Copenhagen Summit Running Out Of Room: Limits On NGOs And Media

by Yuliya Talmazan | December 7, 2009 at 05:16 pm

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One hundred ninety two nations, nearly a thousand NGOs, five thousand media representatives, one hundred and ten political leaders - all in all, 34, 000 people were planning to fill the halls of the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark for the 11-day UN Climate Change Conference (COP 15) that kicked off today. It seems the COP 15 organizers were never clear about how many participants will be coming to Copenhagen and whether the summit will be able to accommodate all of them. The list of delegates was not available on the COP 15 website until the conference opened today.

The expected number of delegates was at 15,000 originally due to the space constraints of the Bella Center where the conference will be held. However, the interest toward the conference has been record high and 34,000 people asked to attend. Now, Danish organizers are asking to limit the number of media and NGO representatives attending the meetings. Today, news flashes appeared on COP 15 website, saying the number of media requesting accreditation reached 5,000. As the result, the memo said any new requests for accreditation will be suspended until further notice. It is still not clear how the COP 15 organizers will reduce the number of NGO representatives.

For the summit of that caliber, it seems this year's UN Climate Change Conference is becoming a major logistical failure. How can one expect to make any significant decisions in a room stuffed with double the number of delegates and media representatives that were supposed to attend? Is the COP 15 a case of over-branding? The kind of publicity that the Copenhagen summit enjoyed was unprecedented for an environment related inter-governmental conference. But, it seems the level of organizational preparedness was nowhere near the hype generated ahead of the summit.