Notes on an informal meeting of the parties

As has now become my morning routine, I arrive by bicycle at precisely 7:45 am in order to be prompt for the cold dark wait until the UNFCCC, as represented by pleasant but firm Danish policemen in yellow reflective vests, deigns to let the NGOs in. This morning I am greeted by an enormous crowd lined up before the fence. I first panic, thinking I will never get in but relax upon discovering that these are the people who have not yet registered. My calm is temporary when I reflect for a moment – there must be hundreds of people in this jostling line. How can the conference centre, already stretched beyond capacity, manage to accommodate more people?

Perhaps because of the general confusion caused by the hundreds of people waiting to register we are let in early this morning and I slide through the security lines. I have become expert at slipping out of my coat, removing my watch and earrings, extricating my laptop and putting it all into the yellow bins for the X Ray machine in a single movement. I then walk double time to the far 'pink' lane for the coat check because the lines are always shorter there. I leave my coat, get my ticket so it can be relocated in the fray thirteen hours later, and dash to the document distribution booth where each morning the day's schedule is available. Due to the vagaries of the negotiation process these are updated daily in two 10-15 page documents that I and thousands of others pick up everyday. I try not to think about how much paper this is.

The programme announces that the informal meeting of the parties will start at 11:30am in the main plenary room. I have a meeting at 10 but cancel it and skip a talk I had been planning to attend. I know from experience that if you are not in the plenary room well in advance you will be unable to get in. If you manage to get into the plenary room if you leave for ANY reason you cannot get back in. For NGOs access to these meetings is determined by the opportunity costs you are willing to pay. I pay the price today because this may be the last time I can. As of tomorrow security tightens and only select individuals from select NGOs will be allowed access. I am not even sure I will be allowed into the building.

I sit in my seat. The room is enormous, designed to hold between two and three thousand people, and is divided in half. The front half is reserved for the official parties and has long tables with a country name plate a microphone for each set. The back half is for observers. This area is divided by white ropes into three zones. Today NGOs get one of these zones, while press and non-negotiating delegation members get the others. As we wait images of blue sky scroll over the two enormous screens dominating the front of the room.

And we wait. And wait. And wait.

At 12:30, one hour after the meeting is supposed to start an announcement tell us that the “informal meeting will continue to be postponed”. Nervous laughter skitters through the crowd. What does this mean? Is this all the information we will receive? I cringe at thoughts of my missed meeting and skipped talk....by this time I could have gone to both of them.

We wait some more.

At 12:45 some people get out of their seats. The loudspeaker booms again, “ladies and gentlemen, distinguished delegates, please keep your seats”. I feel like I am in an airplane. I would like to get some lunch but it is obvious that something is going on, and if I leave now I will never get back in.

We wait some more.

At 1pm I hear a quiet humming. Soon it builds. Several rows in front of me I see Robin Hood, easily distinguished by his green felt hat with the jaunty red feather. He is singing and one by one the young people seated around him start to sing too. They are grouped around an iPod and are all singing along to a Four Non-Blond song, “hey hey hey what's going on....every single day I pray for a revolution”. A security guard comes over and stand over the group and asks them to stop. They ignore him and sing on. A second security guard joins him and they loom over the group until the singing dies. Robin looks down and smirks. The humming does not completely die but the security guards turn their backs and ignore it, unwilling to escalate the situation in front of hundreds of NGO observers.

As 1:15 I eavesdrop on the man skypeing behind me. “The talks have broken down” he says, “no-one was expecting this”. He sounds confident but not panicked so I take him seriously. This is how you get information if you are a bottom rung NGO representative. No information is officially provided. Your ears must tune into the frequencies of those who seem to have been around this block before. The trick is to decipher who not to believe. I generally don't listen to anyone who sounds too excited – chances are they know as little as I and are not yet used to the ebb and flow of negotiations.

We wait some more.

At 1:30 three security guards start telling the people in the front rows they will have to leave. I hear a quiet murmur that they are making all NGO representatives leave. I stay seated, discretely flip my badge over and hunker down with my computer to look as important and occupied as possible. It doesn't work. More security guards have arrived and are examining our badges one by one. All observers and all press are escorted out of the room.

By 1:45 I am outside the plenary hall. All I have to show for my morning is a cancelled meeting, a missed talk, and four hours of waiting. An older NGO delegate is angry we have been excluded but then shrugs, “Oh well, if they don't want us there it is because they are arguing, and if they are arguing at least they are talking”. I decide he is worth listening and reflect that even if I didn't accomplish anything today, hopefully some negotiator in there did.