Global Power Shift

Switchcamp: The First Wave of Indonesia Power Shift

by Syaiful Rochman

Shouting “Indonesia Power Shift Switch!” as the closing shout out, Indonesia has begun the first wave of national climate movement in 17 provinces across the nation.

The four days of sharing, learning and fun was called Switchcamp. Participants will help Indonesia to switch into eco-friendly living, and help free the nation from fossil fuel dependency.

Focusing on solving local environmental issues, for four days the participants were provided with the necessary skills and tools to create help take the climate movement back home to the next level.

Before switchcamp, every participant was expected to come with their local environmental issue, and during the camp they approached these issues through new perspectives, provided by the learning material, to create plans and try to solve their problems back home.

On day two, all of the participants were taken to Poncosari Village. The Village is using a combination of solar panels, biogas and wind as its power sources. In Poncosari the participants unfurled a 15 meter banner, they had prepared, to underline their pledge on establishing Indonesia as an independent and renewable energy nation.

A seedling will become a tree

This weekend our friends from Ukrainian Youth Climate Association feat. partners visited the city of Rivne in Western Ukraine to plant seeds of climate leadership in a follow up of GPS. Shortly after the 2-days workshop on ‘Practice of eco-social projects and adaptation to climate change’ local activist Olexandra posted an article of inspiration based on her participation, an abridged version of which you can read here.

An unprecedented event took place at Rivne Region Library. Representatives from the environmental movement, namely UYCA and National Environmental Center of Ukraine, came to us from Kyiv. With the help from Ecoclub Rivne they held presentations about the Planet’s changing climate and workshops where they taught us how to organize an activists’ team, create projects and attract funds.

Green minded citizens of Rivne met on Friday evening to watch the ‘Chasing Ice’ movie. This dramatic documentary impressed the viewers from the very first minutes: a foolhardy photographer who, regardless having two surgeries on his leg, visited Alaska, Greenland and Iceland to station photo-cameras in order to witness irreversible multi-kilometers glaciers melting. The movie nailed it – a concept of global warming became, at last, clear for us. After the movie UYCA members told us about their work, projects and achievements. The first meeting ended with a pleasant conversation and a cup of herbal tea. (more…)

Small Fluctuations Lead to Change

Youth-led forum in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, set a base for climate movement in the region. Its initiator and main organizer Liza writes about its highlights and lessons, adding some systems science to back her hope for change.

The climate forum “Climate is changing, are we changing ourselves?” took place in Nizhny Novgorod on February 8-9, as part of Global Power Shift Phase 2 in Russia. About 40 participants from 5 regions of the country met to discuss causes and impacts of climate change and to generate new ideas about its solutions which can be implemented by the society. Among them were university and school students, environmental activists, teachers and journalists.

 

Although climate change is intensively discussed in Russian society, there is still no good understanding of the problem. Many people suggest that it is just a myth, or it won’t have any significant impact on their country, and this point of view is usual even among people already involved in the eco-movement. That is why a significant part of the forum was dedicated to explanation of climatic, energy-related, medical and social aspects of climate change by experts. Really, the possible climate change impacts on central regions of Russia aren’t as serious as on other regions and countries. But it was noticed by the experts that even here expansion of diseases and their transmitters, for example tics, is already in progress due to change of climate conditions. Another perceptible example of negative impacts is a summer of 2010 when due to a long period of hot weather and intensive forests fires many cities of central Russia were covered by a thick layer of smoke that caused high numbers of diseases and deaths. (more…)

Tahawul – Egypt Power Shift : a new generation of climate activists join the anti-coal movement

Just last week we held our first, ever Power Shift workshop in Egypt. Tahawul (meaning to shift or to transform in Arabic) took place between March 6 – 9 in the city of Hurghada by the Red Sea bringing together 60 young, aspiring climate activists from different governorates throughout Egypt.

Photo credit: Hoda Baraka

The aim of the workshop was to build capacity and provide attendees with the skill-set required to organize within their communities in order to work on issues related to climate justice, giving particular focus to the problem of using coal as a source of energy.

This comes after the Egyptian government started to consider in earnest plans to import coal in spite of the serious threat coal poses to the health of individuals, as well as the threats to the environment, and its role in exacerbating global warming.

Allowing the import of coal would force the country into an even more polluting and fossil fuel dependent future, discouraging a transition to renewable energy where Egypt has much potential.

This workshop comes as a second stage following the initial Global Power Shift workshop held in Turkey last June.

The first phase of the Global Power Shift, which took place in Istanbul, brought together 500 climate activists from all over the world. The second phase of the project seeks to strengthen local climate movements.

With the culmination of the workshop, the aim now is to create spaces for dialogue and planning activities throughout Egypt’s governorates to combat the import of coal and work towards clean energy solutions in Egypt.

Photo credit: Hoda Baraka

Specifically, activists are working on a traditional and social media campaign in response to false information circulating lately by groups with economic interests to importing coal.

Stay tuned for more to come from this new generation of Egyptian climate activists!

Clímax Brasil asks for less CO2!

 Less CO2 Please! This is the name of the mission we launched last month for our network. And then we received photos of artivism activities from cities like São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Salvador.

 For more photos and to find inspiration to organize this ongoing activity in your region please visit here.

Since August, the collective Clímax Brasil, formed by young people who participated in the Global Power Shift event in Istanbul, has organized lots of activities to take climate change out of the closet in Brazil, such as open Hangouts about mobility, coal in Brazil, food, climate negotiations, consumption, extreme events, food sticker action, Fossil Fuel flash mob, Christmas poster action, direct action during the release of Brazilian Report on Climate Change. In the online front, we are always creating and publishing fun and very creative memes.

Want to be part of Clímax or stay informed about our next activities? Click here.

You can choose to:

• be an amplifier of Clímax spreading information to other people

• organize monthly suggested actions in your city and sending information (photos, texts, videos) about what they organized

• help planning activities.

Clímax actions can be easily replicated everywhere. Please feel free to write to us and we can support you with tips of how to organize an action in your region: climaxbra@gmail.com