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Pitch

Feisty Doves Climage Action will promote an alliance of nations to deal by nonviolently action with climate disruption and invasion.


Description

Summary

Military establishments have a large carbon footprint even in peacetime.  With deteriorating climate, conflicts between nations are apt to increase, with struggles over water, environmental migration, and reparations.  Adaptation to climate change requires that defense deal with climate disruption but also with the threat of coups d’état and military invasions be nonviolent.  Research indicates that this is feasible (see references).

Feisty Doves Climate Action (FDCA )encourages nations to take collective action to ensure their security.  Specifically, Feisty Doves proposes an organization of sovereign nations, an Alliance of Nonviolently Defended Nations (ANDN), to deal with climate disruption but also with the threat of coups d’état and military invasions.  This may seem like an unlikely combination, but there is a body of tactics (nonviolent actions) that can be use to deal with both.  An actual organization of nations to deal with these threats would offer mutual encouragement and assistance.  Safety in these areas need to be a collective enterprise on the highest level.  The United Nations unfortunately is hamstrung by vetoes in the Security Council and other issues. A coalition of nations that are willing to take action on these issues now and to give it the priority it deserves seems to be in order.

Drastically reducing greenhouse gas production requires immediate and sustained pressure on major producers. Although the threat from military invasions and coups d’état threaten individual nations less frequently, considerable resources are obviously used to deter them and to deal with them if they should occur.   Thus Feisty Doves Climate Action could serve to mitigate climate disruption by not only encouraging tested nonviolent tactics to forcefully counter climate disruption from power generation and other sectors but also to counter militarism.

 

 


What actions do you propose?

Initial tasks for FDCA are twofold: first establishing itself as an NGO with individual and organizational participants; second, reaching out to nations that are interested in reaching out to like-minded stakeholders.

FDCA would research which nations might be interested in collective action and establish contact with them and foster cooperation between them on low-risk projects, such as petitions and diplomatic pressure.  ANDN would come later and engage in stronger actions where necessary, such as boycotts, breaking diplomatic relations, a reverse peace corps.

Alliance of Nonviolently Defended Nations

--Member nations would train their citizens in nonviolent tactics to counter traditional threats to their security.  This happened in Lithuania, for example, at the time of the breakup of the Soviet Union, and Soviet forces withdrew.  Citizens would also learn to implement tactics to defend a healthy climate, boycotts and demonstrations, for example, directed at egregious polluters like the United States and Australia.  The attempted blockade of Newcastle harbor by the Pacific Climate Warriors brought Australia's huge export of coal to world attention

--Member nations would conduct research in dealing collectively with the relatively new threats like cyber attacks and drone attacks.  

--Members would pool their intelligence gathering, which would rely on citizen reporters in a transparent process.

--Members would deal individually and collectively with terrorist threats not only with their police, but also by dealing with its root causes: poverty and income inequality, lack of education, and climate disruption, as in the case of the  drought  in Syria that preceded its civil war.

Feisty Doves Climate Action

Projects

–We join with the countries most vulnerable to climate change in insisting that “rich nations contribute more to the Green Climate Fund and honor their commitment to supply $100bn each year by 2020. The near $10bn pledged to date is just two-thirds of the bare minimum stipulated by developing countries” [Guardian, 4 Dec 2014]

–We help countries especially vulnerable to climate change with

  1. Divesting from fossil fuels
  2. Signing the nuclear nonproliferation treaty because nuclear winter is also a climate issue
  3. Asking the United Nations to provide them seminars in negotiating skills to help them participate more effectively in the climate summits
  4. Participating in a reverse peace corps to show the industrialized countries how to live with a lower carbon footprint and to share their perspective on climate deterioration.
  5. Helping free imprisoned former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed.  He’s a very effective climate champion for the most vulnerable countries.

 

FDCA urges citizens to get involved [from our website feistydoves.wordpress.com]

[] Help with our projects.

[] Follow us on Twitter @Feistydoves.

[] Sign up for our listserv: https://feistydoves.wordpress.com.

[] Tell your friends about us.

[] Translate this website or part of it into Mandarin, Spanish, or whatever your native language is, and send us your translation.

[] Send us your thoughts (paul@ancientstudiesinstitute.org): How could an alliance of countries nonviolently defend its members against climate deterioration, military invasions and coups d’état? What would a good name be for such an alliance? What countries might be interested?

[] Organize a petition to the US Congress calling for stronger climate action to avoid climate deterioration, harmful to the most vulnerable nations like Philippines, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Bangladesh, and Vanuatu.

[] Organize a Feisty Doves Climate Action group in your community.

[] Join our advisory board.

[] Help with our website.


Who will take these actions?

Governments.  FDCA aims to get nations to take strong collective action through ANDN.

--Democracies. Democracies rather than dictatorships are more likely members because the latter would probably fear that knowledge of nonviolent tactics could be used to turn them out of office.

--Feisty Doves Climate Action is establishing a listserv and recruiting an advisory board (so far: Pia Jensen, Rosalie Anders, Suzy Pearce, Tom Butts, Joyce Reeves, Jessica Palacios Yamakawa, and Koreti Tiumalu).

--The Albert Einstein Institution, Peace Action,  and Interhelp have provided assistance.  Other Organizations: World Beyond War, Democratic World Federalists, Peace Action. 

--Paul Emile Anders.  He was the executive director of the Civilian-based defense Association for several years in the 1990s and editor of its journal Civilian-based Defense.  Before that he was a researcher at the Insganizations: World Beyond War, Democratic World Federalists, Peace Action


Where will these actions be taken?

 

Alliance of Nonviolently Defended Nations

--Countries with little or no military expenditures would have much to gain because they would obtain allies; if they have rejected violence, strengthening nonviolent defense seems advisable, e.g., Costa Rica, Bahamas, Kiribati, Nauru.

--Neutral Countries would strengthen their defense.  They would need to decide that an alliance of nonviolently defended nations is more advantageous than their neutrality.

--Militarized democracies such as NATO members might decide not to become full members but instead to become supporting members.  A reason for them to be supportive?  If potential adversaries opt for nonviolence, the militarized democracy need not fear invasion.  For example, if Argentina had adopted nonviolence, Britain would not have had to deal with defending the Falkland Islands/Maldives.

Feisty Doves Climate Action

This incipient organization is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts with some participation from Uruguay, Australia, France, and South Africa.  We aim to translate our website into as many languages as we can and to get citizens in as many countries as possible to work with FDCA.


What are other key benefits?

Countries that reduce or eliminate their military forces and rely instead on an alliance of nations pledged to nonviolence will be able to transfer resources to mitigating and abating climate deterioration, education, health, diplomacy, and other programs of social benefit.  

Struggles that may well occur because of climate disruption need to be dealt with nonviolently to prevent military threats and escalation and an even greater carbon footprint from the military in the future.  The footprint from nonviolent defense preparedness and utilization would not be zero but would in all likelihood be far less than what we are seeing from militarization.  It is unsustainable to continue to pour scarce resources into military preparedness. 


What are the proposal’s costs?

Feisty Doves Climate Action: So far all labor has been from volunteers and office space and operating expenses have been contributed.  We hope to hire a paid staff person part time for 2016 year ($20,000), full time the following year ($40,000).

---------------

Alliance of Nonviolently Defended Nations: In the future ANDN could hire a director with defense and/or diplomatic experience, perhaps a retired diplomat.  First year budget:

director. $100,000

supoort staff. $50,000

Office. $25,000

Misc. expenses. $25,000

------------------------------------

Total $200,000

 


Time line

The  actions of FDCA and ANDN are intertwined.

2015.  More prospective advisory board members will be contacted, the listserv will be increased, the website will be developed further.  FDCA projects (see above) will be promoted.

2016.  Establishing of a board of directors, incorporation, appointment of an executive director.  Prospective member countries for ANDN will be contacted to solicit their membership.  ANDN begins collective action to encourage drastic climate change adaptation, including adoption of nonviolent civilian-based defense (CBD).

2017.  ANDN establishes a relationship with the United Nations and other NGOs.  FDCL continues with a large part of its work being the promotion of ANDN.

2020. At the urging of ANDN and other organizations, the UN officially encourages countries to adopt nonviolent CBD.

2025. ANDN encourages NATO and other military alliances to encourage. 

2050. ANDN and other organizations establish an international peace university.


Related proposals

Global Grassroots Treaty for Peace, People, and Planet: Reallocating War Monies /  benjmew

134/26/15 Using Community Rights Law, we will write a Treaty, democractically demanding a reallocation of war monies to Transition.


References

Paul Emile Anders, “Civilian-based Defense and the Environment,” Civilian-Based Defense, Vol. 8, February 1993, Number 3, pp. 5-9. ¨Published by Civilian-based Defense Association.  https://sites.google.com/site/civilianbaseddefense/

Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, 2011.

Johan Jørgen Holst, (former defense minister of Norway), Civilian-Based Defense in a New Era, Albert Einstein Institution, (Monograph Series, number 2.

Serge Mongeau, “La defense civile non-violente,” in Serge Mongeau (editor), Pour un pays sans armée. Les Éditions Écosociété, 1993, pp. 47-57.

Adam Roberts, "Civilian Defence Strategy," in Civilian Resistance as a National Defence: Non-violent Action against Aggression, Penguin Books, 1969.

Joseph E. Schwartzberg, Transforming the United Nations System: Designs for a Workable World, 2013.

Gene Sharp, Making Europe Unconquerable: the Potential of Civilian-based Deterrence and Defense, Ballinger Publishing Co. 1985, pp. 2-3.

Gene Sharp; with the assistance of Bruce Jenkins (1990). Civilian-based Defense: a post-military weapons system. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Gene Sharp, The Politics on Nonviolent Action, 1973: Porter Sargent Publishers.

World Beyond War, A Global Security System: An Alternative to War, 2015.