#nrdcinparis

Ted Scheinman did a great roundup over at Pacific Standard of amazing climate action art that’s appeared around Paris over the past two weeks. He featured my and Brian Palmer’s work covering the UNESCO-NRDC Afternoon of Storytelling for Global Action! 

Ted writes: 

“The Paris climate summit isn't just wonky haggling—it's also a multimedia pageant. Artists from every continent are responding to the urgency of this year's talks with a curious variety of projects: a giant whale beside the Seine, say, or massive chunks of ice at la Place du Panthéon.

Meanwhile, with marches banned, protestors had to get creative. The results—from artists, activists, and people who wear both hats—have transformed Paris. Below, you'll find just a few of the pieces that caught our eye.”

The Earth Crisis globe, by Shepard Fairey, at the Eiffel Tower, November 20, 2015. (Photo: Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images)

Aurora the Polar Bear came to visit the Blue Zone! Above, members of Greenpeace International with Aurora the polar bear in London, September 2015. (Photo: Niklas Halle'n/AFP/Getty Images)

At the Grand Palais off the Champs-Élysées, visitors at "Solutions COP21" don headsets and travel through various ecosystems around the globe (Photo: Loic Venance/AFP/Getty Images)

If you’re anything like me, you have some questions about what is actually happening at COP21 in Paris—especially in the high-security Blue Zone, where negotiators from nearly 200 nations are trying to draft a climate agreement. I asked NRDC’s international program director, Jake Schmidt, to talk me through the nuts and bolts. Here’s what I learned.

We call politicians who ignore the climate crisis “climate change deniers.” That’s too kind. People are suffering from climate change right now. To deny the reality of climate change is to deny their humanity. Climate change deniers are trying to deny the very existence of indigenous peoples in harm’s way.

These people and their stories are the greatest weapons against climate change. Better than research. Better than diplomacy. Better than marches.

Today, while negotiators, diplomats, and technocrats quibbled over commas in the international climate change agreement, a trio of indigenous storytellers took the stage in Paris, alongside the great American storyteller Robert Redford.

“Indigenous cultures are the closest to the land,” said Redford. “It’s time to go back and listen to the stories they have to tell us.” Here are the stories they shared.

Mundiya Kepanga was born into the Huli tribe in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. He led a traditional life, raising sweet potatoes and pigs, until a stranger wandered into his village. The French photographer Marc Dozier wanted to learn about Mundiya’s way of life. Moved by his host’s open heart and curious spirit, Dozier invited Mundiya back to France, and his journey began. Mundiya is now an international celebrity—a commentator, a curiosity, and sometimes comedian. He travels the developed world, reminding everyone of the dignity and inherent value of all indigenous people. “I am here as a bridge between your world and mine,” he told the audience in Paris. Mundiya spoke of a legend among his people. Strangers would come to his land, according to the story, but ancestors warned the Huli not to give the newcomers fire. Mundiya now thinks oil and gas are the fire his forebears prophesied. “My forest is not just mine, it is yours as well,” he said. “If we vanish, we vanish together.” 

Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner is a poet from the Marshall Islands, one of the world’s most vulnerable places. “There are certain areas where you can stand in the middle of the road and feel the ocean on either side of you,” Jetnil-Kijiner told the audience. “Our island is basically at ground zero of climate change.” Jetnil-Kijiner’s poetry puts a tiny, irresistible face on climate change—the face of her small daughter Matafele Peinem. Last year, she read her tribute to the little girl to assembled world leaders at the United Nations, moving some to embrace her child. “Storytelling is so important,” she told the audience in Paris. “It brings back humanity to the discussion. That’s what poetry can do.” Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner moved the audience with another poem, relating the flooding on a Marshallese island that destroyed homes and sea walls, and forced the evacuation of a hospital. This is what climate change means for her and her community. We call politicians who ignore the climate crisis “climate change deniers.” That’s too kind. People are suffering from climate change right now. To deny the reality of climate change is to deny their humanity. Climate change deniers are trying to deny the very existence of indigenous peoples in harm’s way.

Mina Setra, a member of Indonesia’s Dayak Pompakng people, watched as her people’s forest home was clear-cut, burned, and logged to make room for palm oil plantations. At the time, Indonesia had a tangle of inconsistent and overlapping maps, allowing loggers to pick the map that best suited their plans to destroy the forest. The government told the Dayak Pompakng they had no claim to the land unless they could provide detailed, defensible maps showing the outlines of their ancestral lands. So Setra and her people became cartographers. They used technologies old and new—collecting stories from elders and employing global positioning system data—to beat loggers at their own game. Indonesia has now recognized tens of millions of hectares as protected Dayak Pompakng land. But Setra isn’t finished. She launched her own news outlet, Ruai TV, to tell the stories of the indigenous people of Indonesia. She established a massive SMS network that serves as an alert system for abuses against indigenous rights. The SMS network is used offensively as well—indigenous peoples can send thousands of text messages a day to government officials. Mina Setra broke down on the stage in Paris, as she protested the movement to excise indigenous rights from the text of the international climate change agreement. Setra’s tears served as a testimony to her people’s ongoing suffering. “When I was a child, the forest was our playground,” she said. “But now it’s gone.Indigenous people have been trying to tell our stories, trying to build our own media, trying to give our own contributions by trying to protect our territories. That is our contribution to the world. Please put back the rights of indigenous peoples in the text” of the climate change agreement. 

I’ve spent a lot of time this week hearing about how bad the problem of climate change is. And that’s true and important. But it’s hard on a body. The inspiration for today’s Perrin’s Paris Journal is a workshop I attended earlier this week that was really refreshing, because it presented an alternative vision for a really beautiful future. We heard from Naomi Klein and her crew from This Changes Everything; Crystal Lameman, representing the Beaver Lake Cree Nation;  Hassan Yussuff, President of the Canadian Labour Congress; one of my new sheroes, Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians; and Christian Poll, a member of the Danish Parliament for The Alternative. The group presented lessons learned on their collaborative journey to create the Leap Manifesto, a plan for Canada to tackle the climate crisis. But as Klein said, we can’t address climate change until we address gender, class, and geographic inequities. So the plan is a re-envisioning of society and economics. It’s designed to be an opportunity to mobilize around saying “yes” to a future that works for all of us. 

Did you know the Eiffel Tower received a chic makeover this year? 

It now has two wind turbines! The turbines will generate enough electricity to power the tower’s first-level commercial spaces, including its restaurant, souvenir shop, and history exhibits. 

A powerfully subtle addition, the turbines blend into this iconic symbol of Paris. Painted the same color as the tower, they also rotate slowly and quietly.

More changes are in the works. The SETE organization, which runs the tower, set a goal to reduce the tower’s environmental impact by 25 percent. Future renovations will add solar panels, a rainwater collection system to supply toilet water, and high-efficiency LED lights. 

Here on @NRDC’s Tumblr, we like to reclaim the often objectifying #womancrushwednesday hashtag to spotlight women doing rad work on behalf of the environment. They’re crushing it in the name of humanity. And we’re crushing on them as a result. 

This week we’re featuring Melissa Wright, who joins the @NRDC crew on the ground at #COP21 in Paris tomorrow morning. 

Melissa, how are you going to crush it in Paris? As director of the City Energy Project at NRDC, I lead a team that creates healthier and more prosperous cities by improving energy efficiency in big buildings, which are the largest source of carbon pollution in urban areas. We work with mayors’ offices and local groups to cut energy waste, create jobs, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The cities pioneering these efforts are becoming models for communities nationwide and around the world. At the climate talks in Paris, I’m looking forward to highlighting the importance of cities and their climate actions on the international stage, where hundreds of global cities will announce their commitments through the #CompactofMayors. Several of the cities we’ve worked with through the City Energy Project will be sharing their successes. I am very proud to represent the work of the all-female NRDC team and our partners across the country in Paris.

Which women at #COP21 would you consider sheroes? My personal sheroes of the #COP21 talks are all of the female mayors. Anne Hidalgo of Paris; Libby Schaaf of Oakland, California; and Marie Pascale Mbock Mioumnde of Nguibassal, Cameroon, are committing to bold local climate agendas. 

Thanks for chatting, Melissa! To learn more about Melissa’s work, follow her on Twitter, @MelissaW_NRDC, and check out her NRDC Switchboard blog. 

Check out other amazing NRDC women we’ve featured in past #WCWs:

Pam Rivera, who engages partner groups

Jackie Prange, who litigates for the environment

Linda Greer, who’s making fashion green

Veena Singla, who protects our health

Raya Salter, who helps build sustainable communities in cities

Victoria Rome, who represents NRDC at the California state capitol

Lena Brook, who works to protect effective antibiotics

Sasha Stashwick, who is a food policy advocate

Adrianna Quintero, who works to reimagine what an environmentalist looks like

Kate Sinding, who is senior adviser to NRDC President Rhea Suh

Kimi Narita, who works with city governments to reduce urban energy use

Elizabeth Noll, who works on energy efficiency policy

Briana Mordick, who works to reduce the environmental impacts of oil and gas production

Francine Kershaw, who wants to put genetic data into whale sanctuary development

Lara Bryant, who works to understand the connections between soil health and climate change

Elly Pepper, who works to protect endangered species from poaching

Melissa Waage, who works with communities, scientists, and lawyers to change environmental policy

Morgan Wyenn, who takes polluters to court as part of NRDC’s air program

Tracy Quinn, who uses engineering to improve water efficiency in California

Aliya Haq, who fights for policies that protect the country and the planet from the effects of climate change

Annie Notthoff, who helps California be an environmental policy leader

Lena Brook, who’s getting antibiotics out of our food, one fast-food chain at a time

Barbara Finamore, who started NRDC’s China program