The 15th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change opened on Monday, 7 December 2009. Concurrently with COP15, the 5th session of the Kyoto Protocol parties (CMP5) as well as sessions of Subsidiary Bodies and Ad Hoc Working Groups also take place in the Bella Centre.  With the announcement of U.S. President Obama that he will attend toward the end of the conference, the whole discourse on the climate negotiations and the possibility of reaching a renewed international agreement shifted from a pessimistic to an optimistic note. Suddenly, the prospect of merely reaching a political declaration instead of sealing a binding deal was described by commentators as not such a bad result after all. A few days later, the leaking of the so-called Danish Text made the new-found spirit of optimism evaporate and brought the climate summit into disarray. The leaked text, to paraphrase outraged developing countries, is a blatant expression of rich countries covert machinations – within the so-called ”circle of commitment” - to shift the balance of obligations in their own favour and abandon the Kyoto Protocol’s principle of historical debt. Perhaps these lightning fast developments testify to the catastrophic nature, not so much of climate change itself, but rather of the ways in which it is being dealt with. The Danish COP15 organisers and the UNFCCC secretariat expect more than 15.000 delegates of the approximately 200 parties to the convention and the more than a thousand organisations admitted as observers. 14.000 are expected to be nominees of observer organisations alone while approximately 3500 journalists have been accredited to the conference. This means that the Bella Centre will be reaching its absolute maximum capacity should all participants decide to be present at the premises at the same time. The UNFCCC secretariat has announced that a system will be set up to monitor and regulate the participation of each organisation. Outside of the conference venue itself, clustered around the city centre, numerous parallel events are taking place. On the North Atlantic Quay area, the Riddu Riddu Indigenous Peoples Festival has put up a huge laavu, i.e. a traditional Saami tent, that will serve as a venue for various events and performances, e.g., a Saami/Greenlandic group giving a performance that mixes Saami Joik singing with Greenlandic mask dancing. The Riddu Riddu Lavvu organizers invite Indigenous COP15 delegates to use the lavvu for their own events. If you are interested in using the Riddu Riddu Laavu for an event, you can contact and coordinate with the Indigenous Peoples Secretariat. In the adjacent North Atlantic Building, two exhibitions, ”In the Eye of Climate Change” and the ”Arctic Venue” organised by the Greenland Government and the Danish Energy Agency, respectively, will be open to the public during the COP period. Both of these events opens on Saturday, 12 December, while a closed preview of the former attended by his Royal Highness Crown Prince Frederik will take place the day before that. In the DGI town…

Warming up to the Copenhagen COP15 in December, the North Atlantic House has shrouded itself in an icy garment. A translucent screen imprinted with photographic reproductions of ice covers the waterfront end of the building, giving the appearance from a distance that it has rammed into and is being engulfed by a towering iceberg. The 21 meters high and approximately 4000 square meter installation entitled ”The Tip of the Iceberg” is the work of artist Inuk Silis Høegh. It was inaugurated on Friday 20 November in an event that took place outside the North Atlantic House and included speeches by the Icelandic ambassador to Denmark Svavar Gestsson and head of the Faroese Representation Herálvur Joensen, followed by handing of flowers to the artist and serving of hot drinks steaming between hands in the cooling late afternoon November air. In the fading daylight, projectors illuminated the installation from below and the appurtenant soundtrack began playing gentle sounds of ice sighing, cracking, being lapped by waves, and melting, dripping and trickling. And so the installation or the strange - part iceberg, part warehouse - edifice conveyed its double message to the people gathered on the pier, that of a majestic, invincible Arctic, and, at the same time, that of a fragile and threatened one. In a way, the renovated 18th century warehouse in itself sends out a similar kind of mixed and restless signals by being the pure product and a clear-cut symbol of colonial enterprise in the North Atlantic and Arctic regions that, however,  nowadays seems to have  been almost completely inverted and taken over by emissaries of the former colonies. During COP15, it will host two parallel event venues, one of which is the Greenland Representation organised event entitled In the Eye of Climate Change, while the other is the Venue Arctic under the auspices of the Danish Energy Agency. Both comprise a number of exhibition stands, speeches, panel debates, workshops, and film screenings centring on the overall themes of climate change mitigation and adaptation, and on the various ways and discourses on how to relate to these issues. Independent of each other and yet coordinated, the two events seem to have agreed on a certain division of labour. The In the Eye of Climate Change event thus focuses on Greenlandic issues and applies a mainly socio-economic, and human interest angle, whereas the Arctic Venue programme weighs scientific, Arctic Council Working Group approaches. Both venues open to the public on Saturday 12 December. However, a closed vernissage of the Greenland Representation organised exhibition will take place the day before, on Friday 11 December. On this occasion, the official inauguration will be performed by his Majesty Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark. Greenland Premier Kuupik Kleist will host the event that also features artistic performances as well as the serving of traditional Greenlandic food.

The first Senior Arctic Officials (SAO) meeting of the Arctic Council under the Danish Chairmanship was held in Copenhagen on November 12-13, 2009. Over 200 participants came together for two days of intensive discussions on a wide variety of issues important to the Arctic.SAO Chair, Ambassador Lars Møller noted in his opening speech that there was a steadily increasing amount of activity in the Arctic. To address the huge challenges, Lars Møller said, the council brought with it from its previous ministerial meeting an ambitious agenda in the form of the Tromsø Declaration. The initial phase of the meeting, unorthodoxly, included the screening of working copies of two films presenting the AMAP organized Greenland Ice Sheet  (GRIS) and Arctic Cryosphere (SWIPA) projects. The GRIS film will also form part of a high profiled side event at the upcoming COP15 entitled Melting Snow and Ice to be attended by the Danish/Greenlandic and Norwegian foreign ministers as well as by former US vice-president and Oscar winner Al Gore. Apart from COP 15 and the SWIPA project, the SAO agenda comprised, i.a., discussions of the work with establishing new Task Forces on Search and Rescue and on Short-lived Climate Forcers, maintaining and strengthening observing and monitoring initiatives, and International Polar Year Legacy initiatives such as the The Oslo Science Conference to be held in June next year. The Aleut International Association Executive Director Victoria Gofman made a presentation of the Bering Sea Sub Network (BSSN) that was implemented by AIA as an International Polar Year project under the auspices of CAFF and with the participation of 6 indigenous Bering Strait communities. Thanks to a 3 million dollar grant from the US National Science Foundation, Ms. Gofman explained, Phase 2 of this project will be carried out during the next 5 years and will involve 10 communities on either side of the Bering Strait. Measures to identify potential gaps and to eliminate duplication of work were treated in a section dedicated to the effectiveness and efficiency of the Arctic Council. Various initiatives to strengthen the political role of the Arctic Council, enhance information exchange among the council’s stakeholders, and to develop guidelines for communication and outreach were presented by the chair during this section Japan was welcomed as an ad hoc observer of the Arctic Council. Japan has applied for permanent Observer status, however, until its application can be processed in connection with the next Ministerial meeting, it will join the existing group of Ad Hoc Observers to the Arctic Council. In the evening of the first SAO meeting day, Second Secretary at the Japanese Embassy in Copenhagen, Ms. Emi Mashiko, attended a meeting with the Permanent Participant to discuss how Japan as an Observer and the Permanent Participants can benefit from each other’s work within the Arctic Council. The meeting also saw status updates by and on a number of non-Arctic Council groups and projects such as the Danish Arctic Megatrends study, the Arctic Governance project, the 4 (i.e., Arctic, Barents, Baltic, and…

Members of the Standing Committee of Parliamentarians of Arctic Regions (SCPAR) met at the Finnish Parliament in Helsinki on November 18 and 19, 2009 for a workshop on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS) in relation to the Arctic Ocean. Experts from the University of the Arctic, the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) and the World Wildlife Fund briefed the committee on the legal and scientific process of determining the boundaries of continental shelves as well as some challenges and opportunities that Arctic countries face in relation to the increasingly accessible Arctic Ocean. Under Article 76 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas, coastal states can potentially extend their maritime borders. In order to do this, the country in question must collect and analyze the data that describes the depth, shape, and geophysical characteristics of the seabed and sub-sea floor, as well as the thickness of the underlying sediments. This bathymetric and seismic data must then be submitted to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. The CLCS will then review the data and will make recommendations to the submitting country. If there are overlapping claims, bilateral negotiations between the countries involved are used to settle the dispute. Nations that have ratified UNCLOS have a period of 10 years to submit the data which proves the limits of their continental shelves in order to extend the exclusive economic zone of their coastline. Russia was the first Arctic nation to submit their claim pursuant to Article 76 of UNCLOS. The only Arctic nation which has not yet ratified UNCLOS is the United States despite broad support in the US Senate, the Pentagon and the former Bush Administration. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has also publicly stated that ratifying UNCLOS would be a "priority" for her. Though the United States has not ratified UNCLOS, the US government has collaborated with Canada in gathering Polar Continental Shelf data. JT