Heerlen 8 – reports
FROM ELECTIONS SURPRISE TO BREAKTHROUGH?
A Highway to Civil Society
22,8 % for Écolo, 16,3 for Europe Écologie in the European elections of 2009: has the road to a Green breakthrough been found? Écolo’s strategy was building consensus about program and peadership, EE’s was ‘clever casting’ and a casino-like bravour, said Michel Mosser, communications specialist for EE: As long as we win, we play’. But both ‘built a highway to civili society‘, as Écolo’s MP Eric Jadot said, by involving social, cultural and business players (Écolo) and ngo celebrities (EE).
Is that highway the road to lasting Green success? The much lower socore (7,3) of Groen!, the other Belgian Green party, suggest so: Groen! has lost many former societal links and experiences difficulties establishing new ones. ’For Greens, social movements are both the roots’, said the Brussels political scientist Régis Dandoy, ‘and an insurance to rely upon in difficult times. And whereas all political parties can put Green issues in their programme, Greens can – and should – help to build a civil society.’ Read full report.
‘TOWARDS A GLOBALLY JUST CLIMATE STRATEGY’
‘Best Climate Justice: avoid climate change‘
After having vented their dissatisfaction with the Copenhagen Summit results, the panellists explored several ways out of the deadlock. Like: to pursue the CO2-reduction target strategy that failed in Copenhagen, with the EU taking the lead by reducing 30 to 40 % by 2020, and offering substantial funds for helping the poor countries to cope.
Parallel to it, alternative strategies are needed, such as a ‘coalition of the willing’ of the most ambitious states, and damage control by industrialised countries sponsoring cleaner technologies in emerging economies . What would the poorest nations gain? ‘The best way to do climate justice’, said climate researcher Frans Alkemade from the Netherlands Institute for Meteorology, ‘is to avoid climate change.’ Yet he added a proposal for the poor: an exemption from duties for intellectul property rights when buying climate technology.
Follow-up: climate and North-South specialists from party working groups will be invited to explore the above mentioned and other possible strategies. A proposal will be prepared by Frans Alkemade, Lin Tabak (Amsterdam) and Melanie Müller (Berlin). Read full report.
GREEN NEW DEAL – WORK IN PROGRESS
Green Works Locally – on 3 March
Is the Green New Deal just an elections slogan? Forget it! in the southern Dutch town of Breda, a local energy company–cum-housing project will see the light, which entirely relies on local energy sources like bio-fuels from the surrounding woodlands. It is part of a programme consisting of more than 50 action plans. And Breda is no exception, was the message of Breda’s Green alderman Wilbert Willems during Heerlen 8 ( on 30 January in Brussels): over a hundred local Green administrators have pooled their practice to tell the Dutch voters during the campaign for the local elections on 3 March, that on the local level ‘Green Works!’ (Groen Werkt!, as the Dutch say).
The Greens’ answer to climate, economy and other crises and the key theme in the common European campaign, hasn’t only inspired the Dutch Greens. At least 12 parties have made their own versions – varying from election pamphlets proposing Green jobs, to elaborate programmes covering almost the whole spectre of political ecology.
The Green European Foundation will shortly issue areport that compares them. A glimpse of that was revealed during Heerlen 8, by researcher Edgar Szoc. Some plans, he said, are elaborate as books, others stronger in rhetoric than in practical measures, especially when talking about local change. The GroenLinks approach apparently is an exception. Read full report.
