Facilitator: Vasna
Attendees: Vasna, Pierre, Franco, Marko, Frederic, Justin, Daniel, Eva, Madhuresh, Andrea, Marta
CHECK-IN Welcoming Andrea and explaining her tasks. Round of how we are.
ACTIONS RELATED TO COP26 COALITION -What can we do? What initiatives can we develop from the proposals
Vasna: We need to decide what to do for the cop26 in November (7th and 10th- people's summit). We had a meeting with Eva, Justin and Andrea just before.
Daniel: the key focus of the COP26 is the political insight.There will be voices from the south. They will organize physical mobilizations. On the 6th there will be a global action. The idea is to bring people over the world to the UK. The event will be online and physical.
Vasna: One of the first point is that the COP26 is focus a lot on the governments positions and we think that we need to put in value colective decisions. we have 4 proposals: 1. Statement against false solutions and advocating for systemic change. 2. G2G-led 24 hour assembly. 3. Proposals for a day of initiatives at the People Summit focused on community responses to climate change and the alternatives that are transformative. 4. A workshop/session after COP26 on what the next steps post-COP26 for transformative change - focusing on enabling conditions and practical actions.
Eva: The structure of this Assambly will be based in different roles. Taking responsability of this meeting and then passing to others. For us the focus will be how to make better decisions together? and also the problems of climate change.
Justin: Take into account different experiences from India, Australia, Europe etc.
Vasna: Where and how to find support?
Pierre: I have only one problem with the 24h assembly. 6th- decentralized events and activities. Adelante can give support on the logistic aspects (translations or whatever).
Vasna: We are not proposing anything as Adelante to do that day because I understand that each of us already has local proposals. For the day of actions the role we can take is simply to amplify voices.
Pierre: Even if we are not the organizers, for us it is a political thing, and this is the key and the place from where we have to work. The idea is to send a message: This is the key, this is the moment.
Madhuresh: I think Pierre was involved but two other people I know are Ian Vidal from ATTAC France and Pierre George from Caritas and International Council member who is key to the WSF process for now. I will send an email with their contacts details
Vasna: then this working group will continue to refine these proposals and try to come up with more specific ideas which will be sent out by email to everyone.
Franco: The domain of the website is temporally, we need to decide together another name. We need to collect different information to complete the site. Today, it's important to decide our name and domain. The first proposal was adelante, but we can think about other thing.
Andrea: Sent a mail asking you information and will follow the process.
Eva: proposal doing a doodle for the name.
Other proposals: ogether - pamoja
Vasna: We need to take the decision quickly if we want to have the website finish by the end of august. So: send proposals to Andrea and Vasna of different names and Andrea will create a pool so you can vote.
Vasna: We have many places in which we want to participe, so I think we need to organize different WG. For example: WSF, BRICS, Panamazonic Forum etc. So maybe we can take some time to organize that.
Madhuresh: (history of the BRICS: For those not familiar with this acronym, it stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa … these nations came together many years back to form a 'bloc' that could stand up to the USA, including by creating a BRICS Bank that could match the World Bank/IMF. Sounds good, but as many activists have pointed out, they challenge imperialism of the USA but continue their own 'sub-imperialism' of their peoples, and in no way challenge dominant development ideology, centralisation ofpower etc. And as we've seen, all of these countries continue to be or have beomce more authoritarian. Hence the move for a parallel people's process involving civil society movements across these countries.). I think we need to develop a BRICS movement from civil society, this is the idea of the proposal.In India there have already been some meetings on the subject, and the idea is to have proposals in November. We will have a meeting with international groups. We didn't have any meeting yet with China and Rusia. The idea is to explore different ways of cooperation.
People's Forum on BRICS was organised in 2016 when India was the Chair, South African movements have been organising Brics from below and so have the Brazilian activists. See https://peoplesbrics.wordpress.com and https://www.bricsfrombelow.org
I think it would be nice if someone has time to join because we need to build ideas. Maybe we can create a Working Group, by the moment thre's not a lot of work to do, but it will be nice to start sharing some ideas.
Vasna can put in touch with an african organization that can contribute a lot from a ecofeminist point of view.
Pierre: Proposals: World Social forum, Panamazonif Forum, African Forum (they want to have and international comittee but the african will lead the process).
Vasna: Put one part on the website about comming events.
Daniel's proposal about a movement/network-building event in late September, aiming to build links for work beyond 2021: Together with the Undisciplined Environments collective, the GGND initiative is organising a workshop for 20-30 representatives of national Green New Deals/just transitions/processes of reimagination and alternative-building, to take place in late September. It'll be a space for folks to share experiences and build collaborations on imagining, proposing, and building concrete systemic alternatives. Will share more information soon but we're really eager to include and uplift collectives or national processes that are under-represented, particularly in Green New Deal frames and conversations.