Thirty Years of Creative Resistance - Friends of the Earth Australia

When it was announced that
Melbourne’s Crown Casino
would host a regional meeting
of the World Economic Forum
(WEF) in September 2000,
FoEM played a significant
role in organising community
opposition to the event.
The WEF acts as an important forum for
business leaders to discuss and advance
plans for corporate globalisation and
was considered by FoEM as being an
appropriate target for non-violent action.
Around 20,000 people joined the three day
blockade of the WEF, and FoEM worked
through both of the key organising groups,
the S11 Alliance and AWOL (Autonomous
Web of Liberation) in planning and staging
the community protests. It played an
important role in bridging between different
groups of activists, carried out police
liaison, created and maintained the ‘green
bloc’ and provided a prominent media
presence during the actions.
The first few years of the twentyfirst
century saw growing activity for
FoE, even though the number of local
grouped remains small. FoE Brisbane
became an established member of the
environmental community in that city and
took on managing the national climate
justice campaign. There was strong work
on nuclear issues in marginal seats in
Adelaide during the federal election of
2001, blockades of a gas fired power
generator that impacted on endangered
grasslands on the northern fringes of
Melbourne, and the launch of a campaign
to find non-native forest sources of
firewood. Dimity Hawkins, Lisa Robbins
and Kathleen McCann completed the
innovative ‘Forever Country’ project for the
Alliance Against Uranium Mining, with the
production of a series of posters aimed
at highlighting the impacts of the nuclear
industry on Indigenous land and culture.
David Brower, the founder of FoE, died in
late 2000, aged 88. Consumer advocate
Ralph Nader said “David was the greatest
environmentalist of the 20th century.
...................................................................................................................................................................................................
He was an indefatigable champion of
every worthwhile cause in the last seven
decades. His death is a tremendous loss.”
With the Green Institute and Heinrich-
Boll Foundation, FoE organised an
international conference in Canberra
to assess how far global environmental
co-operation had developed since the
first ‘Earth Summit’ was held in Rio de
Janeiro in 1992. Speakers included
Wangari Maathai, an inspirational activist
from the Green Belt movement in Kenya,
and Bobby Peek of the South African
environmental justice organisation,
Groundwork. The general assessment of
the delegates, who represented almost 60
countries, was that the situation was going
backwards and that strong civil society
responses were needed to overcome the
negative influence of nations like the USA.
The 2001 federal election was
characterised by the shameless promotion
of racism and fear by the Coalition
following the Tampa ‘crisis’ and saw the reelection
of the Howard government. FoE
joined with various community alliances,
including Australians for Just Refugee
Programs, to oppose these developments
and to contribute to the thinking around
the real issues behind global movement of
people.
FoE’s Environment and Population project
sought to broaden this debate beyond a
fixation on numbers of people by offering
an anti-racist, internationalist perspective
on ecology. This project created a
considerable and disappointing backlash
from some within the environment
movement, further highlighting the
difference between single issue and more
socially inclusive environmentalism.
2002 saw the foundation of the Dharnya
Alliance, a collaboration between the Yorta
Yorta Nation and green and social justice
organisations. FoE organised the first
‘Barmah summit’ and acted as secretariat
for the Alliance, although differences of
opinion between some of the green groups
on social justice issues made it difficult to
move forward on joint action.
FoE 30 Years 86