The Greenpeace Youth Delegation hit the streets running today, ready to promote renewable energy as a solution for poverty and global warming. We arrived at 8:30am this morning for the summit’s official opening only to find that delegates from NGOs and other major groups would not be allowed into the Sandton Convention Center without a “secondary pass,” which none of the GP youth had. Supposedly, the convention center can only hold up to 6,000 individuals total, because of fire safety regulations. As a result, the UN limited access to only 1,500 of the estimated 15,000 NGO delegates. Although the policy was apparently announced yesterday, it took many groups by surprise. The restrictions on access severely disrupted several events that had planned to take place in the convention center and were responsible for a great deal of anger and confusion as civil society groups struggled to reschedule their events and develop new strategies to adjust to the changes. Early on in the day, the UN announced that each day at 1pm, it would give away 1,500 secondary passes on a first come first served basis. The passes would then be accepted for admission to the convention center on the next day. By 11am, at least 50 people had already formed a line and the line quickly grew from there. After waiting in line for 2 hours just to be able to participate, tensions flared over line jumping and place holding. It is not clear whether it was the UN’s intent, but the obvious effect of the access restrictions has been to incite competition between NGOs for access and to force NGOs to waste 2 hours of potential lobbying work just waiting in line everyday. Later in the day, it was announced that, rather than making everyone wait in line for hours every day, starting tomorrow (Tues the 27th), the UN would just allow in as many NGO delegates as possible in the morning and would then close off further access. Predictably, this caused some resentment on the part of the NGOs that had spent hours queuing to obtain now worthless secondary passes. In response to the obvious lack of organization (or, as some suggested, the deliberate exclusion of civil society) by the UN, NGOs held a meeting in the evening to coordinate a response. The meeting gave many a chance to vent about spending valuable time and resources to come to the summit only to find that they had been closed out of the process.

In spite of the new regulations, the GP youth team stayed active. The youth team participated in general Youth Caucus meetings as well as youth working groups on Energy and Multi-Sectoral issues. Other team members worked in Ubuntu Village to educate the public about the potential of solar energy to lift people out of poverty, while still others questioned the US delegation’s opposition to targets for renewable energy production at a briefing for US NGOs.