A Failure in Organisation

Well besides negotiations breaking down at COP-15 so did the registration process for acredited delegates. Registration opened this morning at 8am, I was there at 7:30, there were probably already a couple thousand people ahead of me so I assumed this meant I would be in line for 2 or 3 hours (which was apparently the standard wait time from last week). At 11 they stopped letting people in entirely (I was at this point less than 10 meters from the entrance). This was supposed to be temporary as apparently their computer system was down. Three hours later the line still hadn’t moved and the story had changed to the Bella Center was at capacity. While there were 30,000 accredited delegated vs the Bella Center’s capacity of 15,000 there were sill delegate who hard already registered streaming in through the other line. We were then told that we would be let in as people left, which never happened.At 5:30 it was announced that press may come through to register but the rest of us now had to go home and come back tomorrow. This is after 10 hours in line outside with it snowing for part of the day. Fortunately for them everyone was relatively well behaved and the worst thing that happened was the crowd started chanting. The Danish police were fantastic throughout the day trying to be helpful by pushing the UN for updates that they didn’t want to give to those of us waiting outside, and being very good about a terrible situation.On a more postive side, being in line for 10 hours I did get to meet a number of people from all over the world, from other NGOs media groups and government delegates from more minor countries. (Only world leaders, ministers, and government delegates from the larger more powerful nations got to use the government delegation line). I also felt very sorry for the two ladies in line behind me from Africa who had never been anywhere this cold before and were then stuck there for 10 hours.I will be going back very early tomorrow in hopes to end up right near the front of the line so that I actually get in this time. For those following my twitter feed you should start seeing updates from me later this evening.