When the lights are about to be turned off after days of intense meetings, the debate is not quite over after all. At one of the last day of the UN Climate Change Conference the biggest political names will gather for a global climate debate to conclude on the results of the summit. And the debate will be transmitted to around 300 million households.
The negotiations during the UN Climate Change Conference COP 15 taking place December 7-18, will be behind closed doors and security barriers in the city’s convention centre, The Bella Center. But why not open up the summit and invite the rest of the world to a debate about the summit’s results? That is the idea behind “The World’s Greatest Debate” a concept developed jointly by DR (the Danish Broadcasting Company) and BBC.
Tension to the last minute
The vision is to have the world’s biggest-ever TV broadcast debate about the climate when world leaders gather for one of the most important summits of modern times. “The World’s Greatest Debate” is the summit’s window to the people of the world, where answers will be demanded of world leaders about their concrete achievements at the summit.
Right up until a few days before the debate, it will not be clear which leaders will have the opportunity to take part. It depends who is in Copenhagen at the time and on the dynamics of the final phase of summit negotiations. DR and BBC World News are working with a number of different scenarios. However, it has already been decided that Stephen Sackur, the renowned host of the BBC programme HARDtalk, will be the moderator, and that the audience in the hall will consist of more than 1200 international students and people from NGOs and business.
The debate will be recorded live on tape and then be prepared for broadcast on DR and other major national TV channels, as well as running on BBC World immediately after the climate summit.
The event will take place in Koncerthuset, DR’s concert hall. Koncerthuset opened January 2009 and The World Greatest Debate will be staged in the main concert hall seating 1,800 people.
Unique partnership
The event will be transmitted to around 300 million households worldwide in a unique partnership between the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) and BBC World News. Copenhagen Capacity and Wonderful Copenhagen have helped to set up the media partnership, which is also supported by the Marketing Denmark Foundation.
