Today was the opening day of the conference beginning with a Danish introduction and speeches by the leaders of the conference including the executive secretary of the UNFCC, the prime minister of Denmark, the mayor of Denmark, and the IPCC chairman (the science body of the UNFCC).

It was a morning of traditions and formalities where the new chairwoman, Connie Hedegaard, of the conference works on her mallet-whacking skills and figures out how to deal with complex points brought up by delegates. One of the most interesting moments in the morning was the first speaker to the floor, Papua New Guinea (PNG). They adamantly proposed to implement 3/4 majority rule instead of consensus rule inorder to speed the deliberation process. Upon the first decision of the chairwoman to 'consider it later' PNG requested again for the floor to consider it now. Soon after Brazil, Sudan and Saudi Arabia spoke-up to say that there is no time for them to deliberate about the change of rules in this conference. PNG negotiated their way in by insisting they speak again in the Wednesday plenary.

The rest of the day was statements made by groupings of countries such as G77/China, the Umbrella Group, OASIS etc. These statement further showed how the developing countries had similar views on how to adapt (or change) the Kyoto Protocol for the future compared to the developed nations. The morning really showed the devide between developed and undeveloped countries.