The New Voices Phenomenon
One of the main goals of Global Justice Ecology Project’s work here in Copenhagen is to amplify and highlight the voices of some of the people being most directly impacted by either climate change, the fossil fuels industry or false solutions to climate change.
One of the most effective means for accomplishing this goal is to get these voices into the media–through radio and television interviews, and in newspapers and other print media.
Our success with this effort so far (we arrived here on Thusday and the Climate Conference opened today) has been phenomenal. We have lined up guests for Democracy Now!, arranged interviews with the New York Times and Al Jazeera, and set up numerous radio interviews across North America. The phones have been ringing off the hook.
This is important because these are the same voices that are being systematically excluded from the UN climate negotiations here in Copenhagen. These are the stories of suffering, of the real day to day impacts already being felt from climate chaos. They are also the stories of empowerment–of communities coming together to fight the corporate domination and/or pollution of their lands. And they are the stories of the real solutions–the efforts being undertaken to find true and just alternatives to the fossil fuel driven economy.
As Climate Justice Now!, the global network we helped co-found, stated today in their opening intervention in the UN Climate Conference,
“Climate change will not be solved by negotiating an agreement behind closed doors. Secret meetings that exclude affected peoples voices only perpetuate the system of injustice – and is nothing less than criminal. We will not be able to stop a profound climate catastrophe if we do not include the voices and the interests of those who have been historically marginalized.”
We are taking action to ensure these voices are heard.
We will be posting links and video clips of these interviews over the course of the Climate Conference. I encourage you to listen to these voices yourself.
Reporting from CorporateHaven,
Anne Petermann
Very interesting Anne. Please indicate who can I access those interviews and if it is possible to broadcast them in a community radio station I help to run in the north of Uruguay. Thanks.