Young Friends of the Earth

Richard Sagar (steering group member for YFoE and recently elected steering group member for YFoE Europe) writes about his experience of the recent YFoE Europe network gathering, which took place in Croatia from 11th- 15th April.

“Numerous Workshops, energizers, wrestling with a Norwegian, learning Croatian curse words and having the opportunity to meet some of the most committed and inspirational environmental activists across the continent. These are just some of the memories I have of the 2013 Young Friends of the Earth Annual General meeting.

The setting for the AGM was the aptly named sunny village in Jagnedovec. Located in the beautiful Croatian countryside with some of the best vegetarian and vegan food I’ve had the pleasure in tasting.

As this was my first time at the Young Friends of the Earth AGM I felt a little apprehensive of meeting so many new people from all over Europe, it became apparent that my fears were unwarranted. I was immediately made to feel welcome. Though I suspect liberal quantities of Rakijia played no small part in this.

While we had a packed agenda to get through there was plenty of time for games and socialising. Some of the most memorable experiences of the whole AGM came from the time I spent sharing jokes around a campfire.

Among the many stimulating sessions and activities that I took part in, the one that I felt was most rewarding was hearing what each group in the network had worked on in the past year. From opposing dirty energy to battling unsustainable food production, it became apparent that young people face the same challenges across the whole of Europe.

Along with members of Young Friends of the Earth Europe we were also joined by guests from three international Friends of the Earth groups- Christian from Otros Mundos/ Friends of the Mexico, Yun-Sung from the Korea Federation for Environmental Movement/Friends of the Earth South Korea and Megan from Groundwork/ Friends of the Earth South Africa. While I had always known that Friends of the Earth was a international federation, hearing first hand what their groups were engaged in, and having ample time to interact with them, really made me feel I was part of a global grassroots network engaged in the struggle for environmental justice. A talk from Jagoda Munić, chair of Friends of the Earth international, further cemented this impression in my mind.

Perhaps the most invigorating thing I took away from the whole experience was that this is just the beginning. Having been elected to the steering group I’ll have the pleasure of working with such engaged and inspirational young people in the year to come. I only hope I can ensure that the network grows from strength to strength.”

Hey Young FoE’ers,

Check out our new ‘Meet us’ page where you can see who is in the steering group.

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Charlotte and Miriam from the fundraising working group recently completed the Big Green Bike Ride, a 40 cycle around the New Forest run by our parent organisation, Friends of the earth. 

Quick plug! You can still sponsor them at www.justgiving.com/treecycle and www.justgiving.com/Miriam-Chapman, thanks!

Now fundraising are itching to strike out! 

The team would love involvement from the wider network, so here’s the first opportunity to join a working group! By working, we mean fun. As in fun-draising. We want to ensure the sustainability of the group and take advantage of all the keen creative minds out there.

The team will be raising funds to support YFOE’s first campaign, which will be decided in the next few weeks. It is a commitment, but hopefully a very rewarding one, and should take up about 5 hours of your month, including a group skype call. 

Just send a quick email at fundraising-yfoe@googlegroups.com with your name, skype name, any previous experience in fundraising/ voluntary sector/ climate activism, and one fundraising idea you have. You must fit loosely into the age bracket 18-30 and have a passion for making a difference (and money!). 

Please forward to any friends who may be interested as well, and don’t hesitate to email us with any questions. We look forward to hearing from you!

Hi YFoEers!

Miriam here from the Campaigns working group. 

We’re in the early stages of creating our own fabulous yfoe campaign. We’d love your thoughts on which direction to go in. 

As a group we’ve compiled a list of pretty much everything we might ever want to campaign on. Have a look, email back your top three favourites. Let’s get an interesting conversation started! 

• Nuclear
• Fracking
• Renewables
• Energy we can all afford
• The G8 
• Corporate influence, and impact on the environment
• Tax dodging
• Biodiversity 
• GM 
• Green jobs 
• Equality (environmental/economic/social)
• The Future (What does our future look like? What do we want it to look like - and how can these two futures become one?)

Don’t just ‘lurk’. We’re excited to hear your views.
Email campaigns-yfoe@googlegroups.com

The campaigns team :)

Young Friends of the Earth were at Summer Sundae Festival 2012 this year, campaigning to save the bees and collecting signatures for the Save the Bee Campaign!

It was great and we had a fantastic response from festival-goers, collecting more than 250 petition postcards in total - everybody we chatted to wanted to save the bee.  

We chatted to people about the importance of bees for the food chain - without them many of our favourite fruits and foods would not be around!  It was also fun dressing up as bees and enjoying the festival atmosphere, but there was a serious point behind it.

Wikipedia has a long list of all the fruits,vegetables, nuts and spices that we know are pollinated by our friendly bees. These foods are not only tasty to eat, bees are absolutely essential for food security and support the food chain for us and other species.

This important campaign is trying to prevent the loss of our wild bumble bees, who are rapidly being wiped out by pesticides and the changing climate.  The British Beekeepers Association has announced that wild bees are almost EXTINCT.  So we are now relying on honey bees. 

It was really disappointing news to hear that the government have decided NOT to ban the neonicotinoid pesticides, despite evidence from Stirling University scientists which shows the impact they are having.

Despite this strong evidence, for some reason, the government has not heeded these warnings.  Why?  Do they really want to live in a world without blueberries, strawberries or avocado?  Or where we have to pollinate all these by hand?

Did you know?

The humble bee pollinates 84% of crops in the European Union, particularly our fruit and vegetables.

In fact the value of pollination worldwide amounts to 153 Billion euros.

Did you know that the wild bumble bee has almost gone extinct?

Friends of the Earth has launched a new petition to help SAVE THE BEE:

http://www.foe.co.uk/what_we_do/bee_cause_all_actions_35034.html

I recommend you sign it and pass it on, as it is an urgent cause.

Bee populations have been collapsing, partly caused by reckless use of pesticides which the EU needs to ban.

Without the bee, much of our food would be impossible to grow. Was it Albert Einstein who said:

“If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live”. 

The Push Europe campaign are planning an action on 5th May to campaign against the Tar Sands:

http://www.no-tar-sands.org/

Please stay tuned for more information or join the mailing list!

Why is oil from the tar sands so bad?

It takes three to five times as much energy to extract than conventional oil, and is resulting in massive environmental degradation:

Before and after image of tar sands extraction in Canadian forests:

More information about the campaign can be found here.

Young Friends of the Earth Europe has just launched it’s brand new website.

Here you can find details of all the Europe-wide campaigns, including the new campaign on Food and Agriculture.

Young people in the network are concerned about the European-wide subsidies going towards unsustainable farming and factory farms which destroy the environment, institutionalise animal cruelty and over-consumption and produce unhealthy food. We feel this is not an appropriate use of EU taxpayers subsidies and requires urgent reform in the Common Agricultural Policy. This is why Young Friends of the Earth is launching the new ‘ReCAP’ campaign.

Check out this great new video made by YFOE Birmingham! :-)

You can sign the Final Demand Petition here:

http://www.foe.co.uk/what_we_do/final_demand2_32882.html

Last month, the government announced they were going to massively cut the support for solar panels, effectively wrecking the UK’s solar industry.  What’s more, the “public consultation” was due to end weeks after the changes were meant to come into play!  Friends of the Earth took this to court, and it has just been announced the High Court case has ruled the government’s action illegal.

What’s the Feed in Tariff and why did the government want to cut it?  It is a policy following the successful example in Germany of support solar panels by paying those with panels a special rate for the green energy produced.  Effectively the policy was a victim of its own success, with government (who are cutting everything at the moment) taking a chainsaw to the policy.  Chris Huhne argued solar panel costs had fallen by 30% in the past year, but this does not justify cutting the tariff by 50% so rapidly.

Government’s own impact assessment found there would be hardly any added cost from reducing the subsidy more gently.  In fact, one of the reasons that the cost of solar panels had come down is that there are more companies installing solar, more installers and solar suppliers, which had created thousands of jobs in new emerging industries.  The government’s actions threaten to wipe out these jobs at short notice!

Why 6 weeks notice? The government set an arbitary deadline for the changes to be put into place. Councils, schools and community projects that were about to install solar panels have had to be scrapped, especially since many of these projects still require planning permission to put up a few panels! Planning permission itself takes 6 weeks to get, so these community projects had no chance…

The emerging solar industry in the UK is under threat of being crushed by incompetent and rushed policy changes. This is at a time when thousands are losing their jobs in other areas. Even the key green industries don’t seem important enough for DECC to save. Is the government forgetting about the support given to fossil fuel industries in the past?  Even as recently as 1997, it was estimated the UK government was subsidising fossil fuels with £100 of public money for every £1 that went to renewables. This historic inequity needs to be redressed! Let’s hope that now the governments actions have been ruled illegal, they will re-think.

- Helena