FoE Australia national meeting

FoE Australia's national meeting was held in January at Shipley Plateau in the Blue Mountains. While the cold weather was hard work, it was not enough to dampen our conversations and planning. This was a hugely productive meeting. There were two public events attached to it, both in Katoomba – one on nanotechnology and food, and a report on the climate change negotiations recently held in Bali and a fundraiser for the FoEA climate campaign.

Some major decisions from the meeting:
* We will bring together the various local campaign activity on food into a national real food campaign. Gemma Schuch of FoE Brisbane will co-ordinate this development.
* We agreed to set up a series of 'sustainable supermarkets' around Australia in coming years, with the first one set to open in Melbourne in Spring 2008.
* We agreed on a new structure for our committee of management (CoM). This change gives greater financial and strategic oversight to the CoM, consistent with the need to keep developing our governances structures as our network grows.
* There is a new affiliate member from SA – West Mallee Protection (WMP). This group supports the Kokatha Mula Nation peoples and projects. WMP emerged from an alliance between environmentalists and Kokatha Mula people who share concerns and see the need for positive action to protect the outback Ceduna region.
* We agreed to establish a new Portwatch campaign, which will look at various aspects of the impacts of sea travel, from greenhouse emissions to the development and expansion of ports. This will be co-ordinated by Teri Shore.
* We established a new campaign focussed on Chile, which aims to support the Mapuche people in their campaigns to protect their traditional lands.

Many thanks to Wayne for his hospitality and to Nat, Sod, Amy and other locals who organised such a productive meeting.

The mid-year meeting will be held in the Hunter Valley, immediately before the climate camp planned for July.

Camp for Climate Action

Camp for Climate Action (Australia) is a collaboration between numerous groups and individuals who are opposed to the expansion of the coal industry at a time when immediate action to prevent dangerous climate change is most urgent.

The Camp is inspired by previous similar gatherings held in the UK in 2006 and 2007. It will be a participatory, sustainable space, where people are invited to share, learn and take action. It will be one of a number of climate camps happening in Europe, North America, and Australia.

The Camp will be taking place mid-2008 in the Hunter Valley or Newcastle. Newcastle is host to the world's biggest coal port. Fed by mines in the Hunter Valley, the port and the mining industry are currently undergoing major expansion supported by federal and state governments.

More information: <www.climatecamp.org.au>.

Climate movement convergence

In early February, FoE worked with a number of other groups to host the first ever climate movement convergence in Victoria, bringing together more than 200 people, representing around 80 groups active in climate change issues.

The convergence provided a space for people from inner city, suburban and rural areas to develop campaign plans and networks with green groups, trade unions, and social justice and aid and development groups. While it was not intended to have a single outcome from the gathering, the anti-coal campaign was certainly strengthened by the day.

Other outcomes included the development of a network focussing on climate change issues in the context of the local government elections in Victoria in late 2008.

Climate Code Red

FoE recently released the report Climate Code Red: The Case For a Sustainability Emergency, written by David Spratt of CarbonEquity and Philip Sutton of the Greenleap Strategic Institute. The report finds that Labor's policy of a 60% cut in emissions by 2050 is consistent with global warming of three degrees. The dangers of such a level of warming are clearly laid out in the report. It concludes that Labor has followed the Stern report in developing a framework for setting targets far short of those required to avoid dangerous climate change.

The report is available at: <http://climatecodered.net>.

FoE International meets in Swaziland

Over the past four years FoE International, a federation comprising 70 national member groups, has committed to developing and implementing a strategic review of the federation's structure, vision and organisational management processes.

How to mould and guide a federation with over one million members, working from over 5,000 local groups, representing 70 nations to develop a new strategic plan? The answer: slowly!

Nevertheless, the review is complete so 2008 brings the implementation stage. Last November, three Australian FoE members – Derec Davies, Sam La Rocca, and Stephanie Long – travelled to Swaziland to contribute to the first FoE International's strategic implementation meeting which followed from the previous four years of review and development.

What a wonderful and remarkable experience. A gathering in Africa of activists from around the world, predominately sharing three primary languages (English, Spanish, and French), all working to transform our burdened planet into a safe and sustainable home for our future. And what better way to kick start proceedings than to host an international conference on democracy in the world's last standing ultimate monarchy.

The job was daunting – synthesize the diverse array of national positions and social change ideologies into overarching strategic themes and then design the action plans for the federation for the coming years. The areas of work were Programme Implementation (thematic campaign consolidation), Communications, Learning, Funding, and Membership Development.

All this whilst considering the revised organisational vision: "A peaceful and sustainable world based on societies living in harmony with nature. A society of interdependent people living in dignity, wholeness and fulfilment in which equity and human and peoples' rights are realised. A society built upon peoples' sovereignty and participation, founded on social, economic, gender and environmental justice and free from all forms of domination and exploitation, such as neo-liberalism, corporate globalisation, neo-colonialism and militarism."

FoE is striving to develop new ways at working together, traversing the diverse needs between it's workers and their supporting communities, bridging connections between various cultural divides, and exploring new models to approach technical and economic disparities.

More information: <www.foei.org>.