 Dzień dobry Państwu. Nazywam się Wasufin Rzachmar. Witam Państwa w imieniu Rady Dyrektorów Zielonej Fundacji Europejskiej GF oraz w imieniu Fundacji Strefa Zielej. Ten webinar jest pierwszym w polskim webizanarem w Międzynarodowym Projekcie o tytule Feminist in the Climate Movement. Jest to projekt, w którym wiądącymi partnerami są Zielona Fundacja Finska Vizio oraz Green Economics Institute z Wielkiej Brytanii, a partnerami poza Fundacją Strefa Zieleni jest belgijska Fundacja Think Tank Zielony Think Tank Oipos. Zielone ruchy, jak Państwo wiecie, zajmują się klimatem od zawsze i jest to jeden z filarów Zielonej Refleksji Myśli. Transformacja, która musi się dokonać w najbliższych latach, tym bardziej w związku z europejskim Zielonym Ładem i przewidzianymi na to środkami, z perspektywy Zielonej, które są to ruchy, które są bardzo sfeominizowane i od zawsze walczące również o prawa kobiet i o miejsce kobiet w społeczeństwie, w życiu społecznym i w polityce. Wiadomo, że te dwie perspektywy muszą być dla nas zbliżone i iść razem w parze. Stąd taki właśnie projekt, w którym nasi fiństy partnerzy organizują szkolenie ogólno-europejskie dla ambasadorów feministycznych ambasadorek klimatu. Zielona Fundacja Europejska jest razem z drugim partnerem Green Economics Institute, organizuje tak zwany Climate Hub w przygotowaniu szczytu klimatycznego w Glezgą, który nie mógł się odbyć w roku 2020 ze względu na COVID i który odbędzie się pod koniec tego roku. Więc wpisujemy się w te wszystkie wydarzenia i od różnych perspektyw szukamy właśnie związków między feminizmem i prawami kobiet, a zmianami klimatu i konieczną pro klimatyczną transformacją. Ja oddaję głos Oli Kołeczek, która, Aleksandra Kołeczek, która jest prezeską Rady Fundacji Strefa Zieleni i jest zieloną polityczką i aktywistką i będzie moderowała to spotkanie. Dziękuję bardzo. Dziękuję, Ewa, for this introduction. Starting with our panelists. First of all, I would like to say that we are very grateful that you accepted our invitation and you found some time for this webinar with us. I would like to briefly introduce you to our guests. So with us, we have Mjuka Stampień from Poland, who is social and political climate activist working on just transition of coal regions in Poland and is well linked to environmental protection, public transparency and civic participation. She is the chair of Association Aksja Konin and co-spokesperson of the European Green Party's conciliation panel. Mjuka, hello. Hi, thank you very much for inviting me today and I'm very happy to be here with you. Great, thank you. From Czech Republic, our guest is Jitka Nesterstawa. She is a long-term environmental activist, art and fundraiser by profession. She has worked for almost 13 years for Greenpeace and other NGOs. Jitka Nesterstawa is also part of Movement Limiter Yismany which is an open grassroots civil movement fighting for a phase out and just transition. She is also a member of the Czech Green Party and has served as deputy chair of Energy Working Group in the past. Thank you and welcome to our webinar. Thank you and thank you very much for inviting me. And last but not least, of course, is our guest from Germany, Katrin Ulik, who is a candidate of the Green Party in the upcoming federal election in September 2021. Yes, fingers crossed. She has worked on climate change and mitigation and adaptation issues on the transformation of the energy sector and the corresponding structural change on the regional, national and international level. She is also an ex spokesperson of the Green Party in Bonn, as I understand, not anymore, but now I understand that you have more time for your campaign and working on the issues of just transition. Welcome, we are very happy that you are here with us. Thank you and thank you for the invitation. So, to start, we have a very interesting situation, three wonderful, experienced politicians who work just transition, but in three different countries, in Poland, Germany and Czech Republic. So, I would like you to briefly tell us what is your experience with transition in your country, in your region. Do you consider it just? Do you consider it accessible? Also, when it comes to participation of women and other minorities. Biuka, would you like to start? Okay, so I will start a little bit with saying something about my experience with just transition. So, I have been working on just transition mostly in my region, which is the Lignite mining region in central Poland. It's called Wielkopolska, so Eastern Greater Poland, let's say. And this is a region which has been mining Lignite since the 1960s. And there are still three open pits mines currently running. Two of them will be closed probably this year. Then there will be one left. Until very recently, so practically until we started getting involved in the whole issue, which is in 2017, there were plans to continue with the Lignite extraction and with maintaining the Lignite run energy plans in the region until at least 2040 or further. They were modernizing the energy plans. They were making plans for new open pits. And just very recently, that's last year, they came to the decision to cease the extraction of Lignite. And we are currently one of the most, I would say ambitious regions in Poland in terms of moving away from coal mining and from the burning of coal. So the plan for our region currently states that we will be backing out of all coal burning by 2030. And so we will be moving towards climate neutrality by 2040. So from the perspective of my region, I would have to say that these changes have been very, very rapid when I was starting in 2017 with campaigning for the phasing out of coal. It was completely inconceivable, even for me that in a few years we would come to the point where we would be talking about climate neutrality in my region. It is a region that has undergone a very rapid transformation in terms of the political and social approach to coal phase out. And currently we are in a process that I would also say is probably one of the most ambitious and participatory processes in Poland because we are working currently on a plan for the just transition in my region. It's an open round table type of process. So anyone who registers that wants to take part in the conversation about how this just transition is supposed to take place can and is enabled to take part. We have a very transparent process in terms of access to documentation and to the plans that they want to implement within the next year and we have influence on changing and modifying the plans that are being created. So I would say that in this form it is openly accessible. One of the noticeable things in terms of accessibility for women is the fact that unfortunately so far there are quite few women participating. But this is not, I would say, because there is no access to it, but because of the specifics of what we are dealing with. So this is an energy transition. We have mostly people connected to the energy plans and to the minds who want to participate in the process. Most of the women are connected to NGOs, so like me. So we bring in the additional, I would say, ecological or climate aspect into the discussion, pushing very strongly for an approach where ecology and maintaining, for example, the water levels in the region are being taken into account within the process. And in terms of Poland as a whole, I would say unfortunately that our region is quite an exception, because in a lot of regions in Poland we have at least six running coal regions within Poland. There are also some regions that have in the last 20 years moved away from coal. There is very little openness to a participatory process. So this makes it unjust, I would say. It is most often closed off to people who are in a decision-making position anyway. So this means that NGOs or social groups that want to participate in the project are not really allowed to do so. And they're also not very ambitious goals in terms of where these regions want to go concerning the coal phase out. So in some regions they're even saying that they want to keep coal until 2060 or even longer. So the conversation is quite difficult depending on the region in which we are talking about in Poland. And of course on the government level, as we know, I think on a European level as well, Poland has not yet committed to climate neutrality. And this is an ongoing discussion also on the European level in terms of talks between the Polish government and the European Parliament and European bodies pushing for climate neutrality. And I think I'll finish with that for now. Thank you. Thank you for this comprehensive insight. Now maybe let's move to Czech Republic. You would be so kind to introduce the situation in your country and your experience with transition. Yes, it was very interesting to hear what Milka was talking about because our experience in Czechia are very different to her region. And it's much more similar to how you describe the rest of Poland. Maybe one very important thing that I see because I've been with environmental movement for 20 years now approximately. And it's funny because I started more as an NGO worker. As you said, I worked for Greenpeace for a long time. But now I'm like a volunteer and voluntarily part of the movement that I found extremely important. And it was very similar. There is a lot of women in the movement, the women in the NGOs even in positions like energy campaigners etc. So there is definitely no problem with any kind of inclusion in the movement itself. And in fact, I'm really grateful because in fact, most of the people who are active in limitism in our movement are one generation younger, like 25 or illiterities. And they are just like open minded Europeans that are at the beginning brought down the manifesto that are really inclusive movement that ban all the forms of any kind of exclusion for whatever reasons etc. So there is no problem. Of course on the political level or on the state level there is no participation at all. I would say when we talk about transition. Of course there are some mandatory steps that for example are required by European Union etc. So my experience is that there are some kind of participatory events organized by the regional authorities, whatever it is more like we need to prove that we tried rather than we are interested to know what our citizens want to say or how they want to be included in the process. But there is at least one very important thing. As I said, I'm in the movement for 20 years and for most of the time the whole discussion about coal was should we destroy more villages and open more coal mines. So until 2015 and in fact our movement was kind of born from one of the attempts of our government in 2015 to open new coal mines and to even destroy the cities for 2000 people or something like this. And it created quite a big public pressure. We partially win in this battle five years ago and since then we really see the change of the whole narrative. So now everyone accepted that the transition is going on. But unfortunately in Czechia it's more spontaneous process because just like the coal mining companies are bankrupting or they are not able to work on the open market anymore it's thought to be profitable. So they know that they are going to end. And by the way in coming weeks Czech government even organized the coal commission inspired by Germany. And in coming weeks Czech government will be deciding whether the Czech coal exit will be in 2033 or 2038. And it seems so in last days it seemed that even the 2033 can be approved but we had a change in the government just yesterday and unfortunately the minister of health care was dismissed and he was of course supporting the shortest possible coal exit. So the discussion, I would say that there is no discussion there is just like the acceptance that there is a process going on and the biggest part of the discussion if there is any discussion it's about how to spend European money. So it's all about there will be a big amount of money coming so let's spend it somehow. And there is no vision, there are no strategic goals anything like that. So it will be some kind of random spending and there is a really big fear that instead of supporting small businesses or medium businesses or local communities community energy and things like that it might quite big portion of this money it might end up at the coal the current coal mining companies with some projects for transitional projects or whatever. So the biggest discussion here if there is any it's just like what to do with all the money coming in unfortunately. So just the last thing, women are not excluded in the discussion because no one really is. Ok, thank you very much. Now maybe let's go to Germany to hear Katrin because I would assume that the situation might be a bit different since the Greens are the discourse about phasing out coal is not new it's mainstream idea but still do you consider just transition process and what is your experience? As Jitka mentioned we had a coal commission in Germany they presented their results in the beginning of 2019 and it still took the current government over a year to present or almost a year to present a draft for a coal phase out bill and over a year to pass it in parliament so since last summer we do have a law that phases out coal 2038 with an option to move to 2035 in our view that wasn't enough especially because the government did not fully translate the results of the coal commission into the coal phase out bill the coal phase out law they especially scratched parts in favour of climate mitigation they changed the phase out of the plans and moved especially the lignite coal plans to a later date than the coal commission suggested especially grassroots organizations which were also part of the coal commission were left out of the deciding process for the structural change funds which in turn means because especially in grassroots organizations or the people doing work at the ground towards the coal phase out are women that women were left out of the decision making process from that perspective we also have an option to the coal phase out law the parliament passed the structural change bill that asserts funds to the affected regions we are not only phasing out lignite we are also phasing out hard coal power plants certain areas where the hard coal power plants mean a lot of revenue for the cities also get some kind of support but the main focus on the structural change bill is on the lignite coal regions we still have three active regions in Germany one is in the Rhine area where I live one is in the middle of Germany and one is in Saxony and I'm not sure I'm not sure what the term is in English but the states get a certain amount of money to use for the structural change and then the lump sum of additional funds comes from the federal government directly for projects that are part of the structural change bill and we as a Green Party have criticized that in the structural change law now traditional infrastructure like roads that there is no focus on renewable energy that a lot of the interesting projects concerning climate mitigation or a change in behavior towards climate neutrality did not make it into the structural change bill so there is no direct funding and when it comes to transparency the sum that comes from the federal government directly into the regions which projects are supported by those sums is decided by a certain committee that includes members of the federal government and members of the state governments so there is no inclusion from grassroots organization there is well there is transparency in a sense that the project the committee decides on will be published on a website but how they decide on it which criteria they use to decide on the project is not obvious so it's limited transparency and none of the people on the ground are included in this decision making process so a lot of the people that actually work towards a drastic transition a good structural change within the region have been women well also men but a lot of women there are still people fighting to keep keep their homes a lot of the spokespeople in that movement are women and we just learned last December that despite the fact that the last villages in my region can be saved if you actually had if the government actually had used the suggestions by the coal commission so that nobody would have to lose their house their home and they did not actually writing into law that that lignite mine has full rights to be fully used until the end so people will will have to fight to keep their homes now and they did not actually use the suggestions by the coal commission on one of the things that the coal phase out law even though we have one really really misses that the focus that wasn't on what the regions actually have and need but more on how can we phase it out in a slower matter so i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i 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