groups have played a crucial role in advocating for a fair, ambitious and binding deal from these talks. As observers, they can be invaluable in making sure our representatives are responding seriously to the gravity of the climate crisis. And now they’re getting shut out almost entirely from the final stages of these negotiations.

Yesterday, youth in the Bella Center staged a sit-in to demand negotiators listen to the more than 11 million voices that have signed the tcktcktck petition to get a real deal. Today, they’re responding the silencing of civil society groups inside. This is what it looks like when our voices are silenced.

Without us from Sébastien Duyck on Vimeo.

Protest leaders advance on the Bella Center (Photo credit: Amy Dewan)

Tensions were rising inside and outside the Bella Center in Copenhagen today, with a demonstration and sit-in to protest the exclusion of developing countries and civil society from COP15 climate negotiations. Demonstrators marched on the conference center, where high-level talks are now beginning, demanding “no decisions about us without us.” They were planning to meet with hundreds of delegates from inside the talks to hold a “People’s Assembly” together outside. Organizers said they were aiming to come up with alternative agreements to those being discussed by negotiators, which many feel are neither ambitious nor inclusive enough. Instead, two NGOs arrived this morning and found their accreditation revoked, leading some inside to stage a dramatic sit-in.

Protesters, mostly NGOs and other civil society members who were previously accredited, were accompanied by police along the march to the Bella Center, but were warned we’d be arrested if they tried to enter. When the crowd pushed forward, police started pepper spray the crowd. When people within the crowd tried to back up, they were beaten with batons from both directions, and several people were arrested and hoisted into vans. At least one person was beaten down after climbing a van. The last I saw, things were at a standoff, with police waiting on either side of the hundreds of protesters that still remained after a foiled attempt to cross the stream in front of the center with an inflatable raft.

On the other side, those few NGO members who were allowed inside staged a walk-out in solidarity. They were to meet with those outside of the Conference, to have a “People’s Assembly.” However, those marching from the Bella Center were barred from entering the street by police. They blocked everyone on a small bridge. As marchers tried to negotiate with them, they seemed to reach an agreement. They told those part of the walk-out that they could advance, but they risked arrest by the police down the line. They decided to take the consequences, but as they attempted to advance through the police barrier, the police failed to move aside and instead bludgeoned the activists. As some in the back realized what had started to happen and retreated, the police created a circle around those still trapped on the bridge. They continued to beat them for a few minutes, and then finally let people go. They continued to block the bridge and the march was forced to find another direction to those standing outside, on public property.

Treehugger has reported that as we were seeing this outside, Friends of the Earth leader Nnimmo Bassey was leading a sit-in in the entrance lobby of the center to protest the revoking of accreditation for his group and Avaaz. No clear explanation has been offered for the revocation, though UN officials reportedly alternately said they presented a security risk and that there was no room.

But it’s important that the meaning of today’s events don’t get lost. As the negotiations move into their final days, many have been frustrated by the huge reductions in the number of badges the UN is giving out to participate inside. As a member of one of the civil society groups frustrated by the move, I joined the march of between 2 and 3000 people one journalist estimated the crowd at. Through thick wet flakes of snow, organizers from the Climate Justice Network and Climate Justice Action groups joined representatives of the Via Campesina landless workers movement to demand their voices be heard, under the banner “Reclaim Power.”

There are definite parallels between the groups’ grievances. Sharon Tan, a youth observer attending with a group named Syinc from Singapore, camped out all through Monday and into Tuesday night without being let in. She says the presence of young civil society members is important for both them and negotiators. “When we attended the plenary last week,” she says, “at least we were aware of developments. My purpose here is mainly for public education back home. But being able to take part in actions on the side in the center helps remind everyone who they’re there for.”

Many countries’ representatives are also feeling like their voices are being ignored. Industrialized countries have not shown a willingness to commit to the deep emissions cuts being demanded by developing nations. Developing countries have shown support for the $10 billion fast-track financing for climate change mitigation and adaption in the, but say it falls far short of the climate debt owed to them by the industrialized countries who have been responsible for most of the carbon emissions contributing to climate change. Small island nations like the Maldives, threatened with being submerged by sea level rise, have been especially vocal in stating that these issues are a matter of survival.

As heads of state and ministers begin to arrive from over 120 countries, it remains to be seen how the gulf between the many different positions being discussed will be resolved.

©Robert van Waarden

Over 100,000 people converged in Copenhagen on Dec. 12, 2009 to march towards the Bella Center and demand a fair, ambitious, and binding treaty at the end of the Conference of Parties. This gallery is a selection of some of my best photography from the day.

During the conference some American and Australian youths decided to stand up to this unfair process and assisted several under-represented delegations. It appeared to be a win-win situation: the youths felt connected with the conference and the under-represented delegations had more manpower to cope with the enormous amount of work at the conference. Project Survival NL blog to learn more!