 Okay, hi everyone. Welcome to this online workshop. We're going to be talking about divestment campaigning around the world and the global divestment mobilisation that is happening in May, which is really exciting. My name is Natasha and I am the Europe organiser for 350. I'm filling in for Emma, who's the normal Europe organiser while she's on sabbatical. And I am joined today by two colleagues from New Zealand and from South Africa. So would you like to introduce yourselves first? Aaron, do you want to say hello? Kia ora. Aaron here. It's great to talk with you all, calling in from near Wellington out on the countryside in New Zealand. And it's just starting to get lighter here. And we're going into autumn. Are you guys bored? Someone, no doubt. Thanks, Aaron. Ahmed, would you like to say hi? Hey, everyone. Ahmed here from Johannesburg, South Africa. Same hemisphere as Aaron, so going into autumn, unfortunately. Amanda, it's good to be here. Thanks, Natasha. Thank you both so much for joining us. It's great to have people from, yeah, all over the world talking to us here in Europe about what is happening. So basically, Aaron is going to be talking through the basics of organising for the global divestment mobilisation, and specifically a little bit on why we're focusing on climate impacts with this. And Ahmed's going to be talking about the divestment campaign in South Africa and what they've got planned there. So basically, you need to sign into YouTube if you want to write comments and say hello throughout. I'm just having a little look at the chat at the moment. So we've got, hi, Michael from Stupgart. I can see Layla from Brighton. Eva's joining from Stockholm. We've got Dominic joining from Marburg in Germany. Please do join us and say hello in there when you join. So we can see kind of who we've got and post comments in there. You will need to have a YouTube account and sign into that, I believe, to post into that chat box. I've got two wonderful colleagues that you can see. They're pictures small at the bottom of the screen. They are helping me facilitate this. Aaron's dancing in New Zealand, which is awesome. Okay, so I'm just going to quickly introduce the global divestment mobilisation talk a bit about the campaign first, and then we're going to go over to Aaron. He'll talk to you. You'll have opportunity to ask questions and for us to kind of respond to your comments. Then we'll move on to Ahmed. Then we'll do another round of comments and questions, and then we'll wrap up. Please do post if you've got questions for any of us, for the presenters, into that chat box as we go along. Post them in there. Also, if you've got questions more generally about anything that you don't understand or that you want to find out more about with the divestment campaign and the specific plans for our mobilisation. So my first slide, I think my colleague is going to share that with you. On the global divestment movement, I was really excited to join 350 to be working on this campaign because it's so successful. So there are more than a thousand campaigns worldwide campaigning for divestment from fossil fuels across six continents. And so far, there have been nearly 700 divestment commitments, which are worth more than $5 trillion, which is just absurdly successful. It really shows that this campaign has legs. And you might have seen in the reminder email that we sent out about this, comments from the Shell chief executive basically saying that buy-in for this industry is just being lost. Yeah, he thinks that's a major challenge to the future of the fossil fuel industry, which of course is exactly what the divestment campaign is all about. Here in the UK, where I'm based, I'm talking from London at the moment, there are more than 100 campaigns targeting universities, local councils, pensions, churches. We've had more than 100 wins, including a quarter of universities. I think that's gone up now, nine councils and four pension funds. So the tension, the pressure is really ratcheting up on the fossil fuel industry, which is why we've decided to coordinate a global divestment mobilisation to have a moment where these campaigns all over the world are kicking off. And so, yeah, this is the second slide, which I hope you can see. So from May the 5th to the 13th, thousands of people everywhere are coming together in communities to highlight the impacts of investing in fossil fuels and demand that institutions divest. It's a distributed action everywhere. It's linking to climate impacts. And the targets are whatever university you have a relationship with. It could be a faith institution, a local council, a university, your bank, your pension fund. And then just onto the third slide, we've had already had more than 70 events registered in this period of action across five continents. Here in the UK, we've got 15. There is a great blog on the 350 blog pulling out some of the more exciting events that we've got coming up. But yeah, basically the divestment campaign is all about people power, exposing the immoral underbelly of the industry and ruining their social licence to operate. And what we'd really like to see happening with this mobilisation are events to get more people involved. I'll be talking about the other webinars that we're hosting later on at the end of this. But yeah, we're going to have one on how to grow your campaign and how to escalate it. But yeah, I will now, without further ado, hand over to Aaron who's going to talk a little bit more about what exactly we have. Great. Thank you, Tasha. Good morning. Good evening, everyone. So my role is the climate impacts coordinator for 350.org. And I also am project managing the global divestment mobilisation. So we are putting a focus on the impacts of climate change through the global divestment mobilisation to really bring divests, really answer the why are we doing divestment and to put it strongly in the spotlight and to reach, hopefully, reach new audiences with divestment. And so on the global divestment mobilisation website, we've crafted an organising guide. There's nine steps in that organising guide. And most of it is pretty straightforward. But there's also some detail in there around how do we make this link to climate impacts with divestment. And so I'm just going to run through the organising plan quickly and really just focus on how we make that link to climate impacts in our organising of events for GDM. So if you go to the link, which hopefully has been shared, you can, is global divestment mobilisation.org slash organising guide. And you can see it has come up on the screen there, hopefully. So the step one is bringing together a coordinating team. And all I'll say about that is just to remember to put time into thinking about how your team works together. You want to come out of GDM stronger and energised. And then step two is about inviting people to join you. And I think you'll are the experts at inviting people to join you. And I think if you haven't already, check out the power analysis tool linked in section three of this guide to help think about who you can invite that will build power with your campaign or event. So then step three, which is plan with your team. So here's where we get a bit more detailed. This GDM, we want to be really good at telling the story of climate change, not just in how it affects people in other parts of the world or deep into the future, but how it affects you and me now. So it's really about bringing climate change home and creating connection points for our audiences. And if we as organisers and campaign teams can talk powerfully about how climate change is impacting the things that I or you care about, then we can make climate change more accessible and immediate for people. So if you scroll down to where it says organising around climate impacts and click the words meeting plan, here's how to get started. You'll see a suggested outline to take your group through in a meeting. So steps one to four there take you through a process of identifying impacts, sharing and then agreeing on an impact or two to focus on as a group. This may involve some reflection and research or learning to understand how to talk about local impacts and how to accurately attribute it to climate change. But I really think it's worth while putting the time into that. And many of you are probably already experienced about talking about climate change, but you'll see at the bottom of the section some guidelines on how to connect the observed local impacts to the wider trends of climate change. And this is usually the safest approach. It can be especially helpful if you can find an attribution study, which are more and more common now, and they clearly calculate the role climate change played in a particular event. And I'll give some examples shortly. What we want to talk about is the impact of the impact. So rather than just focusing on naming the impact, focus on also how the impact is making life harder, more dangerous or more expensive for people or something you care about. And so for me here in New Zealand, an example is just yesterday, I was meant to speak with my colleague, Neve, who lives far in the north of New Zealand, but her farm was flooded out. And she's still clearing up stream weather event that happened over the weekend towards of two contrasting climate impacts, escalating periods of drought, broken with the sudden deluge, which has brought devastating flooding. And I still haven't been able to hear how she's coping. And more widely, this trend is global. We've just seen it in California, where after years of drought, the deluge was intense and strong enough to break dams. Another sort of interesting example, I think is one from South Australia, where increased heat due to climate change is having a severe impact on horses. And I do like horses. So the South Australian Horse Owners Association have launched an initiative called Future Proof Your Horse, and that's getting people to plan for how their horses can survive extreme record breaking heat. And then lastly, talking with my colleague in Philadelphia, USA, Daniel, has told me how he's watched trees outside his window start to die due to the shifting in timing and extent of seasons. And he spoke of his connection with the tree and how he felt a great loss at watching this, while also knowing this wasn't affecting just one tree, but entire forests in some places. So some of us will have really dramatic examples, flooding, heatwaves, wildfires, while others will have more mundane examples. And it's those mundane examples that are important as well to talk about, because they can be sometimes unexpected, but they also show how climate change is affecting us all. And it's perhaps, it's just that your council can no longer afford to fix the roads because they keep getting flooded out or they keep experiencing intense rain. So they're filled with potholes, et cetera. So you'll see the pattern we're aiming for is starting from the local and personal, and then connecting to what has been seen in the bigger picture. Some of the things you might want to focus on in Europe is that flood disasters have more than doubled in Europe in the last 35 years. And an attribution study showed that the severe flooding that submerged Paris last summer was almost twice as likely due to human-made climate change. Northern Europe is getting rainier. Sea level rise is already affecting communities. So coastal communities in Wales are facing being abandoned because of the enormous cost to maintain the defences. And, you know, there's extreme, several extreme summer heatwaves that killed tens of thousands of deaths. And 10 times more likely because of climate change. And, you know, we can go on and on. So take something, localize it, make it personal, make it a motive. And then the last part is step five and six. And that's how you will bring a focus on the impact or impacts that you select as a group into your GDM event or campaign. And we've really made it open. And there's a variety of ways which you can decide how much emphasis to put on impacts. So at its simplest, it might just mean talking about impacts in your communications as the reason why divestment is so important now. But it could also mean designing your entire GDM event around the impacts thing. There are some guiding questions there to help you think through the connection you want to make and how to build it into your narrative. There are also some action ideas which you can click through to on the link included there. And we really encourage creativity. So then just looking at the last steps in the organizing guide, you've got logistics, get organized. Step five, spread the word. And this is a chance to try and reach new audiences through the power of your storytelling and connect them to the divestment ask. So then you've got step six, create your visuals. This is where you can make clearly visible the climate impact and make the call for divestment. Step seven, inform the media. And there's a great media kit to help you out there. And then take action. And that's where all the fun is. And then lastly, report back. So the other key steps. And that's all from me now. And I think we've got some time for questions and discussion. Great. Thanks, Aaron. Yes, there is the guide is pretty thorough and it's really good to be to be talked through it and all the different steps there. Hopefully there's enough information there. And with what you've heard, to be able to adapt that and take action where you are. Like Aaron was saying, it's all about bringing in the local impacts and making it emotive and being creative and having fun with it, basically. So we would love to take questions. Get your comments. All of those sorts of things. I know that we have had a few questions so far. I'm just having a look. So Tommy said, it would be great to hear about different people's experience with how to find out who in your local area are investing in fossil fuels. Transparency is not a given when it comes to this, obviously. I think that's a good question. I'm not sure that I'm the best person to answer, but I would say that as a starting point, it's probably best to try and figure out who could be your target, who would be an institution that you have a relationship with. So it might be your local council or local government or university if you're at one or if you're involved with a Facebook group or where you bank or any of those sorts of institutions. As a starting point for doing your research, rather than trying to see, because I mean, yeah, like there are so many people investing in fossil fuels. Yeah, there are some great resources on gofossilfree.org forward slash Europe. There's a step by step guide and contact details for national organisers to ask for help in your country as well. I wonder if Aaron or Ahmed, if you have any suggestions on that question. Sure. I mean, you know, there's investments in fossil fuels all over the place, and it's really about, I think, spending some time to think, do a bit of a power analysis. So who in your local area is a quite an influential institution, but be also willing to listen to its people. And so there's actually, I think, a link in the organisers guide to how to pick a target. And that gets you thinking through, you know, who is a target that we could actually move and who is a target that will actually have influence if we move them and impact. So I think those are the criteria. Like, and I just think, yeah, I think a good way to go about it is just to have a creative brainstorm where you just throw out all the possible targets. And, you know, here in Wellington, the Wellington City Council doesn't actually have any investments in fossil fuels. But we're also pressuring them to come out and make a statement about because, you know, having a city make a pledge that they're never going to invest in fossil fuels is still a useful and strong statement to make. Thanks, Lauren. Ahmed, do you have any suggestions from your experience idea? Sure, yeah. I think just like connecting impacts to the way the media is reporting on those impacts and who like, for example, in South Africa at the moment, we're targeting the city of Cape Town because the media is like reported on the water crisis in the city. So we're really pressuring the city to, you know, really make a decision in favour of divestment. So we've taken what's come out of the media as that sort of like push for us to really try and encourage the city to make a decision towards committing to divest. So sometimes it is as simple as like really just following what's happening in the media. And I think a lot of the time the media does kind of give us sort of like signs and signals to potential targets. So yeah, another question I think it might be good to answer is what are some of the things to be aware of in terms of being sensitive to the community's impact if by climate change, if you're planning a creative action to highlight that impact? Lauren, have you got ideas about that? Yeah, and this is really at the part of the goal of this GDM is to have people talking about how climate change impacts me or someone I care about, partly because talking about how climate change impacts other communities can create these difficulties. And ideally you want to spend time building a relationship with those impacted communities or at least understanding how they would like to be portrayed and how their images or their stories would like to be used. So you know at 350 we certainly try to take a lot of care with how we engage with impacted communities and don't try to rush into things and just sort of take stories and just use it for our own purposes. So that's partly why we want to bring it to the personal as well because our stories that we can have control over as individuals or you know it's much easier to reach out to a friend or a family member or someone local to go and meet with them and think about what can we give back as well to them if we're using their story. Yeah, this is just making me think about the last webinar that I ran a little while ago when we were looking at how the climate movement could respond to the rise of the right with the Muslim ban and the right on the rise here across Europe. And we were looking at things like the Black Lives Matter city airport action and the film that they made around that. So I think that's another interesting way of linking to climate impact where you are and looking at communities that are impacted because in places like London it's black communities that are being most impacted by pollution from airports and from car fumes and all of those sorts of things. So reaching out to groups that are working on those things and collaborating with them to put actions together would be really good. It would be great if people could share the kind of actions they've been planning to highlight climate impacts in the chat and just to share the actions that you're planning where you are generally that would be great. We had another question that was sort of similar to asking about research but it was from somebody who is a water protector from Arkansas Rising asking about how to find out what banks are invested in and communicate with them. I mean I know that this isn't the focus of the webinar but I wonder if either of you have any suggestions on that. It's outside of my area of expertise. Yeah I haven't personally done much investigation of banks lately. I've certainly occupied a few banks but you know there is organisations like Bank Tracker and others that provide resources on what market forces is one for Australia and New Zealand for example but I'm pretty sure Bank Tracker in Europe tracks where banks invest their money and it provides a breakdown so there are some really useful resources. Also engaging with your bank and just writing to them writing to the manager that's a really useful exercise in itself because it makes the bank respond and have more you know see that its customers are concerned about climate change and so actually we've had a bank here in New Zealand just it's just about coming out to commit to being fossil free because of customers asking about where they're investing and asking for a fossil free bank. Don't know if you've got anything to add then Amit? No nothing to add but yeah definitely would recommend using Bank Tracker as a resource to try and find out whether your bank is investing in any projects yeah. Thanks that sounds good. We've got some more questions coming through. One of them is about groups so how you even start to get a group together I guess I'm not sure this is this is Leila I think if you're just one person how do you get a group together in the first place and yeah I know that both of you have been working on this so Amit if you have any suggestions as well and aren't it good to hear how where to start? Sure yeah I mean I think there are a lot of ways to really like get a group going I mean I think one way could be for example having a film screening on campus you know just inviting a bunch of friends and you know getting their friends to invite their friends to a film screening and then you know before or after the film screening getting someone to present on you know why you think your campus should have a university group that you know targets certain institutions within your city or your university itself and I think that's one of the easiest ways of really getting a group going also maybe chatting to your academics that might be you know that might have a very favorable position on you know I guess a fight in climate change I think going to people who have some sort of influence could help you in setting up a group on campus or in your city. Great that's a really good idea I think film screening sounds like a great way of bringing people together but yeah I mean whether it's a if you're not in a if you're not on a university campus you could look at organizing a film screening yeah somewhat sympathetic like maybe in a in a cafe or like an art center or any any kind of space that you can get and just try and promote it with local networks I mean those are so different depending on where you are but yeah try and find groups on Twitter and social media to kind of promote events as the sort of things I've done in the past like set up a Facebook group for it try and get your friends to share it and tap into local networks to kind of get the word out if you can get someone as an interesting speaker to come along and introduce it as well that's always good but yeah it's just a bit of creative thinking about how that translates into where you are I think um Aaron did you have ideas as well well just to really as a first step I think is finding one or ideally two other people that share a concern about climate change and are up for you know starting to organize together and then just a process of you know thinking what can you focus on who are the groups you can outreach to you know it might just be in the early days a stage of gathering information and finding out who else is out there that you could go and meet and just over time you build up contacts and then you run some events like a film screening and you start to build momentum and I'm sure you know 350 local organizer staff support might be able to help you connect up with some some people as well yeah and I think it's I think it's worth saying obviously we want lots of actions to be happening in this global divestment mobilization in May but if you are not at the point where you have a group where you can do that then if you wanted to advertise a film screening or have some sort of event to try and bring people together then you could totally share that on our on our map as a kind of first step of this but yeah I mean this is this is an ongoing campaign as well so it's not like this is the only opportunity to take action we're just trying to get lots and lots of energy with actions taking around taking place around the world to really kind of give the campaign a bit of a push and take it to the next level but there's not the only opportunity to get involved there'll be lots more opportunities just going to take one more question before moving on because I think there was one left yeah has anyone working in an organization found natural allies in any particular department I guess this is as much for people tuning in if you've been running campaigns yourselves as people in the panel I know I'm thinking of I can't remember where it was but in my research for some of the resources that I'm making for this global divestment mobilization I found a recording of an interview we did with a divestment campaigner in the States I believe who was saying that actually the union turned out to be massive massively on board at the university they were campaigning on and they managed to engage staff by engaging union reps yeah so I think that that could be a useful way Aaron and Armin have you got ideas about allies in organizations or who you could go to to start with not particularly but you know just one anecdote I guess is a couple of years ago we went and occupied the global headquarters of ANZ which is Big Bank in my part of the world and we spent about eight days in sorry not eight days eight hours in in the building and you know six floors looked out on them on the foyer where we were and we're chanting away and you know clearly there were some annoyed staff members but actually we were getting a lot of really positive tweets and we also a member of staff recorded the first two hours and emailed it to us so I think it is like definitely important to remember that within any institution there are going to be allies and there's going to be people in opposition and there's going to be that polarization within an institution and so designing your campaign so that it you know supports your allies to have a strong voice within the organization so it's you know how do you do the campaign in a way that is not just entirely negative but is you know positive and hopeful and gives those people in the organization things to point to and be like yeah see this is why we need to divest and then also making sure that you're you have open lines of communication so that they could reach out to you if they want to. Amit did you have any suggestions about allies in an organization? I mean it's a really difficult question to answer because if we're talking about natural allies like I mean I think a lot of our allies have been you know other environmental organizations that like you know deal with a whole host of environmental issues you know so they've been very easy allies to really you know absorb into the divestment movement here but beyond that like I'm really at a loss for words because it's not an easy question to answer but I don't doubt that it is possible to find allies outside of like climate and environment organizations who would be quite you know supportive of of the movement so it's yeah as Aaron says you know it's but you know just going in there knowing that there will be some people who might you know oppose what you're trying to fight for but yeah it's taking that balance approach and trying to win people over slowly but slowly. Great thanks and yeah so just to say really quickly yeah it's also worth reaching out to the thousands of fossil groups that are already out there so if you go on gofossilfree.org or on Facebook or Twitter on fossil free you'll be able to find that a link to the map shows where groups are so if you're looking at starting your own group it's worth seeing if there is something near you already and if there is something near you but not near enough you could reach out to them and ask them for support and they might be able to give you some tips on your context and how they how they began their work but yeah now I'm going to pass over to Ahmed to talk about divestment in South Africa and some of their plans as part of the global divestment mobilization so Ahmed. Great thanks so much Tasha. All right so I mean divestment in South Africa is a fairly sort of like a new campaign that we're running in the country we're actually trying to like run it across the continent but for now you know just given our capacity feel that it is something that we want to first establish in South Africa and ensure that it takes root in South Africa before trying to spread it across the continent. So with I guess GD sorry GD I'm coming up and like you know in South Africa we're wrapping up like you know protractor trouts we know that we're moving far too slowly in the face of rapidly increasing climate risks in the country and also the South African government is increasingly you know just I think shying away from some of the commitments some of the climate commitments it has made and really investing a lot more in fossil fuel infrastructure projects so for this year and for GDM this year our strategy is to really try and you know build the base for the campaign and really try and focus more on youth mobilization and engagement and also really engaging with more frontline communities. So I think for us the biggest value of having like you know GDM in South Africa is that one of the reasons South Africa managed to pull itself away from the apartheid regime was because divestment as a tactic that took hold in about 1970s and 80s specifically from American universities that opposed the political system at the time applied divestment as a tactic to keep companies from conducting business in South Africa. The end goal was to you know support that was to force the South African government to end apartheid the attention this raised forced many corporations to you know follow suit divest from South Africa and by 1990 more than 200 US companies had cut ties with the country resulting in the direct loss of about one billion dollars worth of investment. So we now fast forward to the 2010s and with climate impacts taking us into uncharted territory impacting the most vulnerable people worldwide. Divestment as a tactic is proving to be a solution that is in South Africa more so gradually addressing the political failure and the political failures of the climate crisis. While the campaign is still in its infant stage in South Africa we have seen two divestment commitments from the Anglican church of Southern Africa and the Desmond and the Tutu foundation alongside we have active campaigns on several university campuses including the University of Cape Town which we're hoping will become the first African university to formally commit to divesting from from fossil fuels and this is following an overwhelming support for a motion that was tabled at the university's assembly about two weeks ago I'm calling for the university to divest although that motion was non-binding I think it really did signal quite a moment for the university. We're also working with other universities who are all at different levels of organizing and campaigning and pushing for their institutions to shift their financial assets from the fossil fuel industry by really creatively stigmatizing the fossil fuel industry. We're also targeting sorry the city of Cape Town which is going through one of like the worst water crises the country has ever seen. By 2019 demand for water will exceed supply so that's a very scary so that was a very scary article to read in the newspaper last week so although the city is increasingly building more like you know resource efficient buildings and infrastructure and is really trying to become a resilient city our messaging is around the lines of it doesn't make sense for the city to be pursuing all these ambitious climate goals climate protection goals while at the same time worsening the impacts of climate change through the financial assets that the city is invested in so we're really pushing for the city to address the political failure that has been that there has been and really demonstrate some climate leadership you know and really use that to push other cities in South Africa to divest so in terms of GVM like one of our is to really capture new movement and new media attention so one of our many plans you know we're still really trying to like cut down plans but like one of our big plans is to have a coordinated die-end where at the same time at several universities across the country we would have students occupying a space and a fairly public and visible space on their campuses and you know pretend to be dead and we want to do this against a backdrop of like infusing you know traditional and creative sort of tactics as a as a team we decided that there is enormous potential for autism in the country and on the continent you know taking into consideration that's 70 percent of well I guess I just threw that number out but a huge like a large portion of the African population does consist of the youth below the age of 30 and I think using art as a social justice tool can become a the main pillar for creating some climate change awareness but also really pointing to other you know social justice fights that are happening on the continent in the past we've used we've trained a lot of our supporters and volunteers with with art with autism skills with the support of a network of up-and-coming creatives in South Africa who have shared their skills to allow us to really creatively communicate environmental struggles and really also allow them to become more visible it is important for us this GDM to really be visible and we are going to go from like guerrilla marketing to having like you know like graffiti on like walls and this in especially the Cape Town CBD but also on campuses just to really try and ensure that the campaign becomes more visible it is our goal to capture new media to new movement attention and and to yeah sorry to capture new media attention but I think more importantly it is to really try and absorb as many people into the movement as possible and I think for us there's no better way than doing it through um art and activism thank you awesome thanks very much on it it's great to hear about the campaign happening in South Africa one of the things that's really excited me about um joining 350 and working on this campaign is to see the kind of the spread of different contexts that it's running in as well as how successful it is it's been really I find it really really inspiring with something as big as climate change that people all over the world are taking really tangible actions for institutions to divest and that it's really it's really picking up steam I'm just looking at the chat box I can't see I know that people there are some conversations people are having where others in the chat are suggesting things which is really great it's really helpful for you to be talking to each other about what's going on where but I'm not seeing any specific questions for Ahmed at the moment yeah I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about what you're planning for the actual um the gdm maybe I missed this because I was looking at the chat and other stuff I know when we spoke before you were talking about how there were perhaps some dynes organized across universities um if you could talk a bit more about your planning that would be great and sorry if I missed you talking about it already so yeah sorry I mean I don't really you know get too deep into the dying but really just mentioned it so the plan is because some of the universities are at different levels of organizing and campaigning around divestment we really wanted to do something that would like capture attention of at all for all the campuses and we thought that maybe by creating a situation where each campus um at the same time you know people you know just go to a very very visible place in campus and pretend to be dead with banners you know just speaking to what they're doing for a short period of time would be um I guess would hopefully create some sort of stir on campus but also uh you know generate interest more widely um I I mean I think uh the planning for that is to let its early stages we have about four campuses who are on board at the moment so we're really trying to get more because I think I think this is more a numbers thing rather than just the action I think if we have more campuses really uh you know joining us on this it would create a powerful sort of like uh moment great that's good to hear and could you also um talk a little bit about the climate impacts that you're going to be highlighting or the groups will be highlighting in in South Africa and how that will kind of come through in your in your plans all right so um so for for example in Cape Town we'll be really focusing in on the water crisis um at the moment um dam levels are at their lowest um and as I said by 2019 um demand water demand for water uh will not uh supply will not meet the demand uh for water by 2019 um so really focusing on the water crisis in Cape Town there's been water uh what they call water shedding so basically um cutting water off or really asking people to keep their water used to a minimal um the government's gone as far as like naming and shaming some of the biggest water abuses at the moment uh because of how um like a bad the situation is at the moment uh we'll also be focusing in on uh the drought uh we just like um in i guess towards the interior of the country um where we've come out of like a two year drought it was it was really bad um last year we had a bread march because um in in terms of like food prices food prices skyrocketed last year simply because um of the of the of the drought that had been taking place over like over the last two years so um really trying to say that um you know i mean we've just like come out of a drought but that does not mean that these uh sort of events aren't going to get worse as time goes by so it's really trying to let people know that you know we're not out of the woods yet and we really need to do something more drastic to ensure that we don't see a drought as severe as the one experience over the last two years uh we also have a lot of flooding happening um torrential rains um in the north in the north of the of the country um a lot more of those happenings but we're seeing more severe weather patterns so really just trying to connect uh to those severe weather patterns but i do want to go back to a question that was raised in Aaron's session earlier on about um you know connecting with impacted uh communities uh because a lot of the um universities and a lot of the um targets that we are asking to divest are based in urban areas they don't really um they aren't really impacted um by a lot of like uh a lot of the climate impacts i'm talking about right so when we try to mobilize in solidarity with impacted communities um it has been important for us to ensure that we're not being tokenistic um in the way that we're in in the way that we're organizing um around impacts um and really just having a very clear engagement strategy with impacted communities and an exit strategy so knowing when to leave knowing that communities know that um your your presence in their community uh has um a time frame but uh yeah i'll leave it at that great thank you just one more really quick speedy question um let's just come in i think this is for both of you and then we'll have to wrap up um really will be quite fast because uh we said we wanted to be an hour and it's uh it's coming up to that so yeah the question was around um as well as climate impact is there any focus on positive visions for a sustainable future in tandem um and i don't think that that's that's not something that we're highlighting it's not something that's central to this gdm but i know it's something that 350 has been talking about doing i just wondered if you had um if you have experience of uh divestment campaign that's focused on um kind of positive vision for a sustainable future or how 350 is working on this it's a big thing to feel about quickly but there was a question that just came in so i wanted to give us a go um i think the positive spin always comes in in uh the messaging and you know when you're talking about a just transition uh um it's really about like you know laying out what your vision for uh that transition could look like um but yeah it just really comes out in uh the messaging but never um uh i've never organized around positive being quite positive about the target um it's always really calling them out for for what they're doing yeah um fair enough aran did you have any suggestions on that on that front no no just uh backing up i mean really um yeah cool all right tasha i think you're muted oh there's a terrible way to finish i'm so sorry um okay so yeah thanks thanks everyone um i feel like this has been really helpful for me to hear a bit about what's going on around the world there are lots of links to find out more that have been shared here and on twitter as well this will be recorded so if you feel like there are other um divestment campaigners or want to be divestment campaigners you'll be able to share this film um with them we're going to also have more web workshops um that i will be hosting we've got one next week on wednesday the 22nd which is about how to escalate your campaign so if you've been running a campaign for a while and it's a bit stuck trying to figure out how to take it to the next level we've got speakers from um edinburgh university and from fossil free berlin talking about how they won on their campaigns um by kind of ratcheting up the pressure and changing their tactics um and then on tuesday the fourth of april we're going to have a webinar on how to grow your campaign and get more people involved and to you how to use this um global divestment mobilization the actions that you're coordinating with that to bring more people on board um yeah so please uh register your events at global divestment mobilization.org um and join the facebook event i think that that's been shared in the chat um and yeah i really if you haven't got the final details of your event worked out yet still please share them um we've got events up there where you know the groups are still figuring out exactly what they're going to do but just so they they've got a kind of day in a rough place and then other people can see and then approach you if they want to get involved um and yeah it's very exciting that this is happening everywhere the divestment campaign has had some incredible university successes recently so last week um there was amazing progress with king's college in bristol and this week we've had three more universities in ireland sweden and the us commit to divesting it really it couldn't be more exciting in terms of the momentum building up um so yeah thanks to everyone who joined thanks to my colleagues that you can't see in the background who've been helping make this work and been reminding me that i'm muted when i'm talking to you um and massive thanks to aron and armed for joining us and speaking as well thank you so much and um all the best to everyone out out there organizing it's inspiring to be able to connect up and go gdm great thanks so much everyone take care thanks thanks guys good night