2015-09-02
Josh Wyndham-Kidd (International Secretary)
The Greek Greens recently asked the Australian Greens to join their push to stop the Halkidiki mine, a destructive project. If you've read Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything — and you really must — you would have heard about the hurt the project has been causing locals. Stopping Halkidiki was a vital part of the Greek Greens' decision to cooperate with SYRIZA to form government. Senator Scott Ludlam wrote to the new Minister, urging him to stick to SYRIZA's commitments.
We heard from the Greek Greens just a week ago that the Minister had stopped the mining works.
Local action is one of the strongest tools in our toolbox. People near Halkidiki have joined Klein's global 'blockadia' and built local power that gave the Green Party in Greece the ability to use their votes to stop the mine. Still, a room full of Greens from Australia, Aotearoa and the UK burst into applause when they heard about that victory because it shows that we're joining people on the other side of the world in tackling a common threat — and that we can directly add to the pressure they're building, and help in our own small way to build their win.
We're winning
This is hardly news to Green Parties, who have collaborated across borders from the very beginning. But these stories are worth celebrating, so I thought I'd take a few from the past year and bring them out:
Only a little over a year ago, the Green Party in Norway was the only party willing to talk about the end of fossil fuel extraction, let alone push for it. They took up the call for Norway's massive wealth fund to divest from the fossil fuel companies causing untold damage — including Whitehaven, the backers of Leard Forest destruction. Christine Milne joined the Norwegian Green MP Rasmus Hansson to call for divestment from coal, noting that Norwegian money would be destroying koala habitat and the climate right here in Australia. As the campaign heated up, Christine, Larissa Waters and Richard Di Natale added their voices to the international call on Norwegian MPs, urging them to back divestment — and they did.
Green MPs from Australia, Canada and Aotearoa have been working across borders for years to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal to hand more power to corporations. Just last week, the Kiwis joined a march through Wellington to stop the deal. Richard will be at the Paris climate conference at the end of the year, telling the world that Australians still support meaningful action on climate change and to end fossil fuel extraction and burning. He'll be joined by Greens from across Europe and from Canada, where the Greens should be strengthened by this October's election — in large part because of their steadfast stand to stop oil and tar sands pipelines from poisoning their water and air. They'll be there, building one part of the alternative vision that those negotiations desperately need, and helping each other where they can.
In a global age, we need to do much more to make sure that Green parties are genuinely global, not just a phenomenon of the wealthy North. That's why it's so exciting to hear from Greens across our part of the world, in communities already hurt by global warming and extractivism, rising in their own ways to change politics in their countries. We know that huge Australian corporations are often causing damage overseas, so when international Greens and activists come to us it's heartening to know that we can add our power to theirs — and that sometimes we win.