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Pioneering Indian journalist and indigenous activist Dayamani Barla will receive Cultural Survival’s first-ever Ellen L. Lutz Indigenous Rights Award on May 23 in recognition of her outstanding human rights work and dedication to indigenous people’s rights.

Barla was chosen from nearly 60 nominees by a distinguished panel of indigenous leaders. Global Greengrants Fund and Women’s Earth Alliance, who jointly nominated Barla for the award, congratulate her on this prestigious recognition.

Barla was one of the first adivasi, or indigenous, journalists in India. Often exposing herself to great personal risk, she has long been on the forefront of people’s movements against the industrialization, urbanization, and corporate globalization that have led to immense human rights violations in her home state of Jharkhand. Through her writing, she sheds light on adivasis’ deep connection with their environment and unearths injustices that threaten their livelihoods, dignity, and very survival.

“Barla has been a trailblazer on many fronts, charting new waters as an indigenous woman to ensure the voices and perspectives of adivasi people are heard by the larger mainstream society,” says Terry Odendahl, executive director and CEO of Global Greengrants Fund. “She is an example of a selfless and courageous activist, who powerfully demonstrates how indigenous women play a crucial role in safeguarding the rights of their communities, while also protecting the rights of nature.”

“Dayamani ji exemplifies how indigenous women’s leadership is central to promoting democracy, building inclusive people’s movements, and protecting their rights, culture, and spirituality at a time when an unfair economic paradigm has threatened their livelihoods and ancestral homelands in India and beyond,” says Rucha Chitnis, South Asia Program Director of Women’s Earth Alliance.

Dayamani Barla’s environmental and civil rights activism has included:

• Working with colleagues to prevent a global mining giant from seizing and plundering 12,000 acres of pristine ecosystem and displacing 40 indigenous villages in the Indian state of Jharkhand.
• Upholding people’s democratic and constitutional rights to assemble and dissent. Barla was jailed from October 18–December 21, 2012, for leading peaceful protests against agricultural land grabs and demanding job cards for rural poor.

We are inspired by Barla’s commitment, and we celebrate her courage. Thank you to Cultural Survival for honoring and celebrating the audacious, critical work of Dayamani Barla, an indigenous defender of the rights of people and the planet, who has fought brave struggles for the greater good of adivasi communities in India. This international acknowledgment will play an important role in bringing attention to the undemocratic attitude the Jharkhand state has assumed towards social activists. Learn more about Cultural Survival and the Ellen L. Lutz Indigenous Rights Award.

For indigenous peoples, criminalization is not new. We have already been criminalized for many years—hundreds of years even. Still, the criminalization of activists or community members creates fear and intimidation, particularly among indigenous youth.

This fear and intimidation are very real limitations for the movement. But the reality is that we have no choice but to pursue these kinds of struggles. Our communities are already in dire situations. So we have no choice but to fight.

In the Philippines, we have what is called “red-tagging,” in which we are marked as friends of the communist movement. Because of this, we find ourselves vulnerable to human rights violations. Not just physical assault, but also abductions and killings. We have many friends and colleagues who are not part of the movement because of such happenings.

Of course, being an activist or full-time organizer is very hard. Not only because you are sacrificing other opportunities like economic benefits, but also because you’re putting your life itself in such a difficult situation.

International NGOs play a very critical role because they have a platform in which they can do many things. They can expose conditions and the realities on the ground. They can lobby governments. Solidarity or financial support is only one aspect.

One of our elder leaders, who was assassinated by unidentified elements of the military in 2006, once said that until our right to self-determination is recognized, then our struggle will not end. Even if that means we must sacrifice our lives to achieve freedom, then so be it. For us indigenous youth, criminalization is a driving force to continue the struggles our elders started.

Learn more about our Next Generation Climate Board.

Terry Odendahl (center) is Global Greengrants Fund's Executive Director. She recently wrote about what women's rights have to do with the environment. (Photo: Elizabeth Weinstein)

The Council on Foundations (COF) began its program in Chicago with a packed pre-conference day of “Bold Ideas for Global Philanthropy.” Having attended this conference at least 20 times over the last 30 years, it was particularly refreshing to participate, along with about 150 other funders, in sessions dedicated to philanthropy outside the United States. I commend John Harvey, the Managing Director of Global Philanthropy at the COF, for his leadership and vision. In the three decades I’ve been involved, there have always been a small number of people, perhaps starting with Bill White of the Mott Foundation, urging U.S. foundations to pay more attention to the rest of the world. I wonder to myself why it has this taken so long to take hold?

Grantees at risk

Our day began with a chilling update regarding repressive legislation against civil society and foreign giving in parts of the world as diverse as Ethiopia, India, and Russia. Joshua Mintz, General Counsel at the MacArthur Foundation, indicated that one of his major concerns right now is about “grantees at risk” in Moscow, Mexico, and Nigeria, and that MacArthur is exploring how to make funds available for immediate legal aid in these regions. Douglas Rutzen of the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law explained that nonprofit organizations in Russia, which take donations of any type from outside their country, must now register as “foreign agents,” which in Russian means the same as “spies.”

Audience participants pointed out that U.S. Treasury guidelines can have a similarly adverse affect on funding to groups and individuals that have been designated as “terrorist,” whether or not they truly belong on the black lists. Some good news is that the U.S. Treasury will soon be issuing new, potentially less draconian anti-terrorism guidelines. An excellent session; I wish only that it hadn’t led the day, as I heard from more than a few participants that it had dissuaded them from international giving.

Can civil society speed things up?

Five leading U.S. thinkers and a Kenyan delivered inspiring, TED-like, presentations on bold ideas: challenges in a digital age for civil society (Lucy Bernholz); ways to overcome the lemming-like responses of foundations, especially around excessive measurement (Adele Simmons); tools that illustrate how values are just as important as evidence, “Tell me what you measure and I’ll tell you what you are,” (Jennifer Lentfer, how-matters.org); data as the scaffolding for social change and wise philanthropy (Jacob Harold); social entrepreneurship and the leadership that already exists in marginalized communities (Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenburg); and human rights philanthropy (Daniel Lee). Sitting through them all without a break was a bit of an effort, but the last two were especially compelling and the information delivered in all was substantive. The afternoon allowed participants to join break-out groups for deeper conversation with each of these thinkers.

The traditional evening dinner, which used to be the only venue for global grantmaking, was keynoted by Dr. Tomicah Tillemann, Senior Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of State for Civil Society and Emerging Democracies. This new initiative was set up by Secretary Hilary Clinton prior to her departure and shows the increasing recognition with the U.S. “Foreign Office” and outside of USAID of the need to focus attention and resources on what we in the United States call the nonprofit sector and philanthropy. He explained that although diplomacy involves state-to-state conversations, it’s clear that lasting change will not occur without the involvement of civil society. While not explicitly stated, it seems that the “sequester” is also forcing U.S. government agencies to look for support from foundations.

Philanthropy around the world

The next morning I learned more about, “The Brazilian Way: Perspectives on Social Investment,” organized by GIFE, the equivalent of the COF (but different) in Brazil. GIFE’s 140 members, many of them corporations, give away more than $2.4 billion dollars annually, often through programs they run themselves and typically in conjunction with government, 80 percent of it going to education. Philanthropy is not the same worldwide.

The politics of philanthropy

Moving from a gathering of 150 to 1,000 in the opening plenary was a bit of a shock, as was the presentation by three U.S. mayors: Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, Michael Nutter of Philadelphia, and Mitchell Landrieu of New Orleans. The COF is always particularly adept at bringing in politicos for their perspectives. Because the session was moderated by Ellen Alberding of the Joyce Foundation, one of the few U.S. funders to focus on the need for gun control even before the recent gun-related tragedies in the United States, I was surprised that the mayors focused on very traditional policing issues. I was not able to stay through the whole plenary, but a friend of mine, Hugh Hogan, Executive Director of the North Star Fund in New York, spent the evening fuming about what he heard. Mayor Emanuel had proudly announced that Chicago was planning to introduce some of the same policing methods used in New York. I asked Hugh to elaborate in writing.

Broken Windows, or stop and frisk, may be coming to Chicago in the form of four P’s: prevention, policing, penalties, and parenting. Based on our experience in N.Y.C., the last sounds great, the other three should make Chicagoans and others very, very worried.

Also known as bias-based policing, in 2011, the New York Police Department made more than 684,000 street stops as part its Broken Windows policing approach. In 90 percent of these stops, there was no arrest or summons whatsoever. Even when these stops turn into arrests, almost all are low-level and result when someone questions the rights of the police to stop them in the first place. The stops can also trigger severe consequences including job loss, eviction, and a loss of scholarship opportunities. Stop and frisk and other “broken windows” policing aggressively targets low-income communities of color, young people, homeless people, LGBT people, people with disabilities, immigrants, and women.

North Star Fund took the unprecedented step of becoming the fiscal sponsor of Communities United for Police Reform, which is a broad coalition led by community organizing and activist groups worked with legal advocates, researchers and media makers to challenge and reform the worst excesses of the discrimination based policies known as Broken Windows. Go to changethenypd.org to learn more.

I went to two great, more progressive sessions, one on food security and the other on climate justice (also organized as part of a global philanthropy focus). An interesting comment was made by Jacques Bouche, apparently one of a handful of Europeans in attendance, about how European efforts and policy seemed to be missing from the conversation.

I just left a morning breakfast plenary that asked why foundations don’t take more risk? The best question of three and a half long days.

Rucha Chitnis is the South Asia Program Director of

In the Indian Himalayas a pair of bulls works 1,064 hours, a man 1,212 hours, and a woman 3,485 hours in a year on a one-hectare farm, a figure which illustrates women’s significant contribution to agricultural production. –Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Sustainable Development Department

Women’s immense contribution to household food security in India remains largely invisible. Yet, the Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that “women produce between 60 and 80 percent of the food in most developing countries and are responsible for half of the world’s food production.” Although the majority of the female workforce in India is engaged in agriculture, most women don’t have land rights.

“Our society thinks that men are farmers,” said one member of the women’s group Maa Durga in the Sundarbans in West Bengal that I visited a few weeks ago. Like many others in the group, she doesn’t own land, yet she labors in the fields day in and day out. “We don’t receive recognition for our farm work. We are looked upon as laborers, but we feel that we are farmers, too.”

Gender discrimination runs deep at many levels: Women manage every aspect of farm work, but are not considered farmers. They toil in the fields—planting, sowing, weeding, and harvesting—but are not landowners. They harvest and process the produce, but men largely control the market and income.

Woman transplanting rice in the Sundarbans. Photo: Rucha Chitnis

Women are also the primary seed keepers, conserving and managing an incredible variety of India’s vital food crops. But industrial agricultural growth threatens to place these seeds in the hands of seed companies, including large multinational corporations that are motivated primarily by profit.

I also traveled to the farm of Rita Kamila in the Sundarbans. She is known locally as a model woman farmer. Over the past few years, Rita has successfully transitioned her farm to organic. She now grows a stunning diversity of food crops. Rita is also practicing integrated farming with support from Development Research Communications and Service Center, a civil society group that is using a grant from Global Greengrants Fund to build food and livelihood security in poor rural communities. She has incorporated livestock and fish into her farm using ecological principles. Rita has also installed a bio-digester plant that is generating cooking fuel from farm waste, including livestock manure, which is judiciously recycled to provide nutrients to crops.

Rita has gained the respect of her community and often mentors other farmers, who stop by her farm for peer-to-peer exchanges. She said her family has plenty to eat year-round.

Gujarat. Photo: Elizabeth Weinstein

“Before, we were dependent on the market. Now, I am selling seeds and produce, and we have more savings. If I am sad, I look at my farm and see the beautiful biodiversity, and it makes me very happy,” she said with a big smile.

Women farmers like Rita Kamila demonstrate that they are crucial drivers of change and can persevere in the face of vulnerabilities.

The world is slowly acknowledging that recognizing women farmers, respecting women’s traditional knowledge, experience, and priorities, and encouraging their ability to innovate on the farm are crucial steps in addressing global food-security challenges.

Funders should consider embracing a gender-justice lens in their grantmaking if their goals are to realize holistic, sustainable development and to promote food security. Gender justice envisions a world that is free from discrimination, in which men and women, both, have equitable access to resources and opportunities, and in which both share power and decision making. A gender-neutrality framework in grantmaking will simply not work—it leads to inefficiencies and is not an optimal use of resources. Besides, in many parts of the world, “gender neutral” means an inherent male bias.

As Elie Weisel wisely said, “Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

Paul Hendricks is Global Greengrants Fund’s Donor Advised Funds Manager. He traveled to Tilwari, India, in November 2012 to visit projects funded through the organization’s partnership with Aveda. Paul last wrote about local solutions to tackle environmental justice in “Offense Wins Games, Defense Wins Championships.”

With a glimmer of satisfaction in his eye, the village elder stood stoically on the large concrete box that protects Tilwari, India’s water supply. This structure is part of a system of pipes, cisterns, and taps that delivers clean water to the community’s 800 members. No longer do villagers have to walk three hours a day to gather water from the nearby mountains—they now use those valuable hours and energy to care for their children, go to school, maintain their households, and make products they can sell in the market.

There was more than just happiness in the village elder’s eye. There was pride. Pride that his community built the water system itself.

Evidence of Change

In the forested foothills of northern India, local Tilwari nonprofit Himalayan Jan Kalyan Evam Baal Vikas Samiti (HIMJAKAS) has used support from Global Greengrants Fund and Aveda to implement a number of clean-water and community-building projects:

• Securing water rights in the nearby forest.
• Building the community’s water-distribution system.
• Constructing a number of public toilets in the village.
• Educating local women on how to weave clothes and other products they can sell in the local market.
• Teaching children and community members on how to protect their environment.

With Global Greengrants Fund’s and our corporate partner Aveda’s support, the village will soon build a community center where people from surrounding villages can come to learn about community development, environmental protection, and sustainable farming.

Local Solutions, Homegrown Pride

Global Greengrants Fund and Aveda provided the material support, but what sets Tilwari apart is the unwavering involvement and commitment of a community taking ownership over its own health and that of the environment.

As I walked through Tilwari’s streets, Santosh Passi, HIMJAKAS’ Director, pointed out the different community members who helped carry pipes up the hills, mix mortar to build the toilets, teach children about environmental protection, and file claims with the government so they could access the natural spring and bring water to the village.

Yet, Santosh’s explanations weren’t needed—the look of pride on the people’s faces made it clear that they were the ones who created change in their community. Pride that they helped bring clean water to their kids, and helped others make an honest wage. Pride that their surrounding forests were being protected. And pride that they could now be the ones to help other communities do the same.

During Aveda Earth Month (March 22–April 22), Aveda donates 100 percent of sales of its limited-edition Light the Way^TM candles to support Global Greengrants Fund and improve access to clean water in communities around the world. This is just one example of the successes you can be a part of when you buy a Light the Way^TM candle. Watch this short video to learn more about our partnership with Aveda. Click here for more information about how to purchase a candle. Or donate directly to Global Greengrants Fund.

Village elder standing on concrete structure that protects Tilwari's water source. Photo: Paul Hendricks

Woman collecting water, Tilwari. Photo: Paul Hendricks

Child collecting water, Dhalani. Photo: Paul Hendricks

Water system flowing through farmland, Dhalani. Photo: Paul Hendricks

Terry Odendahl (center) is Global Greengrants Fund's Executive Director. She recently wrote about mining pollution in India. (Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Weinstein.)

Ask Global Greengrants Fund’s Executive Director Terry Odendahl what women’s rights have to do with the environment, and she’ll say, “Everything!” A passionate advocate for women’s leadership, Terry has been at the helm of Global Greengrants Fund since 2009. She previously served as the Executive Director of two women’s funds and was on the Women’s Studies Program faculty at the University of California, San Diego.

In honor of International Women’s Day 2013, Terry talks about the relationship between women’s rights and environmental activism, and why Global Greengrants Fund is prioritizing grantmaking with a gender lens.

Why is Global Greengrants Fund, an environmental fund, prioritizing women’s leadership?

Gender is a basic organizing principle in all societies. In fact, women comprise more than half of the world’s total population, yet there a few societies in which women, as a group or individually, hold as much power as men. Without question, half the population must be involved in creating the environmental and social justice change essential to the survival of people and the planet.

I wrote in my 2012 Annual Report letter that, like nature, women have been seen as dangerous, things to be tamed, civilized, and exploited. If we seek to change people’s relationship to the environment, we have to challenge the gender balance and make more space for women as leaders.

Can you break down what it means to use a gender lens in grantmaking?

Taking gender into consideration in our grantmaking means we need to look at how women and men are treating and protecting the environment. I’m not in a position to declare what the optimal interaction between men’s and women’s roles would be in every part of the world. I do know, however, that only when women and men work together can we accomplish real social justice and save our planet.

It’s for this reason that each of our regional advisory boards is evaluating how to prioritize grantmaking with a gender lens. I’m especially pleased to report that our India Advisory Board considers gender as a central part of every grant it recommends. For example, when the board evaluates whether to fund a sustainable-agriculture or seed-saving project, it also looks at the role women will play in the project. If women aren’t currently involved, our advisors discuss ways to encourage their participation.

Women at the Mozda Collective in Gujarat, India. (Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Weinstein.)

Grantmaking with a gender lens must also require looking at how power is distributed in the cultural contexts within which Global Greengrants Fund works.

Absolutely. Using a gender lens in our global grantmaking requires us to do a power analysis. We need to recognize and challenge how different cultures normalize discrimination and oppression. To empower women, it is also essential to understand how gender interacts with other forms of vulnerability, such as class and caste, color, ethnicity, nationality, race, disability, and sexuality. Everything is interconnected.

When women assume leadership, both formally and more informally, all around the planet, they change age-old power relationships, including—potentially—the drive toward environmental destruction.

Do you believe women lead differently than men do?

I wouldn’t say that women have different forms of leadership than men. Women vary considerably from person to person, whatever their class, ethnicity, or color. We have different cultures, jobs within our cultures, opinions, personalities, and status. Generalizations lead to contradictions and exceptions. On a spectrum, any one woman can be as different from another woman as she is from a man.

Because of our traditional roles, in childrearing and the family, for example, and the expectation that we will fill them, in most societies, we have been socialized to be more nurturing than men. Some believe women are more collaborative than men.

Can you give an example of how Global Greengrants Fund support is empowering women’s leadership?

Take the case of Bolivia’s Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory, which is known by its Spanish acronym, TIPNIS. A river is the only highway that should run through the heart of this protected 5,000-square-mile Amazonian park. It is home to more than 10,000 indigenous people, whose traditions and lands have changed very little for centuries—until now. A Brazilian company wants to build a high-speed highway right through the center of this pristine rainforest. The megaproject would bring farm development, illegal deforestation, wildlife poaching, and a loss of indigenous culture.

Sensing imminent threat to their customs, children, and environment, women raised their voices. For the first time ever, they united Bolivia’s indigenous groups and prompted communities to participate in massive protest marches. In 2011 and again in 2012, women, men, and children trekked more than 360 miles from Bolivia’s lowlands over the Andes and into the capital of La Paz. On the doorstep of the president, women leaders like Justa Cabrera and Bertha Bejarano demanded a voice in the development decisions that impact indigenous people’s lives and lands.

Global Greengrants Fund has been proud to support social action in Bolivia, where, for perhaps the first time in the country’s history, women are playing a central role in environmental and indigenous leadership.

How do you think transforming the gender equation can help protect, restore, and transform the planet? Email Terry or leave a comment below.

Rucha Chitnis is the South Asia Program Director of Women’s Earth Alliance, a nonprofit that mobilizes resources to grassroots, women-led groups working at the intersection of women’s rights, food sovereignty, and environmental justice. She serves as an advisor to Global Greengrants Fund and recommends grants to support groups in Jharkhand, West Bengal, and beyond.This is the first in Rucha’s four-part blog series on women’s leadership and adapting to climate change in India.

I recently had the immense privilege of traveling for six weeks through central and eastern India to engage in a dialogue with grassroots women’s groups. These women are raising their voices on deeply complex and gravely serious human rights issues. For example, they are advocating for indigenous peoples in Chhattisgarh, who risk being displaced by a dam. They are also promoting the leadership of rural women in Assam in governance, and educating pregnant women and new mothers who work in an open-pit coal mine in Jharkhand about infant and maternal health.

My first stop was in the Sundarbans in West Bengal. Meaning “a beautiful forest,” the Sundarbans is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the world’s largest mangrove ecosystem. Home to the majestic Bengal tiger and various other wildlife, these mangroves are a biodiversity haven that is also vulnerable to natural disasters. For women farmers here, adapting to a changing climate has been a debilitating and burdensome reality.

Maa Durga women's group. (Photo courtesy of Rucha Chitnis.)

At a gathering of women farmers in the Sundarbans, women shared how they are dealing with the impact of Cyclone Aila, which struck in 2009. Aila was deadly: it left more than a million people homeless and displaced hundreds of thousands. The women recalled those dark days, when the saline floodwaters surged into their farmlands, destroying their crops and homes, and contaminating their drinking water.

“When Aila hit, the roof of my home was destroyed,” shared Bhagwati, a farmer in the village of Gayadham. “We had no shelter, and we received no information or help from the government—not even tarpaulin shelters over our heads.”

Bhagwati is part of the women’s group Maa Durga, named after a Hindu goddess known for her fierce strength and divine powers. Most women in this group are landless farmers who work as agricultural laborers.

Women from Maa Durga share that one of their primary concerns is access to safe drinking water. Hunger and malnourishment is also high in the Sundarbans, and a health survey revealed that many women in the group are anemic. During my visit, I learned that high reliance on chemicals and pesticides for agriculture has also depleted the stock of edible weeds, fish, frogs, and crabs from the paddy fields. These once abundant food sources used to supplement the diet of low-income families.

Geeta Das' organic vermicompost. Photo courtesy of Rucha Chitnis.

Over the past year, Global Greengrants Fund has supported Maa Durga through a grant to the Development Research Communication and Services Centre. This organization is helping 150 women farmers, including members of Maa Durga, to strengthen their food security and livelihoods, and raise awareness about climate change.

Maa Durga women are also learning sustainable agriculture practices to reduce their dependency on expensive and harmful chemicals and pesticides, and they are planting kitchen gardens with diverse varieties of nutritious food crops.

Geeta Das, one group member, showed us how she makes natural pesticides and fertilizers using cow dung, neem leaves, vermicompost, and other natural materials. Geeta is now growing more than 13 varieties of vegetables, greens, and tubers in her small home garden.

Geeta Das at her home. Photo courtesy of Rucha Chitnis.

Women from the Maa Durga group shared that last year they organized a rally in their community to raise awareness about climate change and to promote sustainable agriculture. They were also part of a camp to raise awareness about the harmful effect of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Local women’s groups also plan to advocate for their rights and government entitlements by taking action in the gram sabha—a meeting of voting adults, who are part of the local self-governing unit called the panchayat.

Maa Durga is proving that when women find their power and raise their voices, they can guide their communities on a path of dignity, justice, and sustainability.

Read Rucha’s next post on gender discrimination and Indian women’s roles in agriculture.

Climate change is already altering life on our planet. Sea levels are rising, storms are striking with unprecedented intensity, and farmlands are becoming virtual deserts. In Africa alone, as many as 185 million people will die this century because of climate change.

Climate doesn’t care about borders or politics. It affects all of us, and the window for stopping climate change is closing. We must protect our home from the greatest environmental and human rights challenge the planet has ever faced.

Global Greengrants Fund launched the Next Generation Climate Board to address the climate crisis on a global scale.

“I believe the future of our planet is in the hands of young people,” says Hilma Angula, a Next Generation Climate Board advisor from Namibia. “We want environmental change but need support and resources.”

The new advisory board brings together a group of accomplished climate activists—all in their 20s—to recommend $50,000 in grants and provide mentorship to young people pursuing cutting-edge climate change initiatives in some of the world’s most notorious environmental hot spots.

4 Things You Need to Know About the Next Generation Climate Board

1. They are climate leaders. The three women and two men on the board are from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, and they sit on the leadership teams of networks that comprise tens of thousands of youth across more than 80 countries.
2. Grants will go exclusively to youth-led climate initiatives. Whether a project will train new climate leaders, strengthen young people’s influence on policy, or fund youth-driven enterprises, each and every grant made by the Next Generation Climate Board will go toward strengthening the next generation’s role in climate policy and activism.
3. The board is already making cutting-edge grants. The board’s first four grants, totaling $15,000, have been recommended to young people fighting on the frontlines of climate change activism in the Philippines, Kenya, and—for the first time in Global Greengrants Fund’s 20-year history—Iraq.
4. You can support young grassroots climate activists around the world! Make a donation to Global Greengrants Fund to show you support grassroots leaders working to stop the effects of climate change. Then spread the word to your friends and family by asking them to support this initiative. Send them this fact sheet on the Next Generation Climate Board and suggest they stay up-to-date on news and events by subscribing to Global Greengrants Fund’s free monthly e-newsletter.

Tell us what you think: Do you agree that the next generation is a key to the climate solution?

A Global Greengrants Fund grantee in the Niger Delta holds up an oil-covered hand. The Niger Delta experiences the equivalent of one Exxon-Valdez–size oil spill per year.

One of the world’s largest polluters is being held accountable for massive oil spills that destroyed farmlands in the Niger Delta. A Dutch court ruled on January 30 that Royal Dutch Shell is responsible for a series of spills that devastated the community of Ikot Ada Udo in 2007. The milestone ruling sets a precedent that multinational climate polluters can be held accountable for environmental damage they cause in impoverished, resource-rich countries like Nigeria.

“Shell’s disdain for the well-being of communities that suffer the impacts of its reckless exploitation of oil in the Niger Delta has been legendary,” says Nnimmo Bassey, Global Greengrants Fund board member and Friends of the Earth Nigeria Executive Director. “The spill at Ikot Ada Udo lasted for months. It is just and fair that the company is held accountable for this crime.”

Local communities stand up to big oil

It all started in 2007, when rural community activists gathered for the first time in Warri, Nigeria. Global Greengrants Fund supported this historic  meeting, at which communities formed alliances and shared ideas on how to reclaim their rights from the multinational oil companies destroying the delta’s wetlands. They started organizing and formed a nonprofit called Host Communities Network, which helps mobilize activists to resist destructive oil and mining practices.

Since then, Global Greengrants Fund has continued to make grants to Host Communities Network, as well as other communities negatively impacted by Nigeria’s hugely destructive oil industry. Check out all of our recent grants made in the Niger Delta.

“The environment is a resource and all of us must take it very seriously. We have to appreciate the fact that laws are made by human beings and it is possible for human beings to change the laws.” –Che I. Ibegwura at the first meeting of the Host Communities Network of Nigeria

It was through Host Communities Network that four Nigerian farmers brought cases against Shell in 2008. Global Greengrants Fund partner Friends of the Earth was instrumental in supporting the farmers to bring their suits to Dutch court.

Shell must clean up its act

Shell has consistently denied responsibility for oil spills in the Niger Delta, refusing to clean up spilled oil or compensate farmers whose lands have been damaged. Unfortunately, the court recognized only one of the four communities, siding with Shell’s argument that oil pipelines in the other three communities had been sabotaged, reported Reuters.

“There are many things about the judgment that we will challenge,” Bassey says. “The facilities were rotten, not sabotaged. We see a crack in this thinking that can be used to challenge Shell.”

Still, activists in Nigeria and beyond see this ruling as a critical first step in holding climate polluters accountable for destructive practices in countries around the world.

Oil in the Niger Delta

• The Niger Delta is the world’s third-largest wetland and one of the most oil-polluted places on Earth.
• Supporting a population of nearly 30 million people, the delta experiences the equivalent of one Exxon-Valdez–size oil spill per year.
• In the Ogoniland region of the Niger Delta, oil clean-up would cost $1 billion and take more than 25 years, according to a 2011 United Nations report.
• For a compelling look at the history of human and environmental problems triggered by Nigeria’s oil industry, read this article published in World Policy Journal.

The announcement came on February 5, 2013, after Global Greengrants Fund partner Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and other international organizations launched campaigns that forced dozens of high-profile companies to sever contracts with APP. But in attributing APP’s new policy solely to market pressure, U.S. media such as The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and Mother Jones have omitted the role grassroots activists have and will continue to play in holding APP accountable for its environmental and human rights record.

“Local people in Sumatra and Kalimantan have been fighting back against land grabs that are causing social conflicts and human rights abuses,” says Lafcadio Cortesi, a Global Greengrants Fund advisor and Asia Director for RAN. “That’s the story that’s not being told. A challenge area will be in monitoring and pressuring the company to continue its commitments. That’s where there will be a huge need for the kind of support Global Greengrants Fund is uniquely positioned to provide.”

In one community, where logging displaced dozens of families and police shot and killed a community activist, Global Greengrants Fund partnered with RAN to support the farmers’ struggle to recover their land. Another local group used a Global Greengrants Fund grant to study logging and identify areas most in need of protection. The study results helped communities make a desperate case for national and international help resisting forest destruction.

“These conflicts have risen to the government level and are putting a spotlight on problems with the pulp and paper industry,” Cortesi says. “So while the company has paid a lot of attention to market pressures, the government of Indonesia has paid more attention to social conflict. And those social issues will be a huge legacy the company will have to deal with over the next five to ten years.”

RAN is quick to point out that APP’s new commitment is the starting point, not the finish line.

“One of the problems with this announcement is that it doesn’t specifically address how APP is going to resolve social conflict,” Cortesi says. “They’re operating 2.5 million hectares of real estate, and a good chunk of that is what I would consider stolen land. Grassroots work will be critical in monitoring agreements,” Cortesi says. “Local people on the ground are the ones looking at the logging trucks rolling in and the excavators rolling out.”

Clearing Indonesia’s rainforest has global impacts: logging has contributed to making Indonesia the third largest greenhouse gas-emitting country in the world, after the United States and China. APP alone has already deforested an area the size of Massachusetts, putting the last surviving populations of Sumatran elephants, tigers, and orangutans at risk of extinction.

In fact, this isn’t the first time APP has promised reforms to its environmental and human rights policies. The paper giant has a long history of broken promises when it comes to human rights and land conflicts. This puts added pressure on local grassroots groups to monitor and expose environmental or human rights violations.

Still, the milestone new policy offers a powerful lesson: collaboration creates change. When global environmental organizations and grassroots groups join together, they can hold even the largest companies working in the world’s most remote environments accountable for their impact on the planet and its people. Leveraging the economic power of the West was critical in pressuring APP to change its policies—but so was supporting the tactics, strategies, and leadership of communities working at the grassroots level.

Thank you to our partners, to our donors, and to community members in Indonesia for advocating for our climate and the people and wildlife of Indonesia.