From Hopenhagen to Brokenhagen? Reflections and Images

1. From Hopenhagen to Brokenhagen?Reflections and Images Bob Pokrant Professor of Anthropology SSAL Curtin University of Technology Perth, Australia

2. Copenhagen as official process-agreement to supersede Kyoto • Copenhagen as meeting place • Copenhagen as performance politics/alternative public space • Copenhagen as microcosm of fluidity of global power • Copenhagen Accord and adaptation

3. Copenhagen as official process • Bella Center- a convention center built in 70s-retro-fitted to be green • Site of official business • Fenced off and policed • Internally divided between side events and plenary sessions-variable access to Parties, Observers and Press • Many other official venues around Copenhagen-side events

4. Official Outcome • Copenhagen Accord (2½ pages long)– non-binding and noted-full consensus not achieved • Decided behind closed doors by small group • Rise of BASIC group-some internationalisation • long-term goal limiting climate change to no more than 2° C • systems of "pledge and review" for developed and developing country mitigation commitments or actions (BUT no quantified emission reduction objectives) • new financial resources (US$30 b; US$100 b)

5. Bella Center: site of the COP 15

7. Security at the Bella Center

9. Copenhagen as meeting place • Authorised space at the Bella Center • Over 40,000 delegates • Diminished access • Quota system • Observers most affected • Security, control of dissent?

10. Alternative Public Spaces • The Klimaforum: “promoting and debating environmentally sustainable and socially just solutions to climate change,” • displayed 50 exhibit stalls; 190 panels and talks; 30 documentary films; workshops, debates, theatre, and music. • Cost €1 m. (COP 15 €160 m.) • Refuge for those excluded from Bella Center • Global movement sought

11. Klimaforum Images

12. Climate Bottom Meeting • staged grass-roots counter-positioning to events at the Bella Center. Themes included conservation displacement; resistance to carbon markets; distribution of responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions; eco-city and village initiatives.

13. Images from Climate BottomWindows of Hope

14. Performance Politics and Protest

18. Copenhagen Climate Challenge • Skeptics forum: • Danish group Climate Sense and the lobby group Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) • Low attendance-mainly middle aged men! • …the world should have the courage to “do nothing until the science is clear”.

19. Global warming skeptics from CFACT pulled off an international climate caper. Climate skeptivists

20. On the streets

21. Copenhagen Accord and adaptation • Non-binding and not adopted but noted • Mitigation-focused reflecting dominant state power • Adaptation commitments insufficient, unclear • Concern among LDCs and SIDS over linking adaptation funding to mitigation • Reciprocity versus historic debt • http://www.denmark.dk/NR/rdonlyres/C41B62AB-4688-4ACE-BB7B-F6D2C8AAEC20/0/copenhagen_accord.pdf

22. No clear specification of most vulnerable and worthy of support • Concern over funding amounts and their administration • Criticism by wealthy countries over redistribution politics • Possible fragmentation of UNFCC process-BUT! • (Feb 4):“…91 countries, including the 27-member EU,  are likely to or have engaged with the accord, representing 80.5% of global emissions."

23. From Hopenhagen to Brokenhagen? • Reactions range from a mess to hopeful • Many developing countries stepping up emission reductions actions • Official consensus: Development within industrial capitalist parameters will continue-ecological modernisation. No alternatives contemplated • Climate change only one global stressor among many all of which are a product of a particular way of thinking of our relationship to the non-human world.