Istanbul hosts over 500 Climate Change Leaders

By AC - June 25, 2013

I've never practically been active on environmental issues though I'm subscribed to the cause. My main cause has always been human rights and peace building. However, I eventually realized that environmental rights are human rights. One is stupid to think that Green organizations are only environmental!

I had indeed many friends active in climate change advocacy but I realized that though the increasing threat of climate change nothing really has changed during the last few years. Maybe because there is not enough climate change advocates and leaders? From my observation during especially the last five years, I found out that the movement needs indeed a joint effort from as many people as possible because it affects everyone indeed! So for the impact to be more timely and efficient, the movement has to grow, more people eventually have to join and thus I moved from a subscriber to the cause to my country representative of Global Power Shift.(GPS)

Global Power Shift is a catalyst for bolder, broader, deeper action and organizing movements to confront the climate crisis for social justice, initiated and led by 350.org

Here we are in Turkey, we're around 500 climate change leaders from 134 countries of the 6 continents to SHIFT the power

I know that many climate leaders around the world who couldn't join us in Istanbul are following the event and are actually with us by spirit. This is why indeed I will be sharing an overall view of the different workshops, panels, tracks and plenaries organized during this week! so stay turned!

Today, Tuesday June 25th, #GPS2013 has officially started with a welcoming morning plenary session.

Lidy Nacpil, from the philippines shared the effects of climate change around the world and also a reminder of why we're all here together.

There was later a screening of an inspirational video about the warriors across 14 Pacific island nations answered a call, brought on by the threat of climate change. The warrior spirit of the Pacific Islands rose to show the world "We are not drowning. We are fighting."

The Warrior Spirit of the Pacific Islands has been taken to the stage of #GPS through and energetic dance as a creative way to amplify their fight.

Then, we joined our track sessions that we've already chosen during the preparation for the event prior to arriving. The four tracks are:

1.Creative Activism

2.Media and Communications

3.Non-Violent Direct Action (NVDA)

4.Policy

4.Digital campaigning

I've obviously chosen the NVDA track since I am most interested in peaceful peace building tools!

The track was very interesting indeed. We first identified four main terms that might have different understanding in our different countries : *Violence *Non Violence *leaders of Non-Violence and *Agents of Violence :

Then, Francis Joseph Dela cruz, the facilitator from the Philippines, summed up some tools of campaigning that we can use during NVDA:

Shweta Narayan, the facilitator from India, ended up the session by sharing some of the interesting tools that her organization used for campaigning Bhopal gas Disaster.

Moreover, since we are in Istanbul, we cannot but talk about #occupygezi. During the morning plenary, one of the Turkish organizers of the protests shared an overview of the context:

Later during the evening plenary, another Turkish activist organized a session to share the stories of #occupygezi and actually the discussion was very interesting that different people from different countries shared their movements experience in their countries such as the rising movement in Brazil and Bulgaria.