global climate deal

The Arctic Tent comes down today, on the same day that President Obama comes to town to join other world leaders in the negotiations. As our last act yesterday in bringing voices of the north to the negotiations, we finished with a flourish. The tent was packed to capacity to hear indigenous people from North America and Europe talk about the impact of change on caribou and reindeer.

So you’re sitting in front of your computer reading this and wondering “so it looks fine from here, but how many people are really paying attention to what is going on?”

We have heard a lot this week from the peoples of the Arctic, those who live with climate change effects as a daily event. Today we heard from people who go even where the peoples of Arctic do not, people who’ve been drawn to the unpopulated areas of the Arctic. As one of these people remarked today, there are no more blank spaces on the map to explore, but there are places seldom visited, and things unknown and unmeasured. In that sense, those who travel in the seldom visited areas of the Arctic can still be considered explorers.

Today was 2 Poles day at the Arctic Tent – on the surface, there are many similarities between these places defined in the imagination by their ice and snow. It is under the surface that they are different – literally – under the surface of much of the arctic ice is an ocean, while Antarctic ice mostly rests on rock. This is part of the explanation for why warming in the Arctic is faster and has larger local effects.

The Peoples Orb – a shimmering 20cm silver sphere containing a 350 gigabyte mosaic of stories, voices, images and action on climate change collected from around the world – arrives in Copenhagen.

Today was turn of the youth voices to dominate the Arctic Tent. They were not the first youth in the tent, but this was their day, entirely given over to young people from the Arctic, or inspired by the Arctic.

The speakers list for today read like a who’s who of arctic climate science – which I guess is understandable since it was Science Day in the Arctic Tent. Still, it was impressive that all these big names were assembled in a tent on a chilly Copenhagen Sunday afternoon because of their passion to bring their messages to the world.

It seemed grand to me anyway – the culmination of more than a year of planning, the WWF Arctic Tent opened today. The audience, a mixture of the curious and the committed, heard stirring words from the speakers today – starting with Kim Carstensen, WWF’s climate spokesperson, who told the audience that the states gathered here must step up their pledges to cut emissions if they hope to keep world temperatures at levels considered reasonably safe.

Meet the exhibit team from outdoor exhibition specialists weCommunic8, who helped to create the beautiful outdoor photographic exhibition at the Arctic Tent on Nytorv Square, Copenhagen. With them are members of the WWF Arctic Programme and some of the Arctic Tent team.

At 7 this morning, Copenhagen time, a truck dropped off a huge wooden box more than 2 metres tall. It stand in one of Copenhagen’s oldest squares, the site of the original city hall, surrounded by majestic buildings. On this day it was surrounded by more as well – immediately behind the box, a collection of three sides wooden structures went up, to be topped by breathtaking photos of the Arctic, in all its splendour and fragility.