It Begins! COP15 in Copenhagen

It's official. The Conference of Parties 15 has begun. Those of us going with the Nova Scotia business mission are chomping at the bit to get there now that the meetings have launched. The air around here is electric.

I had the fortune to be named Head of Delegation for the observer group from Nova Scotia and it is becoming more than just an honourary positition, as the correspondence from the United Nations is coming fast and furious. It seems the conference centre in Copenhagen may be 'overbooked'. The United Nations grants accreditation to observer organizations to gain entrance to the conference centre, to host side events and in some cases, distribute information and post displays. The Environmental Services Association of Nova Scotia is one such organization and we've been attending as a provincial delegation since COP11, one of few, if not the only organization to attend as official representative of a Canadian province.

In the past few days, we've received a flurry of official-looking pdf documents (yes, much more formal than a simple email message) that describe new security procedures and restrictions on admittance to the site. It seems that 15,000 folks are registered and accredited to attend the COP in a conference centre that holds 14,000 bodies. And the UN has done the math. No panic button has been pushed, but there may be a quota system put in place and the numbers will be closely tracked.

All that means that we will be tracking our own delegation's attendance and sharing quota chits for attendance. Most of us arrive in Copenhagen on Thursday. We'll have our elbows out as we wedge our way into the Bella Center. Watch out world. Nova Scotia is on the way.