The outcome of the COP15 has left much of the world in disappointment, Reportage enviro Danish Correspondent Jeppe Funder reports from Copenhagen.

The COP15 comes to an inconclusive end. Picture: Jeppe Funder.

The COP15 conference is over. The world is left with a non-legally binding agreement and a document full of intentions, but without targets or signatures.

Only late night efforts particularly by Barack Obama and Chinese premier Wen Jiabao lead to an agreement in Copenhagen. But the agreement satisfies nobody, it is not legally binding, it is not signed by all countries and does not have a set CO2 emissions target. The agreement sets the maximum temperature rise to two degrees, but how the goal will be reached is still unclear.

Countries have been left to report back on how much CO2 they are willing to cut with these numbers to be added to the document. Countries are free to sign the agreement or they can choose not to, as their signature has no consequences.

Negotiations went on for over 24 hours before the final ‘Copenhagen Accord‘ was published. According to multiple sources the Chinese Government was one of the main obstacles of a larger agreement, as they refused – and still refuse – to sign an agreement that allows UN inspections to verify actual emission cuts.

The line of dissappointed parties is growing by the hour. The union of developing nations, the G77, accused the Danish Goverment of not being an impartial leader of the negotiations.

“What has happened today confirms what we have suspected all along: That a deal will be pushed through by the United States with the assistance of Denmark,” lead negotiator of the G77 Lumumba Stanislaus De-Aping told reporters at a press conference.

General Secretary of Greenpeace International Kumi Naidoo told Politiken.dk, “we are sending a death sentence to the small island states.”

Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen has taken a lot of heat for his negotiation tactics which ultimately didn’t result in a legally binding agreement. Yet he told Berlingske.dk that is still proud of the outcomes of the COP15.

“We’ve made a difference Denmark can be proud of by bringing the world’s decisive negotiations power to the same table. Denmark can’t deliver the results, we can only deliver the frame.”

The frame is now the Copenhagen Accord. Analysts hope that more countries will support the document and another climate meeting in Germany early 2010 will result in more progress. If not, the pressure will be on once again, when the COP16 takes place in Mexico in December 2010.

Elizabeth Pearson reports from London

Gordon Brown sees the Copenhagen accord as a constructive step in fighting climate change. Image: Wikicommons

The watered-down accord reached at the Copenhagen conference is a “vital first step” in a global approach to climate change, Britain’s Prime Minister says.
British prime minister Gordon Brown has been among leaders from 193 countries to spend two weeks in the Danish capital fleshing out a worldwide agreement on tackling global warming.

A last-ditch deal agreed on as negotiations concluded today admitted that “deep cuts in emissions are required” but failed to supply any detailed provisions to achieve this.

Mr Brown told journalists at the UN summit that the accord was a “vital first step” but refused to label it “historic”.

“This has not been an easy summit but I do say that the Copenhagen deal offers hope,” he said.

“This is the first step we are taking towards a green and low carbon future for the world, steps we are taking together. But like all first steps, the steps are difficult.”

World leaders agreed to limit a rise in global temperatures to two degrees celsius but failed to incorporate specific details as to how this would be achieved. The setting of individual emissions targets for 2020 was also postponed to early next year.

Mr Brown had been pushing for the treaty to be made legally binding. This action was, however, erased from the timetable, to the distress of the European Union.
President of the EU Commission Jose Manuel Barroso told reporters, “I will not hide my disappointment regarding the non-binding nature of the agreement here”.

“In that respect, the document falls far short of our expectations.”

The UK’s Energy and Climate change secretary Ed Miliband admitted the conference dubbed ‘Hopenhagen’ had not been as successful as anticipated.

“I don’t think it’s the full agreement we would have wanted. We would have wanted a clearer tract to a legally binding treaty. We’d have wanted more clarity of ambition for 2050,” he said.

“[But] it’s not the final word at all, it’s the end of the beginning. It marks a real sense that developed and developing countries, despite their constraints, want to tackle the problem.”

Final day talks were hijacked by a standoff between the two largest economies over calls by US President Barack Obama for China’s carbon output to be independently monitored.

Executive Director of Greenpeace UK John Sauven said the event was altogether unsatisfactory.

“The city of Copenhagen is a crime scene tonight, with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport,” he said.

“It is now evident that beating global warming will require a radically different model of politics than the one on display here in Copenhagen.”

Elizabeth Pearson is Reportage-enviro‘s London correspondent.

Read other news from the Copenhagen Conference from our correspondents.

The Copenhagen Climate Conference was significant for all, but none as much as the Pacific Islands, whose people will lose their homes, culture and livelihoods in the near future. May Slater reports.

Locals campaign against climate change. Picture: 350.org.

Akka Rimon greets her Sydney audience with a traditional I-Kiribati blessing “Te Mauri, Te Raoiao Te Tabomoa”. It means health, peace and prosperity for all. “This is something that we believe strongly in, something we believe everyone is entitled to,” she says.

Akka is here to tell the story of her changing island home, Kiribati, a string of 33 coral atolls and coconut palms straddling 4000km of the equator. It’s a fitting tale for a forum called ‘The Human Face of Climate Change’, but it’s a story she finds difficult to tell.

“When I was asked to speak here I wasn’t really sure whether I should be excited or sad because these issues are so close to my heart.” Her story, she says, “is about the waves, climbing over the walls, climbing over my island one day.”

In Kiribati, a nation of 110,000 people, ideals of collective health, peace and prosperity are being washed out with the King tides. “We are tiny” Rimon says, “but we’re at the forefront of climate change.”

Rising sea levels, a warmer, more acidic ocean and extreme weather events are making life on the islands untenable. And in response, her people are preparing to leave.

“Maybe we will still be there when our grandchildren grow up but I don’t know what will happen to us after this,” she said.

Scientists estimate they have fifty years before the atolls will properly drown. Akka thinks it’s more like thirty.

But the Islanders are already living out the flooded sci-fi future of Waterworld – just not in the Hollywood spotlights. On Kiribati, climate change is felt acutely, and every day. Water and food – basic to survival – have been affected most severely. As the sea pushes deeper into natural waterways, it is contaminating freshwater supplies and salt-soaking already arid soils.

“Our children collect water every day,” says Rimon. “In their quest, they now have to carry their buckets right into the middle of the island.”

They are also suffering new health problems from exposure to water borne diseases that hitch a ride on warmer currents and fester in stagnant inland pools.

Not much grows here; land is an already limited resource and more fragile plant life cowers in the face of greedy and temperamental tides. Locals depend on imported foods like rice, flour and sugar.

“We have coconuts and bwabwai (taro), what we call papaya, pandanus and breadfruit as our major substitutes,” says Rimon, “but when there’s a delay in a cargo ship arriving, then we’re in trouble.”

But perhaps the most obvious proof of Kiribati’s close fought battle with climate change are the deep scars of coastal erosion.

“Everywhere, you can see damage to the infrastructure, damage to the roads – the rate of our erosion is frightening because it’s faster than our capacity to repair the damage, to re-build homes and sea walls” says Rimon. “It’s amazing how nature is fighting back.”

The damage and the uncertainty are not unique to Kiribati. Dr Sarah Park, from the CSIRO Climate Change Adaptation program says “all countries in the Asia Pacific Region are vulnerable”. And that includes The Torres Straight Islands. Last year, Dr Park met with Pacific representatives in Fiji as part of an AusAid funded project to assess the impacts of climate change.

“Extreme events like the tsunamis we saw in Samoa will be more frequent and more severe,” she says. “Warmer water temperatures will increase the likelihood of cyclones and storms, which will especially affect the low-lying islands like Kiribati and Tuvalu.”

Park’s research aims to inform future adaptation strategies; improving food security, water management and access to health and education. She says migration, as a way of coping, is an extreme last resort. But the prospect is fast becoming a reality for many.

Cam Walker, National Climate Change Officer at non-profit organisation Friends of the Earth, says climate displacement in the Pacific region is happening, and the numbers of people fleeing their homelands will continue to grow.

“Compared to the rest of the world, numerically, it is not as big an issue as it’s going to be for other regions, particularly Africa and mainland Asia, but it’s going to be significant.”

Unfortunately, these real life refugees from the rising seas will not have a Kevin Costner raft to help them sail off in search of Dryland.

In April this year, The Carteret Islanders of Papua New Guinea became the first people in the world to officially relocate for environmental reasons. When whole communities began the move to mainland Bougainville, experts and activists dubbed them the world’s first ‘Climate Change Refugees’.

“In the Carterets” says Walker, “global warming has actually led to the collapse of the local food security. Rising sea levels matched with storm surges are impacting their food growing areas, their gardens – which means they’re dropping into malnutrition.” There was no alternative but to leave.

Other vulnerable Asian and Pacific nations are bracing themselves in similar ways against the creeping tides, unprecedented droughts and increasingly severe weather events. Like Papua New Guinea, the governments of Kiribati, Tuvalu and The Maldives are supporting their people to relocate.

Rimon says Kiribati’s long-term strategy is to upskill its people; putting training programs in place so that when the time comes to jump ship, they’ll be ready and able to swim with the best in the global economy.

“The government is trying to empower people to believe they can make a good life of themselves, wherever they are in the world,” she says.

Kiribati has already set up a number of skill building partnerships and labour mobility schemes with Australia and New Zealand. In one such program, about sixty young people are traveling each year to Australia to train under the Kiribati Australia Nursing Initiative. Another, The Pacific Access Scheme, allows Islanders to work in New Zealand for an extended temporary period. Rimon herself, who works in the Kiribati public service, is at Sydney University this year on an AusAid Leadership Award Scholarship, completing a Master of Public Administration.

“We want to migrate, not as second class citizens, but as skillful people, as worthwhile citizens,” she says. “We don’t want to be refugees of our own country and we don’t want to be a burden on other countries.”

More immediately, she believes what’s needed is a better understanding of climate change; of the small things individuals can do to slow the impact and adapt to the changes happening around them. Rimon says that while most I-Kiribati now jump at any chance to get out, there are others who don’t believe global warming is actually happening.

“We are strong Christians, some people believe these changes are happening because we have sinned, it’s God’s will. But most I-Kiribati believe in God’s rainbow promise to Noah that there will never be another flood,” she says.

Her concern is that there will be a second flood, and when it strikes, people need to know what to do. “Maybe the government should at least give out lifejackets to every household,” she suggests grimly.

A 2001 World Disasters Report by The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies revealed that more people in the world are now forced to leave their homes because of environmental disasters than war. By 2050, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that there will be 150 million environmental refugees worldwide.

How will Australia respond to a humanitarian catastrophe of such scale on our doorstep? Bill Clinton raised the question during a visit to Australia in 2001. It was the time of the Tampa affair, when the Howard government refused a Norwegian freighter carrying 438 rescued asylum seekers from entering Australian waters.

“If you’re worried about 400 people” he told Australians at a charity dinner, “you just let the world keep warming up like this for the next fifty years and your grandchildren will be worried about 400,000 people.” The number of displaced from the island states alone, is predicted to be more like one million.

Australia is one of the driest places on earth, with gasping riverbeds, a bleaching barrier reef and crumbling coastlines of our own. We’re currently turning asylum seekers away by the boatload, literally. But as the world’s largest per-capita greenhouse polluter, there is the notion that we have a responsibility to support our Pacific mates bearing the brunt of the effects of global warming.

Margaret Duckett, CEO of the Australian Foundation for the Peoples of Asia and the Pacific, thinks we definitely do.

“The proportion of carbon emissions from those 8 million people that make up all Pacific Island countries is three quarters of one percent of global emissions” she says. “Their contribution is miniscule, but they’re the ones suffering the most.”

Cam Walker says the Australian Government recognises climate displacement is happening but is reluctant to act ‘prematurely’. They say they have to wait for Pacific Island nations to ask for help with relocation, and that at present, they are not doing so. “And we say, ‘Well that’s like saying you don’t call the ambulance until the truck hits the wall!”

Last week at the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit, Tuvalu, Kiribati and other members of the Alliance of Small Island States lobbied hard for deeper emissions cuts and a new treaty to cap global temperatures at 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, as opposed to the 2 degrees being pushed by the big polluters.

But the government of Tuvalu has also asked for more immediate assistance from its wealthier neighbours.

“A number of the Pacific Island countries want to be set up and accepted as autonomous states within Australia or New Zealand” says Duckett. “They also want it acknowledged that they will retain ownership of the sea waters around where their countries used to be so that they maintain an economic base. Otherwise they, and their cultures, will disappear.”

Duckett says previous appeals for Australia and New Zealand to take the people of Tuvalu in as a whole community have fallen on deaf ears.

Paul Power, CEO of the Australian Council for Refugees, says current refugee solutions are not appropriate, and in fact, The Refugee Convention is under more pressure than it can bear.

“We need to be prepared for significant climate displacement and we need to find new mechanisms to respond to displacement on a much larger scale,” he says. “Here we have the opportunity to plan long term – It would be a great shame if our collective thinking about movements of people in the future isn’t lifted above and beyond the current way of thinking and responding to crisis situations.”

In October, in an attempt to raise awareness of their country’s plight, leaders of The Maldives pulled on wetsuits and scuba tanks to hold an underwater global warming meeting. The flippers of President Mohamed Nasheed and his 13 cabinet members came to rest, 10 metres below the surface, under office desks on the sandy ocean floor. With hand signals and water-proof whiteboards, they drafted an appeal to all countries to dramatically cut their emissions before the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference. The Maldives are the lowest lying country in the world; 20 of its islands have been evacuated in the last 15 years because of rising seas and devastating tsunamis.

‘I don’t know what works’ says Margaret Duckett of the dramatic publicity stunt, ‘but it is important to try and get some understanding, to inspire action. Not enough people are really aware of what’s happening.’

Many, including Akka Rimon, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, delegates of this year’s Pacific Islands Forum in Cairns and members of the Alliance of Small Island States in Copenhagen agree; the only policy to minimize the pain of a climate displacement crisis is a sharp reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, globally.

“It’s hard to think we’ll be victims of what other people are doing,” says Rimon. “Now our work is to yell to the world, to our big brothers and sisters, that we don’t have any time left.”

Does she believe migration is inevitable for her people? Rimon laughs and launches into another personal story. “Let me tell you what happened when two earthquakes struck Vanuatu just a few weeks ago” she says. “It was so close to home. We had tremors and alerts, Government offices were closed. In the news we hear of people in Vanuatu running to the mountains, to the highlands. But we in Kiribati have no place to run…which is really not a joke at all!”

Rimon spoke to her brothers back home. “I asked them; ‘So what are you doing?’ And they’re like, ‘Well, the stadium is filling up with children’. This is what the panic was like; everyone trying to get their children up on the stadium, to higher ground. And I’m wondering; how helpless is this?”

What she does know is that her people want to remain in Kiribati for as long as they can. “We look forward to the outcome of Copenhagen to assure ourselves we still have hope,” she says. “But at the end of our story, our islands will be submerged one day.”

It’s a reality that lends a galvanizing perspective to the notion of a climate change debate.

“For us” says Rimon, “Climate change is an issue concerning our basic rights to a happy, healthy quality of life. It is a threat to our very existence.”

“Te Mauri, Te Raoiao Te Tabomoa.”

May Slater is a postgraduate Journalism student from The University of Technology, Sydney.

Read about COP15 from our foreign correspondents.

The COP15 negotiations are entering their final stages, but space is limited so NGOs are being forced out as heads of states arrive in big numbers. Jeppe Funder & Rune Langhoff report.

The Bella Centre's capacity is forced to the limits as heads of state arrive. Picture: Jeppe Funder.

Californian ‘governator’ Arnold Schwarzenegger is in the building at the COP15 as leaders of the big nations are starting to arrive. President of the European Union Commission José Manuel Barroso has arrived, China’s premier is expected on the 17th and Obama is scheduled to arrive on the 18th.

But with the new arrivals, the Bella Centre’s maximum capacity of 15,000 people is being streched above and beyond its limits, as 45,000 people have applied for permission to attend the conference.

This has lead to the NGOs at the conference being removed from the conference. They have – until now – had complete access to the venue to promote their messages. But as of Wednesday some of the NGO-workers won’t set foot inside the Bella Center again as more than 80 per cent of some NGO personnel are denied access, because delegates are arriving in big numbers.

“More and more of us are being excluded with numbers increasing each day and only 20 per cent of the organisation have access now,” said Emily Mulligan, 350.org Australian Policy Advisor. She explains that the exclusions have led the movement to unite further and to spread its efforts outside of offical UNFCCC frameworks.

“It is interesting that so many NGO delegates were accredited and made the effort to come to Copenhagen freezing to f***ing death, when at the crucial last moments the UN saw fit to simply remove us from the process,” said Mulligan. She added, “Other interests are over represented within the Bella Centre, whereas it seems that those argueing on behalf of the science and our environment are excluded from the process.”

A total of 3,500 journalists are now accredited, and according to the UN no more accreditations for media personel will be issued.

According to the newest press release from the UNFCCC the Danish Government and NGO network, People’s Climate Action, are organising an alternative venue for the NGO-workers denied entry to the Bella Center. This will be held at the Forum Copenhagen near Copenhagen’s city center.

“Many NGOs have simply lost faith in the official channels; the UNFCCC is providing a live stream of events, but often times a twitter feed provides more diverse and up to date information,” said Mulligan.

The entrance to the Bella Center has been under massive pressure for the last three days. As there is only one entrance for all NGOs, press, and non-VIP delegates, and because the accreditation process has been slow, waiting periods of 3-4 hours and as high as 7 hours have been business as usual.

Negotiations inside the venue are moving ahead with the heads of state in attendance. With just two days left, the lead negotiator, COP15-Minister Connie Hedegaard, has officially stepped down and has been replaced by Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen as negotiations enter the ‘high level’ phase. However, Hedegaard has been appointed special advisor and will still be leading the behind-the-curtain talks with big CO2 players such as the US, India, and the G77, representing developing countries and China.

Danish police are maximising their use of the new protest package of laws, arresting over 1000 COP15 protesters in the past week, writes Jeppe Funder.

Protesters light fireworks on their way to the Bella Centre. Picture: Jeppe Funder.

One week into the COP15 and protesters are taking to the streets of Copenhagen. Police are using the recently passed protest package laws to the full, having detained more than 1,000 protesters for up to 12 hours and charging only six of these.

Hundreds of protesters under arrest were forced to sit on the cold ground for up to five hours before being taken to the special detention cages on the outskirts of Copenhagen.

By far the largest protest of the COP15 took place on Saturday, where up to 100,000 people were involved. The huge crowd started out at the Danish Parliament and was en-route to the Bella Center, where COP15 is taking place, when police made their presence known by arresting between 3,400 protesters in a pincer movement at the back of the demonstration.

According to the police the arrests were made because some of the protesters from the so-called ‘black block’ began throwing bottles and stones at police and buildings along the way.

“This particular group had earlier been throwing stones and fireworks, just as windows had been crushed in respective buildings of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Børsen,” the police stated.

Reports from the police also included protesters attempting to set cars on fire.

Detained protesters had their hands tied with plastic strips and were made to sit in the streets for up to 4 hours. This has been widely critisised and the police have apologised, saying that they were overwhelmed by the sheer number of arrests and were not able to transport the protesters to the custom-built detention cages.

In a press release, they noted, “Copenhagen Police will evaluate if there is an opportunity for a faster way of transporting detainees away from the scene in the future.”

The largest portion of the protesters walked along the route to the Bella Center passing by heavily guarded McDonalds and KFC restaurants while chanting, singing and dancing in the cold Danish winter. NGOs such as Greenpeace and 350.org and Danish parties as Socialistisk Folkeparti were represented at the protest.

According to police, protesters from more than 20 different countries have been detained. If any of these are charged with active protesting or disturbing the public peace, they risk deportation.

Danish progressive website Modkraft.dk states that more than 600 people are sending complaints to the police about their arrest.

Amnesty International have critisised police action during the protests.

“The number of arrests is totally out of proportion and innocent protesters utilising their freedom of speach and freedom to protest have been arrested,” said General Secretary Lars Normann Jørgensen.

Danish newspaper Politiken reports that a number of arrested protesters will take the mass-arrests to court. This will put the protest package to the test before judges and decide when the police are allowed to mass-detain people during a protest.

Several protests are scheduled in the coming days.

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.