1 00:00:07,900 --> 00:00:13,870 [Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] To clear. Pandemic, as we saw, has impact on the economic development of the world. 2 00:00:14,200 --> 00:00:20,530 Does it mean that you'll react the same way? But 911 is we all have seen it, you know, so it's synchronised at the moment. 3 00:00:20,770 --> 00:00:27,390 Covid, but they might differ. The shocks that were considered real shocks internal for the organisation. 4 00:00:27,400 --> 00:00:35,620 Then what might be the global shocks. Welcome to Global Shocks, the podcast of the Oxford Martin program on changing global borders. 5 00:00:36,070 --> 00:00:39,700 My name is John Icahn and I'm a research fellow in international relations. 6 00:00:40,240 --> 00:00:44,800 And in this podcast we're going to explore how international organisations deal with global shocks. 7 00:00:45,580 --> 00:00:51,250 Global shocks are all around us, from humanitarian emergencies to war, financial crises to pandemics. 8 00:00:51,700 --> 00:00:57,160 So how can international organisations respond to them, adapt to them and survive such turbulent times? 9 00:00:57,670 --> 00:01:05,350 To find out, we are entering the conversation with leading figures from these organisations to find out how they're affected by crisis and turbulence, 10 00:01:05,590 --> 00:01:09,490 what lessons they draw from the past and what future prospects they have. 11 00:01:16,270 --> 00:01:17,650 Today let's talk about Greenpeace. 12 00:01:18,130 --> 00:01:23,530 Greenpeace is a little different from the other international organisations that we've been discussing in this podcast so far. 13 00:01:24,190 --> 00:01:28,540 It's not an intergovernmental organisation like for example, the World Health Organisation, 14 00:01:28,900 --> 00:01:34,900 and it's a bit more like the International Committee of the Red cross, an international non-governmental organisation. 15 00:01:35,500 --> 00:01:43,240 But whereas the Red cross aims to be neutral. Greenpeace is an activist campaigning network founded in Canada in 1971. 16 00:01:43,600 --> 00:01:50,470 In its own words, Greenpeace campaigns for a green and peaceful future by holding governments and corporations accountable. 17 00:01:50,920 --> 00:01:54,340 The network is composed of national and regional offices across the globe, 18 00:01:54,640 --> 00:02:02,260 as well as the coordinating office of Greenpeace International in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, known for highly visible direct actions. 19 00:02:02,470 --> 00:02:10,870 Greenpeace has generated awareness for environmental issues and climate change, but also attracted controversy and even legal action over its tactics. 20 00:02:11,890 --> 00:02:15,490 I spoke to the former head of Greenpeace International, Doctor Kumi Naidoo. 21 00:02:16,180 --> 00:02:22,180 Kumi Naidoo was the organisation's international executive director from 2009 to 2015, 22 00:02:22,750 --> 00:02:27,970 and then the secretary general of Amnesty International from 2018 to 2019. 23 00:02:28,450 --> 00:02:35,800 Coming on, you grew up in Durban in South Africa, where as a teenager he organised school boycotts against the apartheid regime. 24 00:02:35,950 --> 00:02:43,840 He went into exile in England in the 1980s, where he earned a doctorate in political sociology as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford. 25 00:02:44,530 --> 00:02:48,819 He returned to South Africa in 1990 after Nelson Mandela's release from prison, 26 00:02:48,820 --> 00:02:52,900 where he made key contributions to the legalisation of the African National Congress. 27 00:02:53,380 --> 00:02:57,130 Currently, he is a pain distinguished lecturer at Stanford University. 28 00:02:57,610 --> 00:03:05,230 I spoke to him about his life as an activist, his experience at Greenpeace, and the past and future of climate activism in a turbulent world. 29 00:03:24,430 --> 00:03:30,100 Welcome to global shocks, Kumi. What did you introduce yourself? And tell us a little bit about your background as an activist. 30 00:03:30,580 --> 00:03:38,530 Absolutely. So my name is Kumi Naidoo. I am currently a visiting lecturer for a year at Stanford University. 31 00:03:38,770 --> 00:03:47,620 I am also advisor to the Community Arts Network and a founding board member of the Ticketek Foundation for the Promotion of Activism. 32 00:03:48,130 --> 00:03:55,020 The foundation was set up a year ago, after the passing of very popular rap and hip hop artists. 33 00:03:55,030 --> 00:04:04,000 Who was my son. And when I asked the question, why is activism failing or not succeeding to win on the scale that it needs to? 34 00:04:04,150 --> 00:04:15,580 The main reason I landed on is that we have a serious communications deficit that we are not able to communicate to people clearly enough, 35 00:04:15,700 --> 00:04:20,859 accessibly enough, and urgently enough. Because a lot of if you take climate activism, 36 00:04:20,860 --> 00:04:29,200 a lot of our approaches is narratives that are aimed at the brain and the head, and we ignore the heart and the gut. 37 00:04:29,650 --> 00:04:33,940 Right. And if we look at the emerging fascists around the world, 38 00:04:33,940 --> 00:04:42,700 from Donald Trump to Steve Bannon to Bolsonaro and others, Orban, they are not concerned about the head. 39 00:04:43,210 --> 00:04:53,380 They are not interested in facts. Because for us in the climate justice movement, we have tried to advance our struggles by using science policies, 40 00:04:53,380 --> 00:04:58,120 rational arguments, proposals around specific interventions and so on. 41 00:04:58,600 --> 00:05:07,300 But the language that we use, the framing of it, and so on, is way above the ability for most people to enter the conversation, 42 00:05:07,420 --> 00:05:10,990 including people who might have university education and so on. 43 00:05:11,110 --> 00:05:17,160 Because if you're not a specialist in climate, then you struggle to get in. 44 00:05:17,350 --> 00:05:23,589 One of the solutions to the problem is I looked back at my own childhood activism, you know, 45 00:05:23,590 --> 00:05:29,950 during apartheid, in a country where the majority of our people were consciously deprived of education. 46 00:05:30,320 --> 00:05:38,049 Uh, one of the most powerful statements of apartheid policy was actually about education, the founder of the apartheid ideology. 47 00:05:38,050 --> 00:05:42,490 And the foot said blacks should never be shown the greener pastures of education. 48 00:05:42,490 --> 00:05:46,600 They should know that this station in life is to be used upward in droves of water. 49 00:05:47,290 --> 00:05:54,220 And so when I look at how did we mobilise, how did we mobilise in a context with people couldn't read and write. 50 00:05:54,460 --> 00:05:56,440 And actually the answer is so simple. 51 00:05:56,710 --> 00:06:06,490 It was through song, through dance, through theatre, through a range of cultural set of expressions that connected with peoples. 52 00:06:06,760 --> 00:06:14,440 So that is why a lot of my work right now is focussed on how do we break through the communications hurdles, 53 00:06:14,950 --> 00:06:18,310 and how do we actually draw on the power of arts and culture. 54 00:06:18,340 --> 00:06:25,239 Let me just conclude by saying that I am not suggesting that if we harness the full power of arts and culture 55 00:06:25,240 --> 00:06:31,960 for social change on its own will deliver us the salvation from the climate crisis and its intersecting crises. 56 00:06:32,350 --> 00:06:38,050 However, I would safely say right now that without harnessing the power of arts and culture, 57 00:06:38,320 --> 00:06:42,970 we almost guaranteed not to have a chance to break through the communications hurdles that we have. 58 00:06:43,420 --> 00:06:48,830 What really led you from from your sort of earliest involvement in activism all the way to an organ, 59 00:06:48,850 --> 00:06:54,970 a big organisation like Greenpeace, when Greenpeace, you know, folks had come to me for this position. 60 00:06:55,180 --> 00:06:58,959 In fact, there's a funny story about it when when they called me, 61 00:06:58,960 --> 00:07:07,000 I was in the middle of the hunger strike to put pressure on the South African government to act on the worsening situation in Zimbabwe. 62 00:07:07,150 --> 00:07:16,630 Part of it was this strike that Archbishop Desmond Tutu had called for, and I was the first person that anchored it for 21 days and all of that. 63 00:07:17,050 --> 00:07:23,680 And in the middle of it, I got a call from Greenpeace, uh, sort of saying, would you be interested to be a candidate? 64 00:07:23,860 --> 00:07:27,250 And I said to them, you know, thanks very much. 65 00:07:27,370 --> 00:07:30,160 Deeply honoured, but the timing is really bad. 66 00:07:30,880 --> 00:07:39,580 And my daughter, uh, who I spoke to a few days later, said that she had seen me on a television interview. 67 00:07:39,580 --> 00:07:43,440 Interested? Dead. Why are you. So why are you still doing interviews and so on? 68 00:07:43,450 --> 00:07:47,950 Aren't you supposed to be conserving your energy? And I said, no, no, you know, I, I made an exception. 69 00:07:48,130 --> 00:07:56,050 Uh, the only two people I spoke to with these BBC people and, and this folks from Greenpeace who called and she said, what did you tell them? 70 00:07:56,050 --> 00:08:00,040 And I said, no, I told them, bad timing. You know, I can't make a decision like that. 71 00:08:00,040 --> 00:08:07,270 And she said to me, you know, that I won't talk to you if you don't seriously consider this when you finish your stupid hunger strike, 72 00:08:08,560 --> 00:08:14,560 because, you know, Greenpeace is addressing one of the most critical issues of our time. 73 00:08:15,280 --> 00:08:23,230 But when I spoke to the Greenpeace board and so on, it became clear that the reason they were keen to have somebody like me. 74 00:08:23,640 --> 00:08:28,500 Was the recognised that the organisation couldn't continue as it was, 75 00:08:28,980 --> 00:08:34,950 which is having a international claim by calling themselves Greenpeace International, 76 00:08:35,220 --> 00:08:42,630 when in fact there was not a equal balancing of power between the Global South and the global North. 77 00:08:43,350 --> 00:08:48,900 And it's important to recognise that when we, talking about international organisations and their role in the world, 78 00:08:49,440 --> 00:08:53,610 is that actually there are very few truly international organisations. 79 00:08:53,790 --> 00:08:59,010 We use the term international very loosely, and I can tell you an anecdote to bring this point to life. 80 00:08:59,460 --> 00:09:06,360 The Secretary-General of amnesty, while I was the head of Greenpeace, was a guy called Salil Shetty, 81 00:09:06,570 --> 00:09:12,170 and he brought his senior management team to meet with my senior management team at Greenpeace. 82 00:09:12,180 --> 00:09:15,210 You know, about six months or so after I started. 83 00:09:15,630 --> 00:09:22,140 And then he said, you know, Kumi, I've come to realise why all the organisations we know, 84 00:09:22,140 --> 00:09:26,280 whether it's Greenpeace International, at Amnesty International, 85 00:09:26,280 --> 00:09:34,889 Save the Children International, Oxfam International and so on, is that we use the term international to mask out an international. 86 00:09:34,890 --> 00:09:39,390 We actually are. So the word international has been abused for far too long. 87 00:09:39,450 --> 00:09:42,809 And so when I was approached both by Greenpeace and Amnesty, 88 00:09:42,810 --> 00:09:49,170 it was very much part of how does the organisation become as global as the challenges that it seeks to address, 89 00:09:49,170 --> 00:09:55,409 and how does it ensure that it looks like how the world looks like now? 90 00:09:55,410 --> 00:10:05,640 The difficulty we have is that international organisations in the governmental space G20, G8, UN and so on, 91 00:10:06,000 --> 00:10:13,050 they don't have a fundamentally different analysis from the crises that we find ourselves in. 92 00:10:13,260 --> 00:10:22,299 Right? Because, for example, as early as 1997, after the Asian financial crisis, the president of the world Bank, Bill Clinton, was president, 93 00:10:22,300 --> 00:10:31,020 then secretary general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, and many others said the world needs a new international financial architecture. 94 00:10:31,230 --> 00:10:38,700 We would agree with that. But then once some Band-Aids were put on the Asian financial crisis in 1997, 95 00:10:38,700 --> 00:10:48,360 which obviously proliferated beyond to Argentina, Russia and so on, as we saw after the 2008 2009 global financial crisis. 96 00:10:48,600 --> 00:10:51,630 And as we are seeing now after Covid, right, 97 00:10:51,840 --> 00:10:59,370 all of these crises have shown how bad our current systems are in terms of being able to take 98 00:10:59,370 --> 00:11:04,200 care of the majority of people in our societies within the global South or in the global North. 99 00:11:04,440 --> 00:11:11,430 So what we would have expected, say, after the global financial crisis in 2009, 100 00:11:12,030 --> 00:11:17,370 was that there would be an approach of system innovation, system transformation, system redesign. 101 00:11:17,400 --> 00:11:26,190 But what we got and as we now having with Covid post-Covid is all you get is system recovery, system maintenance and system protection. 102 00:11:26,550 --> 00:11:33,150 The other important thing to note about the failure of the international system at the moment is 103 00:11:33,150 --> 00:11:39,450 the failure to embrace a wisdom from the feminist movement that was given to us decades ago, 104 00:11:39,630 --> 00:11:46,050 when we were urged to embrace the power of intersectionality, understanding that, you know, 105 00:11:46,050 --> 00:11:51,840 environment doesn't exist in a silo development and poverty doesn't exist in a silo. 106 00:11:51,840 --> 00:11:53,639 Human rights doesn't exist in silos. 107 00:11:53,640 --> 00:12:01,290 But both on the civil society side that, you know, Greenpeace and WWF, friends of the Earth focussed on environment, 108 00:12:01,290 --> 00:12:07,440 amnesty, Human Rights Watch on Human Rights and Oxfam and Save the Children and so on on poverty. 109 00:12:07,800 --> 00:12:10,560 But on the governmental side, you have exactly the same thing. 110 00:12:10,560 --> 00:12:17,520 Greenpeace also stands out as a civil society organisation that is committed to direct action to civil disobedience. 111 00:12:17,700 --> 00:12:24,840 And that's, of course, included not shying away from confronting powerful multinational corporations responsible for major environmental harm. 112 00:12:25,050 --> 00:12:31,770 2012 for example, you occupy the Gazprom oil platform in the Arctic as part of a Greenpeace campaign. 113 00:12:31,950 --> 00:12:36,720 In this kind of world marked by turbulence, do we need more civil disobedience? 114 00:12:37,170 --> 00:12:41,850 So, uh, firstly, one of my objections of joining Greenpeace. 115 00:12:41,850 --> 00:12:44,730 I had spent ten years working internationally before that. 116 00:12:44,850 --> 00:12:50,880 If history teaches us anything when humanity is facing terrible injustice or a terrible challenge, 117 00:12:51,240 --> 00:12:57,570 those struggles only move forward when decent women and men stood up and said, enough is enough and no more. 118 00:12:58,080 --> 00:13:01,770 We prepared to put our lives on the line, prepared to go to prison if necessary. 119 00:13:01,770 --> 00:13:12,630 We are prepared to make sacrifices necessary and by taking action that is peaceful, but which actually breaks unjust laws. 120 00:13:12,960 --> 00:13:23,130 Right? And I would say laws that protect the fossil fuel industry, given that we know that the fossil fuel industry is dabbling in a poison. 121 00:13:23,450 --> 00:13:29,000 Called carbon dioxide emissions, which is killing the future of our children and their children. 122 00:13:29,150 --> 00:13:33,230 If we look at the extreme imbalance of power. 123 00:13:33,560 --> 00:13:41,570 Let me give you a practical example. So you, as the head of Greenpeace, uh, we were engaged in a campaign around shell, right. 124 00:13:41,600 --> 00:13:45,800 To encourage it not to go into the Arctic, for example. 125 00:13:45,980 --> 00:13:52,100 Now, the Arctic is actually one of the front lines of the environmental challenges that we face at the moment. 126 00:13:52,130 --> 00:13:55,580 The Arctic is telling us clearly we are in deep trouble. 127 00:13:55,940 --> 00:14:02,540 The incident you talk about when I occupied a gas boil rig in 2012, in the bottom sea. 128 00:14:02,690 --> 00:14:12,890 At that time there was a clear recognition, but the science there was very few governments that was still questioning the reality of climate change. 129 00:14:13,400 --> 00:14:19,730 But what we saw is, yes, you can't blame people who work in the fossil fuel industry, 130 00:14:20,090 --> 00:14:24,170 you know, for being in the dirty energy industry that's driving us to destruction, 131 00:14:24,290 --> 00:14:32,660 because they've been told that they are providing an important national service by generating energy. 132 00:14:33,140 --> 00:14:37,790 But none of those workers particularly say, oh, I only want to generate dirty energy. 133 00:14:37,790 --> 00:14:45,589 Please let me generate dirty energy. They want to generate energy so they would be happy to do it through cleaner means. 134 00:14:45,590 --> 00:14:49,640 It doesn't impact the children's futures. Now the fossil fuel industry. 135 00:14:49,790 --> 00:14:54,920 We're head of the International Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 136 00:14:55,040 --> 00:15:03,950 The IPCC, in terms of their own scientists, told them much earlier that burning of fossil fuels is going to create the problem. 137 00:15:04,490 --> 00:15:14,030 What they opted to do was to to bury their own scientific findings in terms of public discourse, but they changed their practice. 138 00:15:14,390 --> 00:15:17,840 So, for example, when rigs were being put in the sea, right, 139 00:15:17,840 --> 00:15:23,870 they took into account sea level rise as a result of climate change, and they put the rigs higher. 140 00:15:24,170 --> 00:15:29,510 But in the public, those spending hundreds of millions of dollars saying fossil fuels is absolutely fine. 141 00:15:29,570 --> 00:15:37,010 And so when you look at the imbalance of power between Shell and Greenpeace, for example, 142 00:15:37,250 --> 00:15:47,660 Greenpeace entire global budget of close to €400 million is not even one tenth of the advertising budget of one fossil fuel companies like shell. 143 00:15:47,930 --> 00:15:57,770 And so the power of civil disobedience, you know, which we learned from Mahatma Gandhi, from Martin Luther King, from Nelson Mandela, 144 00:15:57,770 --> 00:16:07,219 from Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, you know, many, many people in history around the world is as relevant today as it's ever been. 145 00:16:07,220 --> 00:16:11,660 Because when power does not shift, you have to shift power. 146 00:16:12,020 --> 00:16:20,600 The other purpose of why civil disobedience is important is that some of these crimes, environmental crimes, 147 00:16:20,840 --> 00:16:27,260 are happening far away from the visibility of the vast majority of people on the planet. 148 00:16:27,740 --> 00:16:32,540 Whether it's the slavery practices we have seen in the Amazon, 149 00:16:32,540 --> 00:16:40,910 whether it's the murders of nuns and others who are working to change things around what we've seen in the Amazon. 150 00:16:41,510 --> 00:16:50,480 Then if you take the Arctic or the Antarctic, they are so remote from where the majority of people live, it seems so far from the reality. 151 00:16:50,870 --> 00:16:56,720 But as I like to remind people, you know, people say, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. 152 00:16:57,050 --> 00:17:00,080 Sadly, what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic. 153 00:17:00,170 --> 00:17:12,560 Its impact is global, but so so therefore civil disobedience is also about bearing witness to injustice in places where it's hidden from people. 154 00:17:13,280 --> 00:17:19,429 Now, nobody relishes the idea of going to prison or putting your life at risk when you, you know, 155 00:17:19,430 --> 00:17:27,620 occupy a oil rig where potentially Russian agents could be firing at you has happened the year after, 156 00:17:27,950 --> 00:17:35,000 in 2013, that the Greenpeace activists were thrown in prison in Murmansk for doing exactly the same protest that we did. 157 00:17:35,030 --> 00:17:38,120 But where we are right now as humanity, 158 00:17:38,120 --> 00:17:48,680 it's important to understand that civil disobedience is one important and powerful tool in the toolbox of social change. 159 00:17:49,070 --> 00:18:00,680 And like any tool, if you don't use it strategically, with good timing, with sensitivity and so on, it can actually backfire really badly. 160 00:18:24,320 --> 00:18:33,140 Civil disobedience is very contextual. What I mean by that is what works well in one context might not work well in another context. 161 00:18:33,320 --> 00:18:40,820 So let me give you an example. I hope many of your listeners will know what mooning is, but if they don't, let me just up a definition. 162 00:18:40,820 --> 00:18:51,800 So if 20 people want to make a sign, say, stop climate change, but they have to into a venue where they kind of carrying placards and so on. 163 00:18:52,370 --> 00:18:58,009 What has happened sometimes is people will paint on each of their bum cheeks 1 or 2 letters, 164 00:18:58,010 --> 00:19:04,550 and at a given point they all pull their pants down and it'll say, act now to stop climate change, for example. 165 00:19:04,670 --> 00:19:08,180 Now, that might work well in London or New York or San Francisco. 166 00:19:08,420 --> 00:19:12,890 It might not work so well in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia or Egypt, right? 167 00:19:13,310 --> 00:19:22,910 So it doesn't mean that it was bad. And it becomes more complicated in the global environmental space because nothing stays solely within one country. 168 00:19:22,910 --> 00:19:27,319 And that was often a challenge for Greenpeace because like, for example, 169 00:19:27,320 --> 00:19:35,990 whenever there was atrocities committed by the Israeli state against the Palestinian people and when when those were happening, 170 00:19:35,990 --> 00:19:45,410 you would have a lot of Greenpeace wanting to take action and take a position, and then others would be very hesitant about it. 171 00:19:45,410 --> 00:19:52,250 And those that were hesitant would not even allow all those individual countries where it was easier to do, 172 00:19:52,280 --> 00:19:57,769 or it was appropriate to do to to offer that solidarity to the Palestinian people because they would say, 173 00:19:57,770 --> 00:20:05,360 well, it will still reflect in our market because when you do social media and so on, people will still say, hey, that's Greenpeace who did that. 174 00:20:05,360 --> 00:20:10,880 And in our country that will play bad. So this is quite a challenging thing to actually manage. 175 00:20:11,060 --> 00:20:12,800 And let me give you another example. 176 00:20:13,070 --> 00:20:22,640 When Extinction Rebellion, who I fully support, but for example, when they choose to block tube stations by public transport, 177 00:20:22,730 --> 00:20:27,050 used mainly by working class people, we are pushing people away. 178 00:20:27,350 --> 00:20:34,249 You know, that might have got media coverage, but on the other hand, it's alienating a critical constituency. 179 00:20:34,250 --> 00:20:40,520 And bear in mind, one of the problems of the environmental and climate movement that it's far too wide and far too middle class. 180 00:20:41,330 --> 00:20:47,120 So you were international executive director of Greenpeace International from 2009 to 2015. 181 00:20:47,570 --> 00:20:53,090 In that time, what was the most challenging global shock that challenged the organisation that challenged Greenpeace? 182 00:20:53,990 --> 00:21:03,049 I think the Fukushima nuclear power plants, uh, vulnerability after the tsunami in I believe it was 2011. 183 00:21:03,050 --> 00:21:11,360 And it's at a time also when people were trying to make a big push for nuclear energy because they said it was carbon neutral, 184 00:21:11,360 --> 00:21:17,680 which, by the way, it's not 100% carbon neutral. And there's major questions around water and resources and so on. 185 00:21:17,690 --> 00:21:29,440 So and so we were struggling right until Fukushima to get movement on countries like Germany and Italy, for example, but six months after. 186 00:21:29,510 --> 00:21:33,469 So we turned that crisis into an opportunity. 187 00:21:33,470 --> 00:21:41,750 And this is just be very clear why I and many others don't think nuclear energy is the solution to the current situation, 188 00:21:41,750 --> 00:21:47,300 because to put it simply, it's too expensive, it's too dangerous, and it'll deliver too little, too late. 189 00:21:47,450 --> 00:21:55,580 To address the climate crisis, the global shock of Fukushima, which was put the world on anxiety, and not just in Asia. 190 00:21:55,880 --> 00:22:01,130 You know, I also faced other global, which would say to us that Greenpeace was like a global shock, 191 00:22:01,130 --> 00:22:08,810 but probably not to the world as a whole, which had to do with the culture and the reality of international organisations. 192 00:22:08,810 --> 00:22:16,490 And I'll tell the story because it's a painful one. So in 2014, the climate negotiations were taking place in Lima, Peru. 193 00:22:16,490 --> 00:22:26,480 And I hate going to those negotiations because it kind of always is very frustrating because you seem as if you are doing the same thing every year, 194 00:22:26,600 --> 00:22:32,210 and each year you just like moving the agenda, like, you know, one centimetre in the right direction. 195 00:22:32,360 --> 00:22:40,489 Groundhog Day. Yeah, exactly. So my colleagues in the Philippines kindly said to me, why don't you, rather than go to Peru, 196 00:22:40,490 --> 00:22:47,959 come and be in the Philippines because another horrific typhoon is on his way and thousands of people are going to lose their lives, 197 00:22:47,960 --> 00:22:51,080 and there'll be millions and millions of dollars in infrastructure loss. 198 00:22:51,080 --> 00:22:57,140 And let's stand with the people on the ground, and we can message in to Lima and the cop that was happening there. 199 00:22:57,410 --> 00:23:01,219 And, you know, we didn't have cell phone reception and so on. 200 00:23:01,220 --> 00:23:03,370 And we were kind of chasing the typhoon, 201 00:23:03,380 --> 00:23:10,250 trying to get ahead of it so that we could get to communities and support them with temporary solar installations and so on. 202 00:23:10,250 --> 00:23:12,170 So they could call their families and so on. 203 00:23:12,170 --> 00:23:21,680 And, and we would interview them and tell their stories, and we would use satellite phone to, to send the stories to, to the negotiations in Peru. 204 00:23:21,920 --> 00:23:32,319 When we come out of it, we get a shock to. Discovered that Greenpeace Germany had led an action on a sacred site in Peru called the Musk Alliance, 205 00:23:32,320 --> 00:23:36,460 which allowed a corrupt political elite in Peru. 206 00:23:36,760 --> 00:23:46,600 The president and the people around him to then turn that into attention away from the corruption investigations and so on, that were going on to say, 207 00:23:46,720 --> 00:23:54,310 oh, Greenpeace disrespected our culture, by the way, the Peruvian government was not doing anything substantial to protect the Nazca lines. 208 00:23:54,340 --> 00:23:57,399 So it was complete opportunism on their part. But should we have done it? 209 00:23:57,400 --> 00:23:59,200 We should not have done it, but no question. 210 00:23:59,710 --> 00:24:07,260 And, you know, in a situation like that where indigenous peoples around the world were criticising Greenpeace immediately, 211 00:24:07,270 --> 00:24:13,389 people in the world of archaeology and cultural protection of historical sites and so on, 212 00:24:13,390 --> 00:24:20,620 with so upset with us as well as the climate movement, because suddenly nobody was talking about what's happening in the climate negotiation, 213 00:24:20,620 --> 00:24:24,390 everybody, the news became saturated with good people. 214 00:24:24,400 --> 00:24:29,020 Can we arrest the people? You know, that's how the government played the agenda. 215 00:24:29,530 --> 00:24:36,040 I then went and I've never witnessed I never had tomatoes and eggs thrown at me in my life. 216 00:24:36,040 --> 00:24:43,809 But that, you know, what I see when there are global shocks is that people in leadership don't actually step forward and say, 217 00:24:43,810 --> 00:24:47,990 we made a mistake, we made a miscalculation, and we take responsibility. 218 00:24:48,010 --> 00:24:55,719 Part of what I was trying to do in that, that for us was like for me was emotionally because bear in mind, right, the inequality of it. 219 00:24:55,720 --> 00:25:01,510 Can you imagine a bunch of Peruvian activists coming to Germany and occupying a church in Germany? 220 00:25:01,510 --> 00:25:04,900 The German office of Greenpeace would never agree to that, right? 221 00:25:04,990 --> 00:25:11,170 But the global north can parachute into global South places with complete immunity and arrogance. 222 00:25:11,440 --> 00:25:18,700 And that has to shift. And even though I was not aware of the decision and I had to deal with the aftermath of it, I felt it was responsible, 223 00:25:19,000 --> 00:25:24,670 the right thing for us to do as Greenpeace was to go and apologise and say, this is not who we are. 224 00:25:25,290 --> 00:25:30,069 Would you say that part of learning the lesson is to really think more carefully, 225 00:25:30,070 --> 00:25:36,880 as you said at the beginning of a conversation about how to truly be a global organisation, is that is that part of the answer to these moments? 226 00:25:37,630 --> 00:25:45,370 Absolutely. Because because if as a global organisation, you're choosing to do something in one national space, 227 00:25:45,370 --> 00:25:50,499 then we should evenly say yes, that we will do that in all national spaces. 228 00:25:50,500 --> 00:25:56,680 So like with Covid and the vaccine apartheid that most of us in the global South had to deal with, 229 00:25:56,740 --> 00:26:02,229 they were saying the powerful nations of the world were saying, we need to get people vaccinated, we need to get people vaccinated. 230 00:26:02,230 --> 00:26:08,620 And and they developed the vaccines because they have the resources on a scale that the global South could never have done it, 231 00:26:09,160 --> 00:26:15,340 with the exception of India, which caught up and played a big role. We have to have equity in how we act in the world, 232 00:26:15,340 --> 00:26:21,350 and basically the global system has very limited equity in the people that dominate decision making. 233 00:26:21,370 --> 00:26:25,320 It's, you know, you would say, okay, it's changing a bit now. 234 00:26:25,330 --> 00:26:34,209 And I think that the formation of bricks and its recent expansion is an attempt to balance the power that exists. 235 00:26:34,210 --> 00:26:43,060 The difficulty for many of us in the global South is that some of the leading governments in BRICs are not the shining examples of democracy, 236 00:26:43,060 --> 00:26:47,820 or of justice, or of anti-corruption and so on. 237 00:26:47,830 --> 00:26:51,100 You know, like my country, South Africa, which is a leading figure in BRICs, 238 00:26:51,100 --> 00:26:57,400 is one of the most corrupt countries in the world with one of the most corrupt political leaderships that that you can find. 239 00:26:57,520 --> 00:27:04,659 And so while I agree with a lot of the words coming out of the mouth about the changes we need in the international system and so on, 240 00:27:04,660 --> 00:27:11,900 there is this difficulty that what they are saying and why saying it is not necessarily what they're going to follow through on. 241 00:27:12,040 --> 00:27:20,649 Right. And so that's the other huge problem we have with the state of our politics at the national and global level. 242 00:27:20,650 --> 00:27:29,950 And so for civil society organisations, we have to live up to the criticisms that we are making about the injustices in the global governance system. 243 00:27:30,190 --> 00:27:34,299 Right. If we are making critiques about, you know, people should not stay in positions, 244 00:27:34,300 --> 00:27:39,100 they shouldn't develop a culture of indispensability, then we need to reflect that fully. 245 00:27:39,100 --> 00:27:44,200 And another small example, you know, the one thing that international organisations, 246 00:27:44,410 --> 00:27:53,770 national governments and international NGOs have in common is that over time they've ended up all using the same consultants, you know. 247 00:27:54,040 --> 00:27:59,140 No, seriously, they using, you know, Accenture, KPMG, Deloitte and Touche, 248 00:27:59,180 --> 00:28:05,620 all the major consulting firms in the world, Boston Consulting Group, uh, Gemini named them. 249 00:28:06,010 --> 00:28:10,660 They all now have significant sort of non-profit practices, as they call it. 250 00:28:10,690 --> 00:28:14,290 So even when I was at Greenpeace, you know, that was the logic. 251 00:28:14,740 --> 00:28:22,750 The many of those contracts were in place. And of course, if you've designed the organisation to look like corporations and you. 252 00:28:23,210 --> 00:28:29,960 You're mimicking them. Then you're going to need the same consultant to help you figure out how to make those institutions run more effectively. 253 00:28:29,990 --> 00:28:36,680 Yes. And so a big question for people who believe that the current system is not simply 254 00:28:36,680 --> 00:28:41,839 one that requires incremental tinkering and baby steps in the right direction, 255 00:28:41,840 --> 00:28:49,460 but people who believe that the current system is broken to an extent that it requires substantive structural and systemic change. 256 00:28:49,670 --> 00:28:50,840 If you hold that view, 257 00:28:50,990 --> 00:29:00,920 then you have to recognise that it's a fraud to suggest to people that if we just improve things and it's all going to be okay, don't panic. 258 00:29:01,280 --> 00:29:06,320 Right. And that's the approach we've taken to climate since 1992, since the first Rio summit. 259 00:29:06,680 --> 00:29:11,870 The powerful thought we can get some nice words in the final declaration and show that 260 00:29:11,870 --> 00:29:17,030 we are going to do something that responds to what the science was saying will be okay. 261 00:29:17,150 --> 00:29:22,060 And now we are in a situation where we are right at the climate cliff. 262 00:29:22,100 --> 00:29:28,429 And let's be blunt, as we you know, people ask me the question, is it too late to address climate change? 263 00:29:28,430 --> 00:29:33,410 And this is a question, by the way, people who are asking me ever since I was at peace from 2009. 264 00:29:33,500 --> 00:29:41,090 And my answer is always an optimistic one, which is to say that the window of opportunity to prevent catastrophic, 265 00:29:41,090 --> 00:29:46,910 runaway, irreversible climate change is small and shrinking, but the opportunity is still there. 266 00:29:47,300 --> 00:29:52,730 What you see with the most progressive or radical of of political parties, 267 00:29:52,730 --> 00:29:56,990 when they are out of power, they can be very transformative in what they say. 268 00:29:57,080 --> 00:30:05,360 But when they get into power, you know, understandably, the constraints of power is very, very limiting within certain current global rules. 269 00:30:05,720 --> 00:30:11,760 And those very global rules continue to perpetuate more and more global shocks. 270 00:30:11,780 --> 00:30:18,139 Right. I mean, Covid itself is a result of us not addressing deforestation. 271 00:30:18,140 --> 00:30:24,490 And and so we then continue to generate more and more, if you want, uh, 272 00:30:24,590 --> 00:30:36,110 crises or global shocks that that each time we are more shocked by and each time appear to be more incompetent in addressing it as a global community. 273 00:30:36,530 --> 00:30:42,890 And the last thing I would say is that climate change, I've been arguing since 2009 can be an opportunity. 274 00:30:42,950 --> 00:30:46,160 Well, at 2009, it could have been an opportunity, right? 275 00:30:46,430 --> 00:30:48,410 Which is for us to recognise. 276 00:30:48,650 --> 00:30:55,190 For far too long, we've lived in a world that's been divided between north and south, east and west, developed and developing, rich and poor. 277 00:30:55,460 --> 00:31:04,520 What climate change is saying to us, hey folks, get it together, get it together and get it together fast because you'll either act as a united, 278 00:31:04,520 --> 00:31:10,700 global family and community, and hopefully you can reduce the amounts of deaths that are happening. 279 00:31:10,700 --> 00:31:18,260 So for the people who are dying, like the 450 people that died in my city in Durban in 2022, it's too late for that. 280 00:31:18,530 --> 00:31:29,150 Right from two days of crazy rainfall that created massive infrastructure losses and took 450 lives. 281 00:31:29,360 --> 00:31:36,979 It's too late for those people, surely. But I still want to believe that we are still in a moment where we can actually 282 00:31:36,980 --> 00:31:42,049 prevent the worst losses of human life and the complete destruction of countries, 283 00:31:42,050 --> 00:31:48,290 and so on. Even though parts of Africa are becoming depopulated as a result of climate change as we speak, 284 00:31:48,410 --> 00:31:52,340 I still want to believe that it's possible for us to deal with the biggest global shock. 285 00:31:52,640 --> 00:31:58,100 And, you know, it's interesting about whether you could even call climate change a global shock in the sense that 286 00:31:58,280 --> 00:32:03,280 the global shock sort of suggests that something that was unanticipated came out of nowhere. 287 00:32:03,290 --> 00:32:10,639 And so the terrible thing about it is that climate change is the biggest global shock that we face, but we don't treat it as a global shock. 288 00:32:10,640 --> 00:32:12,980 We treat it as always, just one other issue. 289 00:32:13,640 --> 00:32:20,840 And therefore it's important for us to recognise that the struggle to but to address climate change is not an environmental issue. 290 00:32:20,990 --> 00:32:26,870 Climate change is a cross-cutting issue. It's a failure of our economic system, energy system and so on, 291 00:32:27,260 --> 00:32:32,120 and we have to deal with it in a more intersectional way than we've been doing in the past. 292 00:32:32,780 --> 00:32:36,830 If we think about the past, what we've been doing in the past, how Greenpeace is, uh, 293 00:32:36,860 --> 00:32:42,610 is trying to achieve climate action since it's, uh, been founded, a lot of things have changed. 294 00:32:42,620 --> 00:32:47,830 Of course, there's been lots of lots of different individual shocks in the past that Greenpeace has been dealing with. 295 00:32:47,840 --> 00:32:52,550 Geopolitical tensions have just shifted a lot over the last decades. 296 00:32:52,820 --> 00:32:55,879 And at the same time, global governance itself has changed. 297 00:32:55,880 --> 00:33:01,900 You mentioned the role of consultancies. For example. The way global governance is being done has has changed over the last decade. 298 00:33:01,910 --> 00:33:09,080 So if we take all of that, how would you say can Greenpeace, as an organisation learn from its own past, 299 00:33:09,200 --> 00:33:15,350 and how can it deal with this diversified and fractured global governance landscape that we have today? 300 00:33:16,070 --> 00:33:23,120 The real imperative of Greenpeace and other international NGOs is to recognise that they cannot continue to operate. 301 00:33:23,300 --> 00:33:29,900 We have operated historically that cannot continue to call themselves international when they actually the decision making, 302 00:33:29,900 --> 00:33:34,390 the finance, the control and so on is very much in the global north. 303 00:33:34,400 --> 00:33:37,430 That needs to change. So there's a big contradiction there. 304 00:33:37,440 --> 00:33:44,450 We cannot say to governments and businesses we need to transition to an economy that's driven by clean, 305 00:33:44,450 --> 00:33:51,260 green, renewable energy rather than an economy that's, you know, driven by dirty fossil fuel based energy. 306 00:33:51,590 --> 00:33:56,660 Because when we say that to governments, we are not saying to them it's a walk in the park for you to do that. 307 00:33:56,780 --> 00:34:03,950 We recognise that it has to be through a just transition, that it's complicated, that it'll take time and all of that. 308 00:34:04,220 --> 00:34:12,350 So we can't be saying the science says you need to change in the substantive way on the one hand, and then on the other, 309 00:34:12,560 --> 00:34:20,990 we say, oh, for us to become to balance the power between the global South and the global, not with the international NGOs. 310 00:34:21,530 --> 00:34:25,069 Uh, we need about ten, 20 years to do that, you know, uh, 311 00:34:25,070 --> 00:34:32,600 and put a different timeline of what we need to do to be fit for purpose versus what governments and business need to. 312 00:34:32,720 --> 00:34:41,870 We should be ahead of the game anyway, because we are supposed to be the ones that are driven by public service in a much more fundamental way. 313 00:34:42,050 --> 00:34:45,470 You know, we're not compromised by the profit or by power. 314 00:34:45,680 --> 00:34:54,140 Yes. Well, that's the logic of it. Therefore, we should be significantly performing better in how we look and so on. 315 00:34:54,180 --> 00:35:00,030 You know the sad reality. There are senior management teams of most international NGOs. 316 00:35:00,110 --> 00:35:05,800 If you were to look at them, with a couple of exceptions, they are all led by very good people. 317 00:35:05,810 --> 00:35:08,870 Let me just say good people from the global north. 318 00:35:08,870 --> 00:35:14,930 But that doesn't matter how good they are, it's sending the wrong message that we still live in a colonial world, 319 00:35:15,050 --> 00:35:19,850 which still means that the voices, perspectives, expertise, 320 00:35:20,150 --> 00:35:28,770 capabilities of people from the global South are not valued in the same way as people who come from significantly more privileged, 321 00:35:28,940 --> 00:35:33,470 uh, better education systems, more opportunity and so on. 322 00:35:33,680 --> 00:35:38,329 Because, you know, the pathway for somebody like and, you know, like with, with Greenpeace, 323 00:35:38,330 --> 00:35:45,500 I'm the first and the last person from Global South to be the head of Greenpeace, which is a 60 year old organisation. 324 00:35:45,500 --> 00:35:47,600 That's just not good enough, in my judgement. 325 00:35:47,690 --> 00:35:58,940 The ability to be as consistent with what you say and what you do is a critical success factor for the international NGO community going forward. 326 00:35:59,090 --> 00:36:02,510 I think that they need to be shrinking the bureaucracies, 327 00:36:02,630 --> 00:36:08,300 putting more resources to frontline communities who are facing whatever issues that they're facing, 328 00:36:08,300 --> 00:36:13,520 especially on climate, but all the intersecting crises, and start moving in that direction. 329 00:36:13,520 --> 00:36:20,510 Because the reality is that the power and impact of the international NGO community is on a decline right now, 330 00:36:20,540 --> 00:36:23,480 international NGOs that still have an important role to play, 331 00:36:23,870 --> 00:36:31,340 but that role can only be played if they look and feel as global as the challenges that they seek to address. 332 00:36:31,730 --> 00:36:36,620 Kumi Naidoo, I want to thank you so much for your time, for generously sharing all this really, 333 00:36:36,620 --> 00:36:42,649 really interesting experience and sharing your thoughts on where climate action and climate cooperation might go in the future, 334 00:36:42,650 --> 00:36:45,560 might have to go in the future. Thanks so much, Kumi. Thank you very much. 335 00:36:47,920 --> 00:36:54,070 You've been listening to Global Shocks, the podcast of the Oxford Martin programme on changing global orders. 336 00:36:54,700 --> 00:36:59,710 My name is John. I'm a postdoctoral research fellow in international relations. 337 00:36:59,860 --> 00:37:07,510 And I'm the host and producer of this podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to follow us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 338 00:37:07,780 --> 00:37:13,780 Do have a look at the show notes for further reading on today's topic, as well as links to our website and social media channel.