Pacific Climate Warriors Vanuatu canoe launch. Photo credit: 350.org
This article was written by Aaron Packard for 350.org, an organization building a global climate movement, and is republished on Global Voices as part of a content sharing agreement.
In October this year, 30 Pacific Climate Warriors from 12 different islands will arrive on Australian shores to stand up to the coal and gas industry. They will use the canoes they have built to paddle out into the harbour of the world’s largest coal port – Newcastle – to stop coal exports for a day.
The port of Newcastle is exporting destruction upon the Pacific Islands at an unprecedented scale, and plans for expansion are underfoot. If the port were a country, it would be ranked 9th in the world in terms of emissions.
If nothing is done to transition away from the fossil fuel industry, many of the Pacific Islands stand to lose everything.
Pacific Islanders have spent over 20 years negotiating and pleading with countries like Australia to cut their emissions and to stop digging up fossil fuels – to save their homelands and their cultures from the consequences of climate change, such as rising sea levels. But still, the coal and gas industry is doing the opposite of that. They’re ramping up extraction at an unprecedented rate, while continuing to attack the renewable energy industry. It is a radical attack on our Islands and our cultures.
For the future of their cultures and Islands, the Pacific Climate Warriors cannot sit by and watch this happen. That’s why Islanders from across the Pacific have been preparing for this journey to Australia and building traditional canoes. For most, this has been a first – warriors have been reconnecting with their cultures in order to take up the fight they need to save them.
Next month these traditional canoes will go to Australia to stop the destruction of their Islands at its source.
This is going to be an incredible, landmark action, and will send a powerful message: we will not stand idly by as the coal industry sinks the future of the Pacific Islands. This is an expensive undertaking and our Pacific Island teams have been fundraising locally to build the canoes and make the journey. Any contribution towards these costs would be greatly appreciated.
If you’re in Australia and close by, come and join us. The more people we can get to join us the bigger and better the message will be. Register for the event here. For those outside of Australia, visit the website to find out how you can stand in solidarity with the Pacific Climate Warriors.
Then lastly, share the story of the Pacific Climate Warriors with the world!
Tokelau school kids with a canoe and banner, which reads: “We Are Not Drowning, We Are Fighting.” Photo credit: 350.org
8 comments
Hey great idea to launch an awareness campaign, all good.
How did it ever get this bad ? — is just asking for it’s own awareness campaign while it certainly does not help the fact how much influence big mining has over a country like Australia – not to mention that the Australian Greens gave their preferences to Coal mining baron Clive Palmer….I know I know – the irony/hypocrisy is… truly astounding.
The main problem here is that corporate profits are literally considered more important than anything else down the food chain — while government’s are pretending that perpetual economic growth should take priority over the health of the planet, and actually holding big polluters accountable, instead polluters become able to sue the state for not being able to pollute while in the process of making a profit.
By reading up on the consequences of these deceptively termed Free Trade Agreements (fta) people can become aware how investors aka corporations are able to hold governments accountable to their own and imagined financial agenda’s – This happens in closed* and private tribunals where they’ll use their own corporate officials and taxpayers funds as settlement.By signing and ratifying fta’s governments lose their nations sovereignty.All told there are thousands of financial agreements that include the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS)
*Not often are these events are reported so here is an example from a well known case.(4)
The best known example of this happened in Canada in the case of –Lone Pine resources — who launched a 250 Million dollar suit against the state as the result of a ban on hydraulic fracturing. (1)
Lone Pine resources successfully used the ISDS clause from an existing free trade agreement (CETA) to hold the state accountable to their own and imagined financial agenda.
”Canadians should expect more lawsuits if it completes trade deals with the European Union and in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, he said, since both are likely to include investor protection provisions similar to the one found in NAFTA.
“These investment protections are going to be built into these mega-trade deals and this Lone Pine case has become kind of the poster child for what’s wrong with giving corporations the right to sue governments when they don’t like certain policies,” (2)
(1) http://corporateeurope.org/climate-and-energy/2013/05/right-say-no-eu-canada-trade-agreement-threatens-fracking-bans
(2) http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/10/03/quebec-fracking-ban-lawsuit_n_4038173.html
Suggested reading The corporation invasion by Lori M Wallach, (3)
”Imagine what would happen if foreign companies could sue governments directly for cash compensation over earnings lost because of strict labor or environmental legislation.”, (3) http://mondediplo.com/2013/12/02tafta
ISDS related cases ARE on the rise (4) – http://www.citizen.org/documents/investor-state-chart.pdf