Watch the Awards here:

http://mdgawards.org/webcast.html

More on the MDGs here (is it all a giant conspiracy?):

http://www.element-tv.net/mdg/

And more on Tina and Ifie’s fight to make the oil industry do the decent thing, here:

http://http:www.element-tv.net/news/2007/03/episode-2/

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Want to write to Tia? Here’s her address:

Message from Tia:

It’s been just over a year since I returned from Papua New Guinea Global Forest Rescue Campaign and it feels like yesterday.
Since working with the local tribes in PNG- sharing food, traditions and stories – my views have broadened to more of an Indigenous Unity direction.

Because of the issues affecting the indigenous people (Maori) here in Aotearoa/ New Zealand, I’ve gotten involved in an organisation called Conscious Collaborations.

Our vision is to collaborate with other NGO’s creating Global Networks, so that indigenous peoples from around the world can share struggles, victories, strategies, arts… all the things that make us unique to our lands.
By doing this we can create a stronger voice and empower people to move forward in their campaigns… and just be there to support each other in each others’ fight for our lands and resources.

One thing I strongly remember from my time in Papua New Guinea was warning the local tribes about colonisation, corporate theft, government confiscation and privatisation of lands and resources: the things that Maori people in Aotearoa/ New Zealand have already experienced and are now fighting to reclaim.

I hope that from our example the people of Papua New Guinea will not go down the same road.

Peace love and indigenous global solidarity

Tia

With thanks to Greenpeace: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/

and to Pitch Black and Salmonella Dub for the music:

http://www.salmonelladub.com

http://www.pitchblack.co.nz/

and to Serena Stevenson for the footage of Tia’s moko session:
http://www.serenastevenson.com”

Tia’s Element relates to:
Millennium Development Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability

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You don’t expect fire to feel metallic.

That’s what flaring feels like – you feel it as a whine, like metal being rubbed. Turn off the engine, someone said, but it wasn’t on – it was the flame’s vibration shaking the van.
Tina is angry. Why is this gas being burnt, when it could be used, and people are suffering because of it?

Then she’s quiet. It just feels wrong.

Gas is ‘flared’ or burnt up as part of the process of extracting crude oil from the ground. Separating the gas from the oil makes the oil more usable. This gas could also be stored and used. But it’s cheaper – if only economically – to burn it off than to build the infrastructure that storage would require.

Especially if you’re not paying for the damage locally, and the tab for the long term is split between everything on earth.

Gas flaring in Nigeria contributes more greenhouse gases – the gases contributing to climate change – than all activity in sub-Saharan Africa combined. More than from Portugal, Switzerland, Sweden or Norway!

Flaring is illegal in Nigeria: its toxicity and effects on health and the environment make it a violation of human rights.

Oil companies get away with flaring and other activities because we want more oil to do more with. There are ways to change this.

Tina and Ifie are filming testimonies so that people around the world see the local cost of oil.

We can also:

• Demand that energy companies are more socially and environmentally responsible
  http://climatelaw.org
  http://www.foei.org/campaigns/

• Write to the Nigerian government requesting that they uphold this recent court decision
  http://www.climatelaw.org/media/Nigeria%20May%202007

• Reduce how much oil (and gas!) we each use and support renewable forms of energy
  http://www.greenpeace.org<

• Read here for more on the oil spill documented by Tina and Ifie:

  http://www.eraction.org
  http://www.foe.co.uk

Tina and Ifie’s Element relates to Millennium Development Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability.