Olive Heffernan

I arrived at COP15 bright and early yesterday morning with the hope of getting registration out of the way fairly swiftly so that I could get on with more pressing matters. No such luck. Instead, I spent nine hours witnessing an organizational disaster of colossal proportions. Having accredited three times the number of attendees for COP15 than the Bella Centre could handle, organizers at the UN decided – well – to ignore the problem. The upshot was that hundreds were left waiting in the freezing cold for hours while UN officials deliberated over whether to let those who were already officially accredited into the conference, or not.

In total, 45,215 people — including delegates, journalists, lobbyists and campaigners — registered for the conference, UN organisers told AP reporters. The Bella Center’s maximum capacity is 15,000, reports the AP. Among those outside were country delegates, academics, many NGO representatives, and journalists from the BBC world service, CNN, Deutsche Welle and New Scientist. According to one source, Lord Nicholas Stern was also outside at one point, unable to gain access.

One of the issues for UN officials was how to restrict the number of NGO representatives. Over 15,000 registered for the conference, and some organizations had 200 or more indiviudals attending. What’s surprising is that the UN didn’t put a cap on this number during registration, which takes place in the months prior to the actual event. Now they’ve decided that only 1,000 NGO representatives will be granted access to the conference on Thursday, and this will be pared down to 90 on Friday. Many NGO representatives outside yesterday were expressing outrage at the decision, having travelled far and wide to be here.

Another way of handling the problem yesterday could have been to seperate the registration process for different types of attendee, but that also seemed to evade UN organizers. The criteria on which they granted access seemed fairly random and changed from hour to hour. Some people got in by pretending to be part of a national delegation and waving a piece of paper that was supposed to be an official letter. These letters were checked by police sometimes but mostly not.

At times, police announced on a tannoy that registration for COP15 was completely closed; at other times they told us we would simply have to wait another two hours. Two hours later, the waiting time had not changed. Outside in the cold, people joked that if this is representative of UN efficiency, it’s no wonder we don’t yet have a deal on climate change. At one point in the afternoon as we waited for further announcements, several members of the African delegation walked out of the Copenhagen meeting, owing to a perceived lack of progress. I got in after seven hours outside, after which I queued for a further two hours inside (and that was with a fast-tracking system for press once inside).

UN organizers say that they will have sorted the problems with registration today, but that remains to be seen. I’ll keep you posted.