Climate organizers from the post-Soviet independent states are preparing for a new big push towards sustainability as they join the GPS mobilization.
Oleg and Katerina from Ukrainian GPS team couldn’t agree more – the time for green revolution has come!
When the new independent states were formed after the fall of Soviet Union some 22 years ago many of us were children and some were yet to be born. Yet now in our twenties or thirties we , the ‘peers of Independence’, understand that real independence is something still to be built. Everywhere from mountain villages in Tajikistan to the capital of Russia, young people like us stand up to liberate their homelands. We won’t tolerate corruption and inefficiency that brings environmental catastrophes, climate risks and peoples’ despair. Our nations deserve better – and greener – lives! We all need a Power Shift in many senses and we are working on it right now.
GPS team from Kyrgyzstan works on ideas. For hours…
Like people all over the globe, the younger generation in post-Soviet countries wants a lot from their lives – to get a career, to create a start-up, to see the world, to live a meaningful and healthy life. Last, but not the least, we want to help our nations to become stronger. We do feel embarrassed by all the poverty, awful roads, waste, officials’ selfishness and peoples’ apathy. And we just can’t sit by and watch it all.
The ladies-only GPS meeting with the Russian team
People like us, the independence’s peers, make their moves. They organize and get engaged in dozens of initiatives. They open veg-cafés, they teach the youth, write songs, start an NGO, watchdog politicians and experiment in many ways to create the nuclei of a new reality around themselves. In those groups, prosperous and sustainable nations are possible. With them, climate crisis is solvable, too.
A rare photo of the first Power Shift event in Moscow few years ago
Slowly, people inside and beyond the activist groups are beginning to realise that fossil fuel dependency, environmental degradation and poverty are all parts of one knot. If we don’t stop corruption, don’t demand climate solutions and don’t do it now, our dreams will not come true. Neither personal, nor political ones. Independence starts with the state accountability and our right to choose what our electricity is made of. It starts with us.
In mountain villages of Tajikistan climate organizers teach farmers about adaptation. Photo taken at one of the Global Days of Action.
This June some of the brightest social experimenters from Georgia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan are coming to Global Power Shift to unite their groups into a multi-nuclei organism and reinforce their work. They will exchange their newest tactics, from seed-bombing to online campaigning, to see how they can use them strategically, in times and places where they can bring real impact. They’ll discuss how to better react to extreme climate events like massive forest fires in Siberia and how to make sustainable alternatives feasible. They’ll brainstorm about how to make the dangers of fossil dependency visible and how to prevent climate-bomb industrial projects like shale gas extraction in Ukraine. They’ll plan involving hundreds of citizens of their countries into a wave of campaigning for more sustainable and dignified life. They’ll prove that the independent countries deserve better than mutilated nature and electricity blackouts.
Olga leads on the GPS planning session in Kyiv
Intense preparations have started in all of these countries in order to bring the best campaign ideas to Istanbul. I’m thrilled to see how the organizers’ group all over the region come together and build up their muscles for the big push. Whatever projects are created by our GPS teams, I’m sure they will be bold, efficient – and fun!
Power Shift is happening. Join the campaign for climate independence.
Max and I agree: Renewable energy should be sustainable.
— Yuliya,
an independence’s peer,
daring to speak for all the GPS organizers
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