Dear Community,

As we enter 2024, we are sending sincere wishes of well-being, solidarity, justice, and care to you and your communities!

The world is at a crossroads of great change. Now more than ever we know we must keep working together, and keep pushing to stop egregious harms and violence to our global communities and the land, while nurturing effective solutions and bold advocacy for democracy and climate justice. 

As we look to the year ahead, and beyond, we are holding close the astounding work and great strength of women in all their diversity the world over who are standing to lead movements to protect and defend people and planet, while calling for systemic change and justice on inseparable issues from colonization to militarism, to patriarchy and racism.

We thank all of you for standing with the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network as we delve into a new year filled with mobilizations; trainings, advocacy and education for climate justice; divestment and just transition campaigns; forest protection and regeneration; rights of nature; Indigenous rights; feminist climate policy advocacy; climate resiliency projects; food sovereignty programs; and strong solidarity and collaboration with frontline women and Earth defenders around the world.

Please see below for updates and actions you can take as we build momentum for the new year.

Digital Rendering of Nanih Bvlbancha created by Colloqate. Photo courtesy of the Nanih Bvlbancha website.

This January, members of the WECAN project, Okla Hina Ikhish Holo, in collaboration with an Intertribal collective of Artists, Educators, Researchers, Gardeners, Herbalists, Water Protectors, Land Defenders and Culture Keepers are stewarding the building of Nanih Bvlbancha!

As has been shared with us, “Nanih” is a Chahta (Choctaw) word for hill or mountain, and is commonly used to describe Indigenous ancestral earthen mound architecture. Nanih Bvlbancha is a site that will include native plant gardens for community food sovereignty, a stickball field to provide pathways for health and healing, and a site for contemporary Indigenous lifeways and communal gatherings. This project is a part of Prospect New Orleans Artist of Public Memory modern monument initiative.

Please learn more about Nanih Bvlbancha here.

Left: Organizers and supporters start the first layer of the mound at Nanih Bvlbancha.

Right: Community members weave palmetto leaves into mats to be used for the Nanih Bvlbancha mound.

Photos Courtesy of the Nanih Bvlbancha Instagram page.

The WECAN project Okla Hina Ikhish Holo, meaning People of the Sacred Medicine Trail, is a network of Indigenous gardeners working urgently to respond to the climate crisis, and the network is central to the vision and building of Nanih Bvlbancha. Okla Hina Ikhish Holo is re-establishing old trade routes and networks to share traditional foods and medicines while adapting and co-designing new future paths that strengthen decentralized systems of support, build circular economies, and support local biodiversity, food sovereignty, and stewardship of their traditional territories. 

Look for updates throughout the year from this new part of our food sovereignty program!

The Women and Gender Constituency with Mary Robinson, the Former President of Ireland, at COP28 in Dubai.

Photo Credit: Katherine Quaid / WECAN International

While WECAN is still following-up from our advocacy efforts at COP28 in the UAE, we are already looking ahead to COP29, which will be held in Azerbaijan this coming November.

With the climate crisis worsening every day, we know it is vital to ensure the participation and engagement of women leaders in all of their diversity throughout the UNFCCC negotiations and decision-making processes. If you would like to know more about our advocacy and analysis of COP28, please see WECAN’s COP28 report back: http://tinyurl.com/mr2fud35

Significantly, last year at COP28, the extreme influence of the fossil fuel industry was on full display, with a record-breaking amount of fossil fuel lobbyists in attendance. This year, as we look toward COP29, the fossil fuel industry is once again positioning themselves to pressure the conference agenda. 

At the beginning of the year, Azerbaijan appointed Mukhtar Babayev, a fossil fuel veteran, as the COP29 president-designate who helps set the agenda for the conference. Babayev spent 26 years working for the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (Socar).

In one of the first steps for organizing COP29, the host country announced its organizing committee, which consisted of 28 men and zero women, and included several fossil fuel executives.

In response to this news, WECAN joined many of our colleagues in absolute outrage and appall at this decision, which neglected to include women at the decision-making table. As part of our efforts, Osprey Orielle Lake, WECAN Executive Director, signed an open letter, organized by the We Mean Business Coalition, stating in part: “Gender diversity is crucial to successful negotiations and decision-making, bringing with it better, bolder decisions that have been shown to last."

After significant pushback from women-led and feminist groups, including the Women and Gender Constituency, Azerbaijan announced new members of the committee which not includes 12 women. While it is important that there was a response and action taken, this is not enough. We will continue our advocacy efforts.

When women are in leadership roles, emissions significantly decrease and our communities thrive. Globally women are leading climate justice solutions, yet often continue to be disregarded in the halls of power. We need more women and gender diverse leaders engaged at the highest-levels of governance who have a climate justice analysis and are listening to the leadership of frontline communities.

As our global movements have shown, we will not back down when it comes to protecting our communities, ecosystems, and Mother Earth, and we will continue to show up and demand a seat at the table and that our solutions, expertise, and analyses be included and implemented in international climate policy.

In action for the Rights of Nature at the 2023 March to End Fossil Fuels at Climate Week in New York City.

Photo Credit: Lisa Weatherbee / WECAN International

To start off the new year, we want to spotlight and celebrate several recent victories and updates on the Rights of Nature movement, which is a core pillar of our work at WECAN.

• Ireland is considering a nationwide referendum to include the Rights of Nature and the human right to a healthy environment in its constitution. If this happens, Ireland would become the first country in Europe to constitutionally recognize that ecosystems have legal rights.

• Local communities in Australia are looking to pass legislature that protects the rights of rivers and other ecosystems.

• Community partners recently created the Eco Jurisprudence Monitor, which is mapping where ecological jurisprudence, like the Rights of Nature, is advancing across the globe. Check out the mapping tool here.

Rights of Nature is a framework and legal system based on the recognition and honoring of the Earth’s fundamental and inviolable right to exist, live, thrive, evolve and regenerate. The majority of the world’s legal frameworks treat nature as property, meaning that life-giving rivers, forests and mountains are seen as objects to be sold and consumed. Legal systems built on the premise of Rights of Nature challenge the idea that natural communities and ecosystems are property to be exploited endlessly by humans, and instead recognize the Earth as a living, rights-bearing entity.

WECAN has been campaigning, alongside partners, for Rights of Nature since our founding, and we believe this is a key solution that can protect the Earth's Ecosystems, support Indigenous knowledge and rights, and dismantle systems that seek to commodify and destroy Nature.

From Aruba to Panama to Ireland, in 2024 WECAN is continuing our advocacy and programming at the grassroots, national to global spheres to accelerate and support the Rights of Nature movement!

Please see our most recent report on Rights of Nature that WECAN co-authored with Movement Rights and the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature: https://www.wecaninternational.org/ron-paper

Join WECAN, frontline leaders and national allies from February 6-8 in Washington D.C. for three days of mobilizations at the Department of Energy to push Jennifer Granholm, Secretary of Energy to stop approving new Liquified Natural Gas terminals, including the CP2 project in Southwest Louisiana!

This is the largest fossil fuel buildout in the world, and the fossil fuel industry is planning over 20 new LNG Export facilities in the Gulf of Mexico. These projects pollute our communities, drive up prices, and would emit as much pollution as over 850 coal fired power plants. 

We're calling on the Department of Energy to pause all new export approvals until they do a proper analysis of LNG's impact on our climate, communities, and US consumers.

This week, unnamed sources reported that the Biden administration was pausing the decision to approve the CP2 project, in a delay that could stretch past the November election. However, until we get an official decision, we will continue to apply pressure so CP2 is never built.

WECAN will be on the ground for the three days of action, mobilizing and sharing on social media. Sign up and learn more here!

Please join WECAN and hundreds of thousands of people across the U.S. in raising your voice for meaningful protections for mature and old-growth forests on federal public lands.

On December 20, 2023, the USDA issued a Notice of Intent (NOI) for a National Forest Plan Amendment to Conserve and Steward Old Growth Forests nationwide. This amendment is a significant step forward as it is the first-ever national policy to protect old-growth forests on Forest Service-managed lands from commercial logging.

However, as it now stands, the amendment would still allow for numerous exceptions of commercial logging of old-growth, does nothing to protect mature forests–the old-growth of the future–from logging, and exempts the Tongass National Forest from any protections made in this amendment.

Now it is up to us to ensure this process delivers meaningful outcomes that establish enforceable protections for both mature and old growth forests across all National Forest Systems. The USDA has opened a public comment period that closes on February 2nd, 2024. Please join us in submitting a comment today!

In January, The Constitutional Court of Ecuador issued a historic ruling to hold the government accountable for the removal explosives that threaten the lives of Indigenous Sarayaku people in Ecuador, and also call for the consolidation of laws related to prior consultation with Indigenous peoples.

This ruling comes after a decision by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that found Ecuador in non-compliance with a ruling from 2012.

In 2012, the Inter-American Court condemned the Ecuadorian State for violating the right to consultation of the Sarayaku People in relation to an oil project in their territory. The oil company who was pushing through the project left a ton and a half of explosives in the sacred territory of the Sarayaku, which not only affects what the people know as Kawsak Sacha, but also poses a threat to the life and integrity of the members of the inhabitants of the region. Since this ruling Ecuador has yet to clean up these explosives, and in response to this government inaction, leaders from the Sarayaku community decided to sue Ecuador to ensure compliance.

You can read more about this ruling here.

WECAN has been working with close partners in the Sarayaku community for many years, and we celebrate this important victory and also the precedent it sets for Indigenous communities globally to exercise their rights, and protect their territories and lands. 

Thousands gather at the Oceti Sakowin camp in 2016 to support Indigenous-led efforts to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Photo Credit: Emily Arasim / WECAN International

The fight to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline continues!

Over the past many months, WECAN joined partners in calling for public comments on the new Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Over 200,000 comments were submitted! We are calling for a new Environmental Impact Statement and for the U.S. to respect and uphold the rights and sovereignty of Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities. Thank you to everyone who submitted comments. While at COP28, we were able to continue the call for comments online.

The Standing Rock Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and grassroots Water Protectors have led the resistance against DAPL since the beginning. Right now we have a key opportunity to let the United States government know that we stand with Standing Rock and all the Water Protectors who put their bodies on the line to protect their communities, ecosystems, and our global climate.

WECAN also endorsed a Congressional letter in support of the calls for a new environmental impact statement. US Senator Jeff Merkley and Representative Raúl Grijalva led colleagues in sending a letter to the Army Corps of Engineers expressing their concerns with the agency’s climate analysis in the court-ordered DEIS for the Dakota Access Pipeline. Read the full letter here.

This letter is endorsed by Women’s Earth & Climate Action Network, NRDC, Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters, Center for Biological Diversity, Food and Water Watch, Earthjustice, Oil Change International, and Elected Officials to Protect America.

We are demanding that the Corps shut the pipeline down and conduct a proper environmental review, not one prepared by the fossil fuel industry. This is our best chance to end DAPL for good!

Please be welcome to join us for this inspiring event: “How Worldviews and Climate Justice Can Remake a World in Crisis,” a fundraiser for Sogorea Te’ Land Trust and book launch for “The Story is in Our Bones.”

REGISTER HERE: https://tinyurl.com/4x6vpcnc

This free event will be in-person at 6:30pm at the David Brower Center in Berkeley, CA. February 1, 2024! The event will also be live-streamed on Instagram.

Speakers include:

• Corrina Gould (Ohlone)— Tribal spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan and Director of Sogorea Te’ Land Trust
• Casey Camp-Horinek (Ponca)— Environmental Ambassador for the Ponca Nation and Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) Board Member
• Leila Salazar-Lopez — Executive Director Amazon Watch
• Osprey Orielle Lake —Founder and Executive Director Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) and author of "The Story is in Our Bones: How Worldviews and Climate Justice Can Remake a World in Crisis.”
• Moderation: Tracey Osborne— Associate Professor in the Management of Complex Systems Department at the University of California, Merced

To live in a healthy and equitable world, we must fundamentally change how we respect and interact with the Earth and one another. To change the present and future, it is imperative to change the narrative and amplify worldviews and stories of solutions that transform the dominant worldview from an extractivist, colonial paradigm of exploit and extract to a thriving, globally-conscious one of respect and restore.

At this event, movement leaders and change-makers will weave together stories, worldviews, and experiences of restoration and justice that demonstrate the world we know is possible and needed. We knew in our bones this time was coming. And now we must act in solidarity more than ever, as we continue building a powerful movement founded on principles of justice, love, and a fierce dedication to our planet and our communities.

This event is both a fundraiser for Sogorea Te’ Land Trust and the launch of the book by Osprey Orielle Lake, "The Story is in Our Bones: How Worldviews and Climate Justice Can Remake a World in Crisis." All book proceeds at this event will be donated to Sogorea Te’ Land Trust to support the powerful work of Corrina Gould and her leadership in the urban Indigenous women-led land trust based in the San Francisco Bay Area that facilitates the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people. There will be a program with speakers followed by hors d’oeuvres and a book signing. All are welcome!

To learn more about the book: https://ospreyoriellelake.earth

To learn more about Sogorea Te’ Land Trust: https://sogoreate-landtrust.org/

Please consider supporting WECAN as we continue to uplift the leadership and solutions of women worldwide fighting for climate justice and the defense of the planet for current and future generations.