with Stéphanie Danielle Roth & Helena Norberg-Hodge
In this webinar, Stéphanie Danielle Roth, campaign coordinator of the European Initiative ‘Stop TTIP’, and Local Futures’ Director Helena Norberg-Hodge, engage in an eye-opening discussion about “free trade” treaties that exposes some of their lesser known effects and outlines strategic alternatives.
They discuss the link between global trade treaties and other social issues from cultural breakdown and poverty to epidemics of depression and suicide among youth and increased CO2 emissions. They discuss “Investor-State Dispute Settlements” that allow corporations to sue governments, and most importantly, they explore strategies of resistance and renewal from campaigns, petitions, lawsuits, and protests to alternative trade mandates and systemic localization.
For decades, governments and big business have negotiated trade treaties that have steadily shifted power from nation states to global corporations, decimating democracy, local economies and communities, while systematically lowering social and environmental standards.
But opposition is growing. People are waking up to the “free trade” issue and the fact that it concerns us all. Wherever your focus lies – social justice, worker’s rights, climate change, food and farming, animal welfare, community health, environmental protection – it’s time to get “trade literate” and take part in the resistance against a destructive system that only benefits the 1%.
During the webinar we address the following topics:
The link between global trade treaties and • cultural breakdown • fundamentalism
• poverty • financial instability • epidemics of depression and suicide among youth
• increased CO2 emissions • plastic waste • GMOs • and much more…
“Investor-State Dispute Settlements” that allow corporations to sue governments
Strategies of resistance: campaigns, petitions, lawsuits, protests
Strategies of renewal: alternative trade mandate, systemic localization
This webinar is a chance to get updated on what is happening on the “free trade” front and to learn about resistance strategies and alternatives. You’ll find out what you can do to revoke these undemocratic treaties that threaten the survival of both people and planet.
Recorded May 24th, 2016.
Presenters
Stéphanie Danielle Roth has been Campaign Manager at Stop TTIP – a European citizen movement against the Transatlantic Free Trade Agreements (FTA), TTIP and CETA. Stop TTIP counts over 600 supporting groups, which raised 3.3 million signatures within one year against both FTAs. Roth has been developing and working on campaigns for over 15 years, with a specific focus on mining and farming. She was news & campaigns editor at The Ecologist until 2002, when she moved to Romania. In 2005, she received the Goldman Environmental Prize for her contribution to Save the town of Rosia Montana from being turned into Europe’s largest open-pit gold mine. This campaign, centered around local opposition, became Romania’s largest activist movement, and in 2012 thousands of citizens took to the streets across the country when the government aimed at passing a bill to force through the mine. In 2016, Rosia Montana was listed as a protected site due its cultural heritage and is now in the process of becoming a UNESCO World Heritage site. The Canadian corporation Gabriel Resources, which wanted to develop the mine, has now initiated an ISDS arbitration case seeking up to $4 billion in “compensation,” which represents about half of Romania’s annual public healthcare budget.
Roth currently lives in Berlin, where she has developed campaigns for ARC2020 – a European platform working on food and farming issues and the reform of EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). She has been working on the Stop TTIP campaign since 2014. Read more.
Helena Norberg-Hodge (Australia) is the founder and director of Local Futures/ISEC. A pioneer of the ‘new economy’ movement, she has been promoting an economics of personal, social and ecological well-being for more than thirty years. She is the producer and co-director of the award-winning documentary The Economics of Happiness, and the author of Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, described as “an inspirational classic” and Local is Our Future. She has given public lectures in seven languages, and has appeared in broadcast, print, and online media worldwide. She was honored with the Right Livelihood Award (or ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’) for her groundbreaking work in Ladakh, and recently received the Goi Peace Prize for contributing to “the revitalization of cultural and biological diversity, and the strengthening of local communities and economies worldwide.”