Hanging around in Copenhagen

The COP15 organizers (UN, UNFCCC, City of Copenhagen, Denmark) have either done a terrible job organizing this event or they have deliberately messed this up, either way 45,000 registrations were given for a conference that holds only 15,000 people, therefore civil society is left out in the cold. In some cases civil society has even been roughly evicted from the Bella Center. Luckily the IFOAM staff is extremely resourceful and industrious and have been organized enough to find a new space for a side event at Action Aid here in Copenhagen.

Despite the exclusion from the COP15 the NGO world has been active. The side events I witnessed today at the Klimaforum and Action Aid were phenomenal. IFOAM hosted a 2 hour side event dealing specifically with soil carbon and organic systems. Gundula Azeez of the Soil Association Timothy Lasalle of the Rodale Institute, Urs Niggli of FiBL as well as people from IATP, La Via Campesina and others presented information about organic systems.

Great day!

Biofach 2009

Well, I have just returned and recovered from the Biofach in Nuremberg. Biofach is the largest Organic fair in the world - held each year in Nuremberg it is literally the center of the Organic Market Sector and the meeting place for people from all over the Organic World.

IFOAM among others has a strong presence there and does a lot of it's networking for projects and functions for members in the comming year. FiBL was there and with IFOAM were publicizing the recently published 'World Statistics Book'

During the Biofach, although I was extremely busy I met people from all over the world farmers and sales people, cheese and wine makers, researchers and non-profit workers. Everyone involved in organics was there.