The year didn’t start well. A man with a vested interest in oil companies became President of the USA, promising a new era of climate denial, of racism, and promising to pull out of international climate and nuclear peace deals in the name of putting “America First”.
But the day after Trump’s inauguration, something amazing happened. All around the US—all around the world even—a wave of protest against Trump and his ideology took hold. And mass public mobilisation continued to mark 2017. In April, over 170 peaceful protests around the world showed how unstoppable the global movement to Break Free from fossil fuels is.
We did our bit in Aotearoa by blockading the annual Oil Conference, in a coalition-organised display of mass civil disobedience. But for me personally, perhaps the most heart-warming example of the climate movement’s strength was how everyone came together to purchase Taitu, the people’s boat. After we needed a bigger boat to confront the Amazon Warrior, an overwhelming amount of support came in to crowdfund it.
Thank you, with humble gratitude, to everyone who made this happen.
As representatives of the wider climate movement, we took Taitu out to sea and three of us jumped in front of the ship, forcing it to turn around and lose a day’s worth of work. As of this writing, Sara and I are awaiting our sentencing hearing for this action. By the end of the year, there were three major nonviolent direct actions against Big Irrigation in Canterbury too, two of which were opened up to the general public so that everyone impacted could take action in solidarity. The first saw people occupying the Central Plains Water dam construction site.
Then, a week later we facilitated “The People’s ECan”, calling for action to save rivers and restore democracy to Canterbury, the only region whose Council is not fully elected by its constituents. The groundwork laid in 2017 (and many years prior) finally paid off in 2018 following two major announcements by the new Coalition Government. First, they announced the end to the Crown Irrigation Fund, meaning that countless New Zealand rivers would be protected from Industrial Dairy expansion. A week later, in a landmark speech, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that the New Zealand Government would be banning new offshore oil exploration blocks.
It shows the power of your support— Greenpeace doesn’t accept any money from Governments or corporations, so everything we do was only made possible by you. Our battles are far from over. Oil companies with existing permits will continue to attempt to explore and drill. The industrial dairy sector will seek to expand and in the process pollute even more rivers and lakes. Our friends in Taranaki, who have been fighting against fossil fuels longer than anyone in this country, continue to have their homeland threatened by onshore drilling.
We are still trying to get plastic pollution under control and establish a huge marine protected area in Antarctica. The fishing industry is still having an enormously destructive impact. Yet, these recent wins show that we have reached a milestone. They reassure us our blood, sweat and tears are paying off; what we’re doing is working; we are making progress. Let’s continue to stay united and unflinching, until we finally win full protection for our rivers, our climate, and for future generations. Because when we stand together, we win.
Download the full 2017 Greenpeace NZ Annual Impact Report
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