Keynotes

 

CHRISTINE MILNE,

Senator for Tasmania and Leader of the Australian Greens, is one of Australia's most experienced and respected environmental and community activists, with a career spanning 30 years.

 After leading a highly successful alliance of farmers, fishers, scientists, environmentalists and concerned community members from Wesley Vale to prevent the construction of a polluting pulp mill, Christine was elected to the Tasmanian parliament in 1989, and became the first woman to lead a political party in Tasmania in 1993. She was elected to the Senate in 2004, and elected Deputy Leader of the Greens by her colleagues in 2008.

Christine's vision, her deep policy knowledge about climate change and her unparalleled experience with power-sharing minority governments led to the establishment of the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee and its successful negotiations to design the Clean Energy Future package which will place innovation, opportunity and clean energy at the forefront of the transformation of the Australian economy for the 21st century.

Having grown up on a dairy farm, Christine's commitment to and understanding of farmers, the needs of regional Australia and the future of the country's food production is widely appreciated.  She is currently overseeing the development of a major local and global food security and sovereignty campaign placing sustainable agriculture, biosecurity, healthy eating, and a fair go for farmers, as priorities in maintaining Australia's world renowned food industry.

When in the Tasmania parliament, Christine constructed a comprehensive plan to transform the state into a "clean, green and clever" economy.  Although futuristic at the time, her proposal has become main stream, and Christine has brought a similar vision to the federal parliament.

Christine has long recognised the arts as playing a central role in our quality of life and self awareness as Australians. As well as a passionate attendee at galleries and performances, Christine works hard to bring the needs of artists to parliament.

Christine's global reputation was recognised when she was appointed a United Nations Global 500 Laureate and elected  Global Vice-President of the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) from 2005-08.

 

NICANOR PERLAS,

Green President Candidate in the Philippines 2010

Alternative Nobel Prize Awardee "Right Livelihood Award" (2003)

Nicanor Perlas was drawn into the struggle against the Marcos-promoted Baataan nuclear plant in 1978 and had to leave the Philippines after organising a conference to expose its dangers. After the fall of Marcos Perlas was able to return to the Philippines, founding the Centre for Alternative Development Initiatives (CADI).

He became a consultant to the Aquino Government on the troubled nuclear power plant, and contributed to the decision to mothball it, despite it being very near completion, and having cost $2.1 billion.

At the same time he engaged in a campaign against the abuse of pesticides, founding the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. This (and very often Perlas personally) gave training and technical assistance in 23 provinces in the Philippines. Perlas also became a member of the government's Pesticides Technical Advisory Committee, which eventually banned 32 of the most damaging pesticides and caused the government to invest P760 million in integrated pest management, which trained more than 100,000 farmers. For this work Perlas won the Global 500 Award from UNEP, and one of the TOFIL Awards to outstanding Filipinos, both in 1994. In the substantial press coverage that accompanied these awards, Perlas was often referred to as 'a farmer' and his work with CADI still helps farmers to shift away from chemical-intensive agriculture.

By this time Perlas was already one of the Philippines' environmental leaders. He had set up student environmental groups and his work on nuclear power and sustainable agriculture had given him a national profile. He was one of the Philippines' NGO delegation to the 1992 Earth Summit. He later became heavily involved in the post-Rio process in the Philippines, not least through the Philippine Council for Sustainable Development (PCSD), of which he has been Civil Society Co-Chair, and helped to formulate and implement at the local level Philippine Agenda 21 (PA21). Later in the 1990s he became Co-Chair of the Green Forum of environmental groups, and he has been a member of Mikael Gorbachov's Commission on Globalisation.

Perlas explicitly sought to use PA21 as a counter-weight to the trade liberalisation that was being pushed through the Uruguay Road of the GATT, in what he described as a "creative response to the challenge of élite globalisation." A major practical expression of the PA21 approach is the micro-credit initiative Lifebank, of which Perlas is a Board member. Lifebank has so far reached 15,000 families.

Perlas has evolved a 'tri-sector' approach to policy-making, which he calls 'threefolding': "In social threefolding the three global powers - government, representing political concerns, business, representing economic concerns, and civil society, representing cultural concerns, can come together, where appropriate and feasible, to join efforts in solving major world problems." This is the subject of Perlas' most recent book, Shaping Globalisation: Cultural Power and Threefolding, (2000). These ideas are said to have been important in the process that led to the toppling of President Estrada in 2000. Perlas took the book to the State of the World Forum 2000, and has co-founded two networks to take the ideas forward globally: GlobeNet 3 and the Global Institute for Responsible Leadership, which seeks to promote innovative thinking and collaboration across traditional boundaries - departments, organizations, sectors, and cultures.

For the past five years Perlas's focus has almost exclusively been on social movements and their power to change the world. He counts as one of his major achievements that,  he convinced the Philippine NGO scene in 1996, through major talks, the formation of networks and a big civil society conference that the issue for the future of the Philippines, is the value system underpinning globalisation. Perlas warns that the developments we are facing demand a deeper, ethical and spiritual response: we face a system not just a management crisis. Thus he asks how our sense of identity and humanity will be affected by current technological advances (in genetic engineering, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence) which could lead to the proliferation of half-human half-machine "silicone beings" in the near future.

He received the Global 500 Award, the UNEP's highest international award for environmental achievement, in 1994.

In 2010, he ran for President of the Philippines mainstreaming Green Agenda and Development.

 

MOANA CARCASSES KALOSIL

Prime Minister of Vanuatu

Leader of Green Vanuatu Confederation 

Moana Caracasses Kalosil has been Prime Minister of Vanuatu since March 2013 and is the first naturalized citizen of Vanuatu to become the country's prime minister. Previously he served as Foreign Minister in 2003 and Finance Minister in 2004.  PM Caracasses Kalosil is a member of the Vanuatu Green Party (Green Confederation), which he led into the opposition and in 2008 became whip of the parliamentary Opposition to Prime Minister Edward Natapei's government.

 In 2009, he served as Minister of Internal Affairs, and joined the Cabinet as the leader of an informal alliance of MPs from a variety of small parties, and three independent MPs.  In addition to PM Caracasses Kalosil focus on the environment, including the creation of a Ministry for Planning and Climate Change.

 

METIRIA TUREI

Member of New Zealand Parliament

Co-leader of Green Party Aotearoa New Zealand

A Green MP since 2002, Metiria was elected Green Party Co-leader in 2009. Metiria holds the Education, Society and Maori Affairs portfolios. Her focus is policy work that helps build a more equitable society. She is a member of the Parliamentary Services Commission and on the Maori Affairs select committee.

She's previously led campaigns to end child poverty, save our National Parks from mining, protect the Mokihinui River, and has fought for greater protection of marine animals and the marine environment. With a law degree from Auckland, Metiria has previously worked as a lawyer at Simpson Grierson and as an advocate for the unemployed and beneficiaries.

Through all the different stages of her life Metiria has been motivated to remedy injustices, and she continues to work for the implementation of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Metiria is proud of her work in helping to usher Green legislation, like the Waste Minimisation Bill, into law. Metiria was the Dunedin North Green Party Candidate in the 2008 election, and was pleased to be part of a campaign that saw a 54% increase in the party vote in that electorate.