Attention must be earned at the busy venue of COP15, as Reportage enviro Danish Correspondent, Jeppe Funder, discovers.

Chanting errupts from within the Bella Centre as protesters try to get their message across. Image: Jeppe Funder.

On the wide bridge spanning the huge main hall of the Bella Centre, the venue of COP15, TV crews have set up improvised studios and are chatting with live guests about today’s events, protests and perspectives on the conference. The usual stuff, coupled with the ever-increasing Obamania and the countdown to the arrival of the powerhouse president of the US.

Chanting breaks from beneath the bridge. The shouting is so loud that the host of the afternoon news on Danish television signals the sound guy to turn her ear piece volume up.

“Climate change is now. Climate change is now.” The chanting can be heard all over the conference main floor. Eight African American protesters dressed in colourful outfits are chanting the words again and again, repeatedly putting their hand above their heads and reaching for the ceiling, jumping up and down and moving around in a circle, hands on shoulders.

TV news crews and photographers hurry to the scene from all directions and soon the chanting crew of eight is surrounded by more than 20 cameras. The photographers in front kneel to get the perfect picture, the ones in the back are high on their toes stretching their cameras up as high as possible, hoping to land a good shot. Five minutes after it started it’s all over again and the chanting crowd begin giving interviews to the reporters.

The main floor of the Bella Centre is alive and buzzing. This chanting is a reoccuring event taking place every 15-20 minutes. The end result is the same each and every time. Cameras high and low, flashes, chanting, singing and dancing.

Beside the main hall is the NGO area. When delegates have passed through the airport-tight security with metal detectors and access-card scanners, they are confronted with an avalanche of more than 200 NGOs in special booths set up to get their messages across to delegates: “Go Nuclear”, “Wind is the solution”, “Some call it mangrove forest, we call it land-protection.” These are just some of the countless messages, slogans and posters that litter the conference. Badges and t-shirts free for all.

In the COP15 world inside the Bella Center in Copenhagen, attention is not something you get, it’s something you have to claim.

NGOs and developing nations are in an uproar after a Danish draft agreement showing preference to wealthy countries and abandoning the Kyoto protocol was leaked. Reportage enviro Danish Correspondent, Jeppe Funder, reports from COP15.

Danish Prime Minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen feeling the heat at COP15. Image: Courtesy of Image.net/Getty Images

British newspaper, The Guardian, has published a document claiming to outline Danish Government plans for a global climate agreement. The document has sparked outrage at the Bella Center, as it is alleged to favour rich countries.

The leaked document from the Danish Government is causing havoc at the COP15 negotiations in Copenhagen. The document is said to have been circulating as a draft paper for a global agreement in the past weeks.

One section of the document suggests that some of the Kyoto protocol’s legally binding principals be replaced with ‘political agreements’. This has been interpreted as a huge advantage for industrialised nations.

This is an idea which has not gone down well with the NGOs at COP15.

“It has sparked massive rage,” head of the World Wildlife Foundations climate programme John Nordbo told Danish news-site Berlingske.dk.

Oxfam climate advisor Antonio Hill told the American political journal Politico that “The poor nations are in danger of getting squished like ants in a room full of elephants.”

Reactions from the developing countries are no better. At a press conference inside the COP15 venue, Sudan’s Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, spokesperson for more than 130 developing nations in the G77 told reporters that the document could severely undermine the negotiations.

“We cannot afford failure in Copenhagen. We must find a way to a fair agreement, but we will not sign an unfair agreement that condemns 80 per cent of the world population to suffering and injustice,” he said.

The Danish Ministry for Climate and Energy issued a press release stating that the document ‘in no way’ represents Denmark’s draft for a new climate protocol.

In a statement sent out to journalists at COP15, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary, Yvo de Boer stated, “this was an informal paper ahead of the conference given to a number of people for the purposes of consultations.”

The Danish Government has passed controversial new laws to detain protesters in the lead up to the Copenhagen Climate Conference. New cage-style holding cells and a vehicle-mounted water cannon are available to local police if protests turn violent. Reportage enviro Danish Correspondent, Jeppe Funder, reports from the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen.

Controversial cages have been built to hold violent protesters during the conference. Image: Politiken.dk

With COP15 only days away the Danish police force has taken its efforts up a notch.

A new ‘protest package’ of laws has been pushed through parliament and is now to ‘welcome’ protesters during the Climate Conference.

While the heads of states and other climate personalities from all over the world are focusing on sealing the deal in Copenhagen, the Danish police force has been gearing up for one of its biggest challenges ever.

The Government’s protest package has been underway for quite some time and has attracted much attention, as some of the powers given to the police are seen as too harsh. The new laws allow the police to administratively detain people for up to 12 hours without the detainees actually breaking any laws. Furthermore, disturbing the peace and disobeying police orders during protests will result in a minimum of 40 days in prison.

The laws have been under heavy fire since they were proposed in early November. The Danish society of Judges, the Danish Defense Attorneys, the Danish institute for Human Rights and various other human rights associations are among the critics.

In a response to the Danish Parliament the Danish Society of Judges underline that the laws are ‘putting pressure on the rule of law’ in Denmark. Furthermore the laws will put a heavy economic burden on the justice system.

The laws were passed on the November 26. The opposition voted against the protest package and stated that they would like to see the law abolished in January when the Climate Conference is over.

This new protest package could also mean more arrests during the Climate Conference Copenhagen from December 8-17. But since the Danish prisons are filled to the brim already, as Danish national newspaper Berlingske Tidende reported shortly after the laws were passed, the police have found new ways to prepare for mass arrests of protesters.

A new improvised prison has been built in an old industrial warehouse on the outskirts of Copenhagen. 37 cages each measuring 5 by 2.4 meters have been installed in the warehouse. Each cage is designed to hold 10 protesters within the 12 square meters of space in the cage. But ideally no protesters will see the inside of the cages according to the police.

“The criterium for success is that they will never be used. But we have to be prepared,” Deputy Police Inspector Rasmus Bernt Skovsgaard told Danish newspaper Politiken.

Amnesty International condemned the method of detaining protesters. Referring to the UN laws about prisoners, the general secretary of Amnesty International Denmark, Lars Normann Jørgensen, told Politiken that combined with the new protest package innocent people could end up in the cages

“These people have done nothing illegal, and the police have no intention of charging them. They just want them off the street,” he said.

Mr Jørgensen refers to the UN standards for the treatment of detainees, which requires that all detainees must be able to sit, sleep and have enough room for privacy.

“There is a whole list of demands that need to be met. Furthermore the convention says that no detainees can be subjected to degrading or humiliating treatment. Something that will definitely happen in this case,” he said.

The police have responded to the criticism by stating that no one will be detained as long as they do not break any laws.

The Danish Ombudsman is currently looking into the cage issues.

But these are not the only questionable powers that have been given to local police. The new tool of riot police in Copenhagen is a car-mounted water cannon which was shown to reporters recently. NGO’s say the police are sending wrong signals.

Peoples Climate Action leader Lene Vennits is worried that the new water cannon is signalling that trouble is coming up at COP15.

“We’re worried what the public impression of what will be going on during COP15 is,” she told Politiken, referring to the newest addition to police weaponry for handling protesters during the Climate Conference.

The police fully understand the NGO’s concerns and stated that they have no intention of using the water cannon.

“But we have to look at the experiences from other countries. And our impressions is, that someone is going to cause trouble,” Deputy Police Inspector Sten Søder said.

The water cannon demonstration was performed shortly after the release of a video from an organisation called “Never Trust a COP (NTAC)” surfaced on Youtube. In the video, the activists threaten to set Copenhagen on fire during the a planned protest march on December 12. In their own words, the NTAC will, referring to capitalism, “show a dead system how to die”.

Some 30,000 protesters are expected to march from the Danish Parliament to the Bella Center where the Climate Conference is taking place.