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We had to wait for two hours in the morning cold to get our accreditation for COP15, the other name of the Copenhagen Climate Summit, for which Attac France has been preparing for two months.

An impressive number of representatives from an equally impressive number of countries has arrived in the Danish capital over the last few days either to attend COP15, or to take part in the Klima Forum (the alternative forum held by social movements and citizens) or to participate in the many rallies, actions and events that are going to take place over the next ten days.

A small Attac team is already operational: Geneviève (Azam), Fanny (Simon), Nico (Haeringer) and Ronack (Monabay, the Attac/Aitec volunteer who has been in Copenhagen for two months supporting the local preparation teams). Some are here listen and write, others to film, others to speak or organise.

Going into the Bella Centre, the site of COP15, is a overwhelming experience. Thousands of people are circulating in a labyrinthine building between immense cloakrooms, restaurants, media spaces and exhibition stands. It took me thirty minutes to find something to eat and another half an hour to find the place in the conference that interested me. I finally reached the Schumann conference room in the European Union (EU) area to attend a workshop on the new opportunities offered by the carbon markets.

The workshop was really organised by Great Britain on behalf of the EU and boasted two finance lawyers, two representatives of developing countries (India and Peru) and some members of the British civil service department in charge of the carbon markets, or to be exact of coordinating the carbon markets with the Clean Development Mechanisms (CDMs) included in the Kyoto Protocol.

The message was clear: the EU was promoting its Emission Trading System (ETS) model, its excellent coordination with the CDMs (the representatives of the developing countries being called on as witnesses) and its effectiveness both in terms of emissions and of sustainable development in the South.

Several participants in the workshop especially Sarah Jane Clifton, author of the Friends of the Earth UK report on carbon markets, sharply interrogated the members of the panel, pointing out the increase of speculation in the sector and the absence of public regulations to address the risk of a new financial bubble.

The replies by the specialists invited to the platform were, to say the least, vague and hesitant: basically they said that transparency would guarantee that the European carbon market functioned properly and that the development mechanisms still offered unequalled opportunities to raise money for the benefit of the countries of the South, when public funds were not able to cover the needs of adapting and attenuating emissions. All in all, the whole question of the effectiveness of the CDMs was brought down to the ability of the countries of the South to absorb them, technically and financially.

This evening, at the opening of the Klima Forum, Naomi Klein reminded us all of our responsibility to be angry, to struggle and to act as detectors of the kind of lies contained in the market’s responses to the crisis. This responsibility to resist, to mobilise and to carry out a transformation, was also referred to by Nimmo Bassey, President of Friends of the Earth International.

Attac France has every intention of contributing to this struggle over the next two weeks.

Translation : Ann Oltra, Coorditrad