Feinstein Goes Global

Santa Monica Mayor Michael Feinstein recently attended the second Global Green Party meeting in Australia and filed this report.

Feinstein (center) with Green City Councillors Sylvia Hale and Sam Byrne from Marrickville an inner-city district of 80,000, 15 minutes from Sydney’s central business district. The Marrickville Greens hold three out of 12 spots on the City Council there, elected by “preference voting.”, a form of proportional representation used across Australia, where voters rank the candidate in their order of preference.

Michael Feinstein 
Special to the Mirror

   Over 800 Greens from 72 countries gathered April 13 to 16 in Australia’s capital city, Canberra, for the second-ever-Global Green Party meeting. 
   A virtual United Nations of the world’s Greens, the meeting focused on common themes, common projects and influencing global politics.
   The first Global Greens meeting was held in Rio de Janeiro in June, 1992 immediately preceding the Earth Summit (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development). 
   The 2001 meeting was held in Australia to aid the development of Green Parties in the Asia-Pacific region. The world’s first Green Party started in Tasmania in 1972 and then New Zealand in 1973, but further growth in Asian and Pacific countries has only begun to take off since the mid-90s. 
   There are now Green Parties in over 80 countries on five continents. In some Asian countries like Mongolia and Taiwan, there are already Green Parties. In others like India, Korea, Thailand and Pakistan, observers came from Green NGOs (non-governmental organizations) who were interested in starting Green Parties. Japan, which also does not yet have a formal Green Party, sent 41 people, most of them from the “Rainbow and Greens” network, a pre-party grouping of many independent local elected officials.
   In the conference’s final plenary session, Greens agreed upon a Global Green Charter and a Global Green action network that would coordinate global actions and positions among the planet’s Green Parties. 
   In the words of Australian Green Senator Bob Brown, this would be a meeting that would alter politics on our planet for the next 100 years.
   One of the global positions taken in the newly adopted charter concerned world trade, responding to the sentiments expressed in the streets of Seattle, Washington D.C., Prague, and likely soon in Quebec this month where negotiations on the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas will be held.
   The Global Charter called for the “abolition of the World Trade Organization (WTO) unless it is reformed to make sustainability its central goal, supported by transparent and democratic processes and the participation of representatives from effected communities.” 
   Greens also oppose any further negotiations be held until a sustainability impact assessment of earlier Rounds can be taken.
   Another major topic among conference attendees was the Bush Administration’s refusal to sign the Kyoto protocol. Many reminded that under Clinton, the Senate also voted 95 to 0 against the treaty.  There seemed to be a sentiment that the best strategy now, would be to continue ahead without the U.S. and achieve progress with the rest of the family of nations.
   Delegates from several African countries talked about the difficulty their countries would have in responding to climate change. They argued that the U.S. and other Western countries have produced the overwhelming majority of greenhouse gases, but the poor countries would have the hardest time dealing with the effects, because they will not have the resources of the wealthier nations
Included among the conference’s over 800 attendees were 22 from the United States, the most from a country outside of the Asia-Pacific region. In addition to me, eight people in the U.S. delegation came from California. I was one of the three national Green Party representatives and I cast one of the nation’s three votes in favor of adopting the Global Green Charter.
   Another of the conference’s highlights was the Saturday evening dinner at the Australian National Parliament House, which was marked by 100 young Greens dancing to drums inside the dinner hall and then outside until the wee hours of the morning.
   The Australian State of New South Wales, where Sydney is located, is a sister state of California. Perhaps the Green Parties in both states might consider a similar relationship, given the success each of them is experiencing.
   California has 33 elected Greens, the most in the U.S. New South Wales has 30, the most in Australia. Half of the elected Greens in New South Wales serve on city councils in greater Sydney. Sydney is actually made up of about 25 separate city councils. Unlike Los Angeles, there isn’t one large city council.
   On the night of my visit to the Marrickville City Council meeting, Greens Sylvia Hale and Sam Byrne brought a motion opposing the Labor Party attempt on the state government level, to sell land where a local high school is located. In an emotionally charged debate attended by many community families, the local Labor Party councillors rebuffed the Greens’ attempts to prevent the land from being rezoned.
   For more information, see the 2001 conference’s web site www.global. greens.org.au.