Fighting for change, fighting for rights

Agatha Mossakowska

Established environmental movements and groups have existed across the continent since the early 20th century,1 and have only grown since. Whether the organisations are international, like Greenpeace, or nationally-based, such as the Australian Conservation Foundation, these groups dedicate their time and energy into making sure we don’t wreak havoc on our environment and destroy ourselves in the process.

Australia has a long history of grassroots movements that have contributed to the quest for environmental conservation. The campaign to protect old growth Tasmanian forests and stop the construction of the Franklin hydroelectric dam in the 1970s, for example, saw thousands of people travelling to Tasmania to blockade the construction site in an immense display of commitment and “people power”. Since the 1980s, thousands of farmers and volunteers have banded together to form local groups with the aim to regenerate the natural environment by combating soil salinity and erosion levels. Wilderness conservation and environmental management movements have been a constant because of the growing awareness of the consequences of complacency, which bode increasingly poorly.

The most pressing environmental issue of the current student generation is, unquestionably, climate change. Young people of today are not only affected by the catastrophic effects of a warming planet (which have been known about since the 1980s) but have also been foisted with the responsibility of devising new solutions for how to mitigate these effects. 2 With hollow commitments such as the Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement representing limited receptivity from government bodies and elected representatives, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the responses from those in power do not match the urgency of the issue.

While it’s tempting to feel that we’re contributing to a cleaner planet through our individual, everyday lifestyle changes, these actions aren’t enough to stop rapid shifts in our global climate. Tackling this most global environmental issue requires a mass movement to communicate the failure of governments and companies of the population as a whole. By building this movement from the ground up, we can better pressure our government into understanding that public demands for significant change are, as of yet, absent from the political agenda.

But what does this have to do with First Nations peoples? How do grassroots efforts aiming to combat the effects of climate change tie into the necessity of working to fight for Indigenous justice?