 Hello everybody. Welcome to the New Zealand and Australia Global Divestment Mobilization Impact webinar. We're just about to get started. So the purpose of this call is to help people who are organizing events for the Global Divestment Mobilization have a better understanding and a better connection with climate impacts in the events that you're organizing and have a better sense of how we're building momentum throughout this campaign and how the climate impacts are impacting and our divestment mobilizations are impacting on the fossil fuel industry. So just to flag for you as well, we've got a chat function down the side and we've got Keith who you can see at the bottom who is the campus digital and comms coordinator for 350 Australia. So he's going to be moderating your chat. So if you have any questions, you can type into the chat and Keith will send them through so various speakers can can answer your questions. So what's going to happen today is we're going to have a quick rundown of what's happening in Australia for Global Divestment Mobilization from Keith and then I'll be running through what's happening in New Zealand. We're going to have some time with Devin from 350.org Indonesia who is going to be talking about how the divestment movement is growing in her part of the world. And then we're going to have Aaron Packard from 350.org talking about the climate impacts that are happening in our local regions. And then we're going to have a bit of a time for Q&A. Cool. So if we'd just like to get started, I think if you'd like to crack into it, Keith. Awesome. Thanks, Neve. Yeah. So in Australia for Global Divestment Mobilization, it's going to be very exciting. Three different movements will be doing decentralized divestment actions during that week. So they are the University Divestment Movement to stop the Darnier Alliance movement and the Lock the Gate Alliance. And I'll talk about what's from briefly. The University Divestment Movement, it's got about 20 established groups in 20 universities in Australia. So that's slightly more than half of all the universities in Australia covering mostly other universities. And it was launched two weeks ago. At the moment, there are seven actions registered on seven universities. It's UNSW, UQ Newcastle, Deakin, Australian Catholic University, University of Sunshine Coast, and UTS in Sydney. And we're expecting at least a few more from existing fossil-free groups. And we also encourage anyone on their campus to host their own events where there's no existing fossil-free group. And a couple of university groups are also using this opportunity to trial a constituency-based organizing model. And they will roll out community surveying sessions using door-locking in the coming weeks, targeting strategic on-campus communities, and identify potential leaders within those communities. And in terms of stop Adani, it's been stopped by the media as Australia's biggest anti-cull push in history. At the moment, there are over 60 local groups that are already registered and ready to go. And they're part of Global Divestment Mobilization will launch this Friday. And lastly, but definitely not the least, is the Lock the Gates Alliance. They have over 250 local groups in Australia, mostly in rural regions. And they have just launched a diverse campaign called Lock the Bolts. And that's to pressure all the big four banks, Westpac, Combank, and the NAP, to stop funding all coal and gas projects that are harming their communities. Yeah. And that's basically what's happening in Australia. Awesome. Thanks, Keith. Sounds like it's going to be a busy time at your end. In Otero, New Zealand, our focus is going to be on solidarity with the Stop Adani campaign that's happening in Australia. We've identified that the Adani mega coal mine is the biggest kind of carbon bomb for our region. And because one of the banks that has refused to rule out funding that project is Westpac, and we obviously have Westpac over here in New Zealand too, that's the bank that we're going to be targeting our organising around. So in May, you can expect to see about six or seven different actions around the country of people taking kind of big bold creative action to make sure that Westpac in New Zealand knows that we need them to rule out funding this mine. A lot of that is going to be around the idea of rising sea levels and how many people are going to be displaced through the climate change that this project will bring about. So we've got new projects being registered and at the moment we've got actions happening in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin and Hamilton. And I think another one just outside of Wellington as well from today. So yeah, there's going to be heaps happening. Yeah, great. So if we're firing right along through, I think we can hand over to Devin to talk about what's happening with the divestment movement in Indonesia. All right, thanks. So 250 is actually new to Indonesia. You know, given that we've been in Indonesia, but not until last year that we have actually two startings on a daily basis, campaigning for the fossil freeze and also creating or building support base and partnership base. We are having a very interesting yet challenging sort of audience in Indonesia. So with the coming GDM in May, we went through all these sort of interesting sort of approach that we need to take. So one of our approach was to initiate discussion. And so we wanted to organize a public talk. Okay, I think we can start with like a place where is out there in the city, people can access and has this sort of like close engagement with the use, because we also wanted to also understand where the use can be one of our strong biggest support base. But that free venue is actually owned by American Embassy. So we had to sort of like adjust our proposal so that it doesn't really highlight and talk call or climate change issue. So we didn't give up. So that was just an example on how challenging our environment in Indonesia. What we can sense is a curiosity of the people. For example, when we share about share our video, they'll be like, people are interested in it, being able to sort of like get themselves around. So what is divestment actually? What does it relate to us? First, because the term divestment is known only, you know, in the sense that we want to divest money from the mining company, but to actually shift it to another mining. So it's not completely about cutting ties from the fossil fuels industries. And we went to meet with, for example, economists from the University of Indonesia, he himself a bit sort of like, okay, what is divestment again in your sort of like perspective, because that's not what we understand. So people know, have heard about the term divestment, but with a different sort of understanding. And so I guess to some extent, these gave us a little bit of a challenge where not only you want to sort of like, introduce a new perspective in understanding about divestment, but also ensuring people don't mix it up, you know, or those people who have already sort of like existing sort of like knowledge understanding about it can actually expand. And the other point of your perspective of divestment. So in the end, back to the public talk that we are going to organize right now, it's going to happen. And then in the end, our entry point is renewable energy. So they say it's okay. If in the end, within the talk itself, we will talk about antifossile free fossil fuel. And then, you know, fossil free sort of like movement. But in our proposal, or at least things that are going to be published, are not going to be obvious. It's about climate change or fossil fuels. Because if you have, you know, probably been aware of like the whole things in America, with the new presidency, the president doesn't really like the term climate change, sort of highlighted everywhere. So that's a bit from our end in Indonesia. Wonderful. Thanks, Devin. Well, sounds like you've got a lot of work on your plate as well at that end. I'm sure we have quite a few questions in the Q&A section about that too. I certainly do. Great. Well, we're powering through it. So Aaron, would you like to take away on making climate change impact accessible and local for us? Thank you, Neve. And good day, everyone. It's great to be here with you all and have this opportunity to share a bit about why global divestment mobilization now and give a sense of how we're organizing around the impacts of climate change and bringing that thread in. And yeah, just thanks to the Devin and Keith and Neve. Yeah, it's great to hear the highlights of how things are going. And certainly my role with the global divestment mobilization is the overall project manager. So I've been in regular contact with our different organizers in different parts of the world. And I'm going to share a few updates from that. But firstly, a bit of a recap on how global divestment is going. The headlines of stats are that over $5.4 trillion has been divested by more than 700 institutions and by more than 58,000 individuals. Those institutions are faith-based organizations. About a quarter of philanthropic foundations. About 18% government. About 15% educational institution. 12% pension funds. And on and on. So the divestment movement and campaign in its relatively short life has had very significant impact. And that was reflected just a couple of weeks ago when the CEO of Shell made some remarks, which said, he said, the biggest challenge the company faces is maintaining public acceptance of the energy industry. I do think trust has been eroded to the point that is becoming a serious issue for our long-term future, he continued. If we are not careful, broader public support for the sector will wane. This is the biggest challenge we have at the moment as a company. The fact that societal acceptance of the energy system as we have it is just disappearing. So what has been about challenging the social license of fossil fuel companies and we are, as this quote shows, I think, starting to win that fight in a lot of ways. Fossil fuel companies fighting back and governments pitching in to help them. As we are saying in Australia, the USA and even in New Zealand and many other places. So we know divestment is transforming the climate fight in a lot of ways that are not always visible and not always told through the media or even well reported, but that it is having an impact in board rooms and elsewhere. And we also know we need to find new ways to broaden our reach and to deepen our impact. So that is why this global divestment mobilisation is about connecting divestment to new audiences, spreading divestment campaigns to kick off new parts of the world and supporting the deepening and escalation in existing locations. As we have heard a little bit from Devon, it is very early stages of divestment in Indonesia and elsewhere around the world divestment is growing in its own way. So in Vietnam and South Africa, it is taking off in campuses across South Africa with a big push on the city of Cape Town. In Brazil, there is many church groups are getting behind it and there is even one of the major soccer teams in the domestic league is supporting GDM which is quite amazing. Also spreading to Argentina, Bolivia, Nigeria, Uganda and more places. And what we are really trying to do at 350 is support those campaigns so that they are actually in this fight for the long term and not just flashing the pan sort of events as can sometimes happen in one-off mobilisations. And we have also heard how the global divestment mobilisation is deepening campaigns in Australia and New Zealand and really putting the heat on the Carmichael mine that Adani is trying to get going. So one of the key themes I want to talk about is the focus on the impacts of climate change. So this is really about getting really good at telling the story of climate change as the reason to divest from fossil fuels. And to do that in a way that is not just about 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 about creating connection points for our audiences. And if we can do that powerfully and talk about how climate change is impacting the things that you care about or I care about, then we can make climate change more accessible and immediate for people. So that's the concept is to make climate change more local, more immediate. And how that becomes part of your GDM campaign is really over to you. We've developed the organising guide, which I think Keith is going to put the link in the chat, as well as action ideas. And both of these resources integrate the theme around climate impacts. So I'm just going to talk you through the organising guide and just explain a bit more of the rationale. So it's really a nine-step organising guide. A lot of it will be straightforward. And the guide is really aimed at a team that is just starting out and organising an action. So it will be more helpful for some than others. But whatever stage of organising you're at, there are ways to bring a focus on impacts. And that might just be communications, or it might be in the actual design of your action or event. So you'll see if you are looking at the organising guide, the first step is bringing together a coordinating team. And then second step, invite people to join you. They're both pretty self-explanatory. But we would provide a bit more detail as the plan with your team. So if you scroll down to where it says organising around climate impacts and click on the words meeting plan, here's how to get started. You'll see that it dropped out, there's a big drop down and a suggested outline to take your group through. So there, from one to four, take you through a process of self-identifying impacts. And then agreeing and sharing those within your group and agreeing on what impact might be most worthwhile focusing on. And I imagine many of you already experienced about talking about climate change, but you'll see at the bottom of the section some guidelines on how to connect what might be an observed local impact to the wider trend of climate change. And this is usually the safest approach. So what we're trying to do is move from the local scale with a personal story that can connect to the everyday experience of people and then connect that experience to climate change. So again, rather than speaking about this is climate change, this is what we're expecting in the future, and then sometimes talking about the local, we're trying to go the other way up. So going from the local up to the big picture. So and it can be helpful to focus on the impact of the impact. So rather than just focusing on naming the impact, focus also on how the impact is making life harder, more dangerous, or more expensive for people or something you care about. So here in New Zealand, recently, stormwater systems across Auckland failed, leaning to massive flooding. Yes, the stormwater system is old and built for a smaller city than it now is, but it was never built to withstand the added pressure of climate change. And that's because storms in New Zealand now carries about 7% more moisture than 40 years ago, plus greater energetic intensity. And an interesting example I think is one from South Australia where increased heat due to climate change is having a severe impact on horses. So the South Australian Horse Owners Association have launched an initiative called Future Proof Your Horse, and it's getting people to plan for how their horses can survive extreme record-breaking heat. And another example was my colleague Daniel in Philadelphia in the US told me about how he 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 of watching this happen, while also knowing this wasn't just affecting one tree but entire forests in some places. So I'm sort of getting to the end of my point here, but some of us will have really dramatic examples of how climate change is impacting people from flooding, heat waves, wildfires, and others might be more mundane, and yet those mundane ones show how climate change is affecting us all. So again, that pattern is just going from the local and personal stories as much as we can and connecting it to what we're seeing in the bigger picture. And then last, steps five and six in the organizing guide with the focus on impacts is how you will bring a focus on the impact that you select into your GDM event or campaign. So at its simplest, it might mean talking about impacts in your communications as the reason why divestment is so important now, where it might be making the link to the mine, the Adani mine, is creating a world of three degrees more or more of warming, and that is going to drive up sea levels, which is going to swamp Patoni. It's going to affect hundreds of thousands of homeowners in Auckland and so on. And there's some guiding questions there to help you think through the connection you can make. And then also we have the action ideas which we've put together and I think Keith has shared the link to. And so we're really trying to encourage creativity about how those are reflected. So bringing this impacts theme into GDM is a bit of an experiment, but so we're really looking to everyone who's organizing an event to take it on in that light and figure out how to best make it work without it becoming a burden to the action. Because there's already a lot to communicate for your given action, no doubt. So we don't want the impacts theme to be just another add-on. So if you're already partway through organizing an event, just think about how you can make strong links to impacts that will help with your activities. So I think I will leave it at that for now and just check if there are any questions or hand it back to Neve. Great, thanks Erin. That is all really useful stuff and we've just had a question come through from Patti in Wellington and Patti says, I personally can't point to an example of how climate change is affecting me now. It would be good to have some of those examples you mentioned, 7% more moisture in the storm systems for example. Is there anything else pertaining to specific regions would be appreciated? Sure, so we do have some detail about how impacts are focusing, sorry impacts affecting different parts of the world. And soon I can pull together some more detail about New Zealand. And I think there's a number of ways to look at that from some of the ski fields. Just had practically no snow last year to I think it was muscle farm in Crestridge. It's having to close down and talking about the warming of the oceans affecting where they can grow muscles. To something like the Auckland Council now footed with this tremendous bill and doesn't know if it can afford to replace the storm water system to deal with storms that are fueled by climate change. So certainly yeah in New Zealand I think we can provide some more detail and with the sea level rise focus that Neve mentioned I think we'll be wanting to bring a lot of detail to that about how different parts, different suburbs, towns will actually be affected by sea level rise if it works out. Great, Devin's going to have to jump off the call now so thank you so much Devin. Just before Devin goes does anyone have any questions from the chat that they would like to specifically talk to Devin about? Keep them coming, just give it a minute here. So everyone listening if you do have any questions or comments or anything you'd like to just add to a discussion feel free to put it into the chat function and Keith will make sure that we are talking about it. Okay so we've got someone who's asking how to describe how climate change impacts on people now. In the community organizing I've been part of climate change has never raised despite huge weather events here in Queensland Australia so Erin I think I think we're asking how do we describe climate change impacts on people now? Yeah so again you know in the organizing guide it outlines some ways to link what might be locally observed impacts to the broader trends of climate change. There are increasingly scientists are doing attribution studies which is able to pinpoint quite accurately just how much climate change is contributing to a specific event. So for there was a drought effect in California for I think it was 2014 to 2016 and they were able to calculate that climate change made that drought between 8 to 26 percent more severe and so you can you know from there calculate the actual costs that climate change has had. So increasingly climate change attribution is being able to be done and that can be you know a useful link but being able to you know it's important not to say you know the cyclone Debbie was caused by climate change but to be able to talk about the broadest ways that climate change would have contributed to making Debbie wetter and more intense. It's a hard one but yeah just finding finding those local stories to connect but if you might have some. Yeah well just to clarify the end of that questions came through and it was how do we help people understand that it is really impacting them now? Yeah well and so that's where just come into finding and just spending a bit of time thinking about what changes are going on around you in your life or affecting someone that you actually care about or sorry that you care about or something that you care about and then figuring out okay how is this connected to climate change. A really useful website for this is called Climate Signals and that does these attribution studies but it also maps how a particular observed event or weather event extreme weather event is then connected to climate change and so the link for that is just climatesignals.org it's quite US focused but it does focus elsewhere and then another two useful frames to think about is climate change impacts sort of fit into two categories one is like sliding impacts so those impacts which are happening over a longer time period and are not very abrupt but and they tend to be easier to organize around so it's things like drought can be coral bleaching or the coral reef bleaching has abrupt moments as well desertification changing weather patterns changing seasonal zones or changing climatic zones so how rainforests are being lost because the warm areas are moving southward in our case and so on so there's the slides the longer impacts and they can actually be easier to organize around and then there's the more abrupt shock impacts which are like yeah cyclone and extreme weather tend to be extreme weather events flooding which are often very dramatic and highly emotive and can actually be quite hard moments to talk about climate change while also appearing compassionate and concerned for those affected so that's another way to think about it is you know the slides first the shocks and okay so what are the slide impacts that are happening around you that you can find ways to talk about thanks sarin just while you're on that I think a question worth answering is how to communicate climate change impacts especially when they are those kind of cyclones and those extreme those extreme events how do you communicate those things in a way that we're not scaring people and and kind of making them feel hopeless but still also communicating the the severity and the weight of those impacts do you have any thoughts that you want to share on that yeah so what we try to do is always tell the story of impacts as much as possible through local voices so that we're not being an outside organization trying to just bring in this element of climate change and so we try to support local organizers to do you know citizen journalism as much as possible when an impact is happening one of the things as the climate impacts coordinator working on is a training module that can go into any training that you're doing that gets local teams thinking about what impacts are like are affecting your local area or are likely to and then how would you respond what organizations do you want to be connected to in the response and there are some examples for like in the UK they have a network of organizations that has pre-planned and pre-prepared communication guidelines for when flooding happens and that's so they all agree on okay how are we going to talk about climate change when flooding happens so put you know it is really worth putting some time and effort into thinking about these things as well as building our organizing capacity so that when impacts do happen we've got people that can tell the story powerfully and connect the dots from the impact to the fossil fuel industry because it's such an important place to do yeah nice one so we've got another question here that is are there any specific climate friendly investment products do you most recommend if so what would they be well you know we tend to have to shy away from providing many recommendations because you know legally we're not allowed to provide to financial advice we do however have uh reinvestment principles which give some guidance as to the type of reinvestment we'd like to see from DaVisman but Neve or Keith I wonder if you've got any thoughts to add to that Keith would you like to go yeah like in Australia I just speak to university campaigns because that's uh where I work in um yeah like we don't provide financial advice to universities and we fully acknowledge that we're not we're no experts in this field and there are trained professionals out there who really know what they're talking about and can actually give like solid advice um and if our universities uh that we're keeping on like if they do want to stick those advice we're happy to like link them up and they can talk about what kind of product they're actually looking for um but we don't like advocate for specific products yeah yeah and to add to that in my experience with institutions like cities or um or churches generally um in my experience they don't particularly want our reinvestment advice um often it's often it's kind of seen as another layer of us kind of adding layers of complication to our divestment asks um so in my experience it's really just been saying you know our bottom line is that you are pulling your money out of fossil fuels um and obviously you know reinvesting that sensibly is is important to us but we're also not the people that they come in and look to for those answers um and I think I think generally most institutions have people that they pay very well to look at that stuff for them who they would rather turn to than us in this um okay do we have any more questions from the chat does anyone have anything else burning they'd like to ask Aaron or Keith or myself or if there's anything that you'd like to ask Devon that we can pass on to her for later okay maybe not um Keith do you have anything you'd like to add to the discussion on the um gdm organizing sorry I think jazz is timing a question in the chat box right now okay great we'll just hold off for a second there I can see patty's question about uh is the record is there a recording going to be posted online uh there will be and I think Keith you're going to follow up with that um yeah um the recording you can access to recording on this web page um afterwards and we'll also post them on um fossil free universities facebook um yeah and uh we'll you know we'll make sure we send the link around to everyone who and some of those links that you mentioned there and his resources as well okay just asks I am keen to know how we can effectively convey the local impacts without making it a convoluted issue to why we are campaigning against west pack yeah that yeah certainly with divestment it can get a convoluted story um and there are lots of different elements so I think you know having a good brainstorm as a team we just like map out the different elements of your story and if that's where getting creative with your visuals can really help um and so if the visuals are about bringing sea level rise to west pack or something like that uh and just bringing it back to that issue as you know west pack is supporting the mine that is going to drive sea level rise uh rather than getting too caught up in details about the mine itself would be my thought uh but yeah I think just a bit of creative brainstorming is the way to go but Neva I don't know if you've got anything to add there yeah I think if um if say your local impact was that people who are living um in coastal properties in Wellington um if that's your local impact then then your kind of messaging can be okay in in 2015 and 2016 climate change displaced this many people at um west packs funding this mega mine that's going to increase the carbon by this much and increase the impacts by this much and these are the people here that are going to be affected by that so just making it a really clear um step by step process um so we have another question in the chat um I know people who say they care about the climate however they tend to have climate wrecking habits and don't want to stop them because they don't like giving up their luxuries how do I inspire them to be more mindful about the damage they're doing uh well yeah I think the best way is just by role modeling uh what you do and I think also with the divestment campaign it's less about individual behavior and more about addressing the biggest systemic level causes and uh acknowledging that these fossil fuel companies are making decisions that um and exploring for oil coal and gas and they've spent decades funding climate change denial and they need to be held to account for that and uh we need to move to different energy systems uh and so against that backdrop you know I think it can get hard to see the impact that individual actions can make uh but at the same time the hugely important to demonstrate and you know lead the charge toward a fossil free future so I think it's sort of that both like not going to hang up on the personal change but seeking to role model that as strongly as possible uh and then also going after the big bad guys uh and the systemic level levers of change that we can actually shift I think there's also a piece there about um you know if people are concerned about climate change and they see this massive devastation that industry is causing um and that governments are causing it can often be really hard to see well how does my behavior um have any impact on that but once someone's involved in organizing where they are actually organizing against those um those huge um you know devastating organizations and and can actually make a change as part of a small group I think you become much more aware of actually the impact that you have on the planet whether that's for good or or you know or for bad and I think that um that realizing that you can make that change at a much higher level also is then really encouraging to make those personal personal changes in your own life so I think organizing is a really great way into that as well okay um if there's no final questions coming into the chat box I think we'll just about be looking to wrap up so we'll be nice and on time um so thank you so much everybody for making the time but it's during the day or is the rainy evenings as it is here in New Zealand um there's going to be heaps of organizing happening over the coming weeks and I know you're all many of you are working pretty tirelessly on this already um but you've got uh me and Aaron and Keith all here who are happy to answer questions on this stuff and to help um help make these connections stronger in your organizing work um over the coming months in the lead up to May um so as Aaron mentioned this whole webinar has been recorded and we're going to be able to send that out so if you have members of your team that you'd like to share this with we can make sure that they have that um and we'll also be sending out some of the useful links that um that Aaron's mentioned as well um not sure if anyone has any further questions or comments just before we wrap up anything from Aaron or Keith that you'd like to add to this uh no other than um you know all power to you all as you get organized then um it's exciting and you know all our actions collectively are having great impact and it up especially in this age of Trump and Turnbull and all these other nutty politicians out there mm-hmm all right go well everybody and have great organizing times in the coming weeks and I'm sure we'll be seeing you all on social media and face-to-face and in your actions so thank you so much thanks for joining us cheers I think there's also so Aaron I think it's simplest at my hand talking about impact in this presentation as the reason why Doug is still working now uh might be making the link to mine the Adani mine