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Laura Garcia Coal, as well as many other extractivist industries are always legitimized by mindsets that are pushing a narrative of development, but development in the name of who? (......)
Sanam That was Laura Garcia of the Global Green Grants Fund. Welcome to If You Were In Charge with me, Sanam Naraghi Anderlini. And I'm Kadita Nandini Ramdas. This week, our focus is on climate, environmental activism. June 22nd is the London Climate Week. For those of you who are in England or who are coming to England, welcome. But we wanted to talk to you about these issues because it seems to be one of the areas which President Trump has basically thrown off the table, cutting back all sorts of funding, all sorts of research funding as well. And yet, obviously, it is one of the most, if not the critical existential issue that we all face. Kadita, you know Global Green Grants very well. Can you tell us a little bit about kind of what's happening and where they are and what they're doing?
Kavita Ramdas Yeah, I've been privileged to know them since they first got started. They were inspired by the feminist funds like the Global Fund for Women and the Urgent Action Fund and others. But from their perspective, they could see that many of the most exciting investments in both climate mitigation and climate adaptation, as well as climate justice, were happening on the ground in small grassroots communities and often, of course, Sanam, not surprising to you, led by women, women who were also working on peace issues, women who were also working on health issues, women who were also working on a number of other critical issues for survival, were noticing that the planet was increasingly under stress and strain. And so, Global Green Grants Fund makes small, flexible grants, much as ICANN does, to support its partners around the world, much as the Global Fund for Women does around the world. And it has been hugely successful in being able to make hundreds of small grants to environmental activists. And I'm just coming off of a Global Green Grants board meeting. So, it was fun to see all of the different partners. This time, we met with activists from Central Asia, Sanam, from Uzbekistan, from Tajikistan. And it's quite remarkable to see the kind of work they're doing on desertification, what's happening to the Aral Sea, and how deeply they see the issues as being interlinked. They're working on environmental issues, but they don't see that as being different than issues of livelihood, sustainability, issues of violence in their communities.
Sanam You would think that it should be obvious that these things are interlinked, because if the sea is shrinking, or the lake, Lake Chad is shrinking, or the temperature is going up, and the fish can't survive in it, then you've got a problem with your fishermen and that whole community. And then where do they go? I mean, they're the first ones to see it. They're the first ones to try and deal with it. They know how things are changing. And it takes long, it's a long-term commitment and investment. Right.
Kavita Ramdas To help them figure it out. And I think that's what Laura and her team, I think, have done so remarkably well, is really bring back even into the, you know, because the problem is, is so much of the climate space is not talking about these kinds of grassroots interventions. Right. So much of the climate space is talking about energy and huge investments in shipping and huge investments in technology. And all of that is important, but it doesn't, it doesn't take away from the need for grassroots activists to be at the forefront of this work.
Sanam So just a few things to put on the table since it's climate week. 2025 was confirmed as the second hottest year on record. Ocean heat sets a record for the ninth year running. Major reports from, from Yale and other places are saying that limiting warming to 1.5 degree centigrade is no longer plausible, even trying to do it up to 2.5 degrees.
Kavita Ramdas Going to be hugely challenging.
Sanam Yep. But some of the other stuff, to 2026, climate change in terms of wind and solar, take overtaking fossil fuels in EU electricity generation for the first time, supplying 30% in 2025. I was, I was flying into London the other day and it was amazing to see coming in from Germany and, and sort of where we could see land, wind farms offshore on land. It's like, they're just standing there and they're silently kind of providing this, this energy. I hope it's connected to the grid. I know that Lydia, my daughter was doing her research for her master's and it's all there, but it's not connected to the grid because the British government wasn't paying for it to be connected to the grid, which was really stupid. So these issues of infrastructure, I think are really important.
Kavita Ramdas And I think all of the conversations we've had about this disastrous war and intervention in Iran only reminds us how critical it is for us to build these alternatives, to invest in a different way of thinking about energy, because in fact, what is going on now is actually a bizarrely old school fight for old school fuels that the West refuses to let go of. And even though we're learning more and more how unsustainable this is for the planet. And I'm glad that Laura was able to share with us some examples of what's really making a difference and what gives her hope and it gives me hope too.
Sanam So thank you very much. And, and, uh, and we hope that everybody enjoys the conversation and, um, comes back for more for us for, for more, because we've got some great guests still coming up and some past episodes that are wonderful available wherever you find your podcasts. Thank you very much. (.......) Laura Garcia, it's lovely to have you with us. You are the CEO of the Global Green Grants Fund. (..) Um, can you tell us a little bit about what that fund is and what you guys do? (.)
Laura Garcia Sure. Thank you, Sanam and Kavita. It's wonderful to be connected. The Global Green Grants Fund is an organization that was established actually over 30 years ago. It basically mobilizes money from the global north, from the U.S. and European institutions, individual donors, and it gives that money to, uh, small organizations and groups around the world in over 160 countries that are working in environmental and climate justice issues. So we're basically a big spreader and democratizer of funding for social change, particularly environment and climate and conservation. (.)
Kavita Ramdas I know you've had the opportunity to work with a wide range of both grassroots women's rights groups. And now for the last five years with grassroots environmental activists and environmental defenders, what do you see as being some of their top priorities and how do you think they actually think about what they would like to do if they were in charge?
Laura Garcia I think that probably the, the thing that is missing and the thing that would happen if people in the front lines and, and, and communities were in charge, it would be that they are actually in charge, in charge of the decisions that they take for their improvement of their lives, uh, for their livelihoods and for them to, to live holistic and integral lives. And by that, what I mean is that you can, you can exercise all of your rights as individuals and as communities. And what I have seen in my passage through leading a fund in Mexico, Fondo Semillas that supports feminist movements all throughout Mexico. And now where I'm in a, in a global fund that does basically the same thing, but globally for environmental and climate justice movements. What I see is oppression and inability to actually take decisions. And I think that democratic practices and participatory practices around the world would happen if we were in charge, because if we were in charge, meaning the people, we would likely not see any of the oppressive systems be able to function because we would be, we would be tackling them. The moment that a community is in charge of its wellbeing and its own resources and its own people, then it just totally changes the way that systems of oppressions work because systems of oppression work through colonialist, patriarchal, extractivist mindsets that are exploiting the individual who doesn't have power, that are exploiting the territory that is not yours. Like you don't extract oil in your backyard, you extract oil in somebody else's backyard. So when that person takes the decisions, then that person will likely think about the implications of extracting oil and, you know, to their health, to the health of their children, to their own resources. So we wouldn't even have, I would say, environmental degradation, because environmental destruction happens always in somebody else's backyard.
Sanam Laura, when you think about the grants that your fund has given out, what are the stories that have inspired you along the way? (...)
Laura Garcia Well, we have the beautiful advantage that Green Grants has been in existence for many years. We all know that social change is a slow process. The first thing that I would say to any individual that puts money into an impactful initiative is that we have to be patient because these systems of oppression that I was talking about have been there for thousands of years and hundreds of years, some of them. So I would say that is very important. However, having said that, there's lots and lots of stories that give me hope and that make me very excited about the possibilities in the future, even if we often feel that we're in a time of very little hope and very little possibilities. But I feel enormously privileged to be working in an organization that gives me stories of hope hope every day. And one of the stories that I'd like to share is in South Africa, Green Grants over 20 years ago was the only grant maker placing small grants. And by that, I mean $5,000, $10,000 to communities that were established in the coal belt of South Africa. South Africa has been for many years, although it's phasing out and it's part of the impact that I want to share, but has been a coal producer. And obviously, coal was not produced in the rich suburbs of Cape Town. Coal mining companies and mines were established in the coal belt of South Africa near Johannesburg. communities that were obviously struggling with the immense amount of smog and contamination happening. Their health was at risk. And these communities started to receive from Green Grants, they started to receive funds from us. And these funds were completely flexible. And they were just given for communities to start organizing themselves around what was happening in their communities. To make this long story short, many years later, these communities had formed a movement. And by that, what I mean is that when communities are organized around a particular goal, then they speak with the other communities. And then this goal becomes the goal of hundreds of people, activists, but also people experiencing a problem in the front lines and demanding a solution. And this movement grew so much that only a couple of years ago, the government of South Africa was pressured to actually commit to the phase out of coal and into renewable energy. So coal is right now in South Africa, a very different thing than what was 20 years ago. And coal, as well as many other extractivist industries, are always legitimized in a way by mindsets that are pushing a narrative of development. So if you are against coal, it's very easy to have the governments and the industries place you and identify you as somebody who is anti-development. But the development of those communities was actually not to have coal contaminate their communities there. So there's a really interesting narrative about development, development in the name of who. And it touches on the earlier question that you asked me about, like, well, what would happen if we were in power? Well, if we were in power, we would be defining development and livelihoods in our own terms. And that's something that's very important for us to think about, because most of the violence that is happening against environmental defenders is placed around that narrative, as well as feminist activists and any other individual who's trying to change bigger systems that are oppressive. They are framed as anti-development, anti-society, where, in fact, they are actually the people that are, I would say, the biggest defenders of democracy.
Kavita Ramdas I was curious when you were saying that, one, I would love to know the name of the organization, the movement in South Africa, that if you remember it, because I think our listeners would love to hear more and to understand better how they can also be inspired by what this has meant. And also, I remember some years ago, Mexico legalized abortion, and it did so after probably similarly a 20-year-long process by which Mexican feminists had been mobilizing, organizing, educating the government about why this kind of access was important. And I, and I'm wondering if you could say a little bit, you know, I've worked in philanthropy for so many years, and now Global Green Grants is also a kind of philanthropy. What's different about this kind of a, if we were in, if we were in charge philanthropy, that you think is different from the ways that so many of us received grants in which they said, well, can you show results? And Sanam, you know this, you've had this experience too. Can you show results in two years? //S00: Six months. Six months.// Can you talk a little bit about what, what has to change in philanthropy? If we have a, we were in charge approach, as opposed to, you know, we're telling you.
Laura Garcia Sure. I'll quickly answer the, your first question. One of the organizations that has been behind the movement to face out coal in South Africa is called Groundwork. Bobby Peek is part of Green Grants. And he's also the, one of the founders of this amazing organization, which I encourage all of your listeners to Google to find out more because this organization, as well as many others that started to establish themselves around this issue, are behind one of the most remarkable country-wide commitments for climate change. To move now to your question, Kavita, on, on philanthropy, I think many things have to change in philanthropy for it to be more impactful. For those listeners who are not in philanthropy, I don't want to discourage them from actually joining philanthropy, but I think it would be great if they join in the right ways. Because, like with everything, there's a good way of doing things and there's a not so good way of doing things. The biggest challenge in philanthropy is that it's being controlled by people who are not the ones who I was talking about. They are not the ones experiencing firsthand what it means to have a health problem because of the coal mine that was just established in your own backyard in front of you. Philanthropy was mostly established by those who are owners of the coal mine and want to do something for that. So that's the biggest problem. But having said that, philanthropy has become also kind of embedded and related or connected with something that I would say is its most powerful element, which is solidarity in many, many traditions in the world and communities, including indigenous communities, very much as the collective effort for us to change something. And there's a lot of philanthropy that is actually more resonating with that type of solidarity than a charity-based way of giving something when you are amassing so much. Global Green Grants Fund, as well as many other feminist funds and community foundations around the world, have been established using participatory processes that continue to evolve today in philanthropy that are actually made to separate the person who gives from the person who decides. And that means, ultimately, that the person who receives funding is the same person who is in the front lines and in direct connection with a problem that they're going to be solving. And therefore, they take the decisions. And I think that these processes are called, in many ways, decentralized decision-making processes in philanthropy or participatory philanthropy. And what that is, is actually a great and beautiful way to protect solidarity and the meaning of solidarity. And Global Green Grants has, for example, a decentralized system of advisors that are based in many parts of the world. And regionally, there's different priorities. What might be a priority in Bangladesh is not the same as in Peru. So, the question that you asked me, like, what would happen if we were all in charge? Well, if philanthropy was able to structure itself through that question, let's make all the people around the world be in charge of their own lives and the money that they receive from philanthropy, I think that philanthropy would be a lot better.
Sanam So, Laura, in, at ICANN, we work on a, we're in a slightly different sector, which is in peacebuilding and women-led peacebuilding efforts in fragile context. And we set up our fund, the Innovative Peace Fund, with exactly this premise that the tagline is investing in trust, meaning that the women we work with, they have trust and access and understanding of their communities in a way that no international actor could ever have. So, actually, the money that we are transferring is really an enabler. But if it wasn't for the trust and relationships that they had and the expertise that they have of their own community, the money is insignificant, right? So, it's almost like the money enables, but you need so much more. So, it's kind of thinking about it as investment. And one of the things that I found is that we live in this universe where money is God and the wealthy are gods, basically. Whereas the reality is that if you have your community in South Africa or we have our peace builders around the world, they are really unique superheroes. They are doing something extraordinary. And in my conversations with foundations and individual philanthropists, I sometimes say, you know, it's easier to put your money and write a check, right? It's very easy to write a check. It's the courage of actually putting your mouth where your money is, like being an advocate, opening your spaces of privilege so that these women or these activists can come into those hallowed, very exclusive spaces. That's really, in a way, what you're talking about, solidarity. solidarity, that's to me the real solidarity. The writing of the check, which these days often seems to be anonymous checks because people then worry about their own, you know, political, you know, whether they're going to get targeted in some sort of way. But it takes a lot of courage to do the actual work. And it takes a lot of courage to be the advocate. And I'm wondering whether those conversations are happening or whether we should be having those conversations with a sort of new generation of philanthropists coming out.
Laura Garcia I completely agree with you, Sanam. And I think that, let me give you just one example of how far trust goes in philanthropy. During the pandemic and the lockdown in 2020, I was just arriving actually to Green Grants. We heard that our advisors in Latin America and grantees in Uruguay and Paraguay were using the funding that Green Grants to organize collective kitchens to be able to feed the community. And they were also a school system in a totally different way for children to continue to study. If we had had donors purely interested in continuing the environmental justice-related project that these organizations were going to do, and we wouldn't have let them do that. We would have, in other words, restricted their funding. (.) We wouldn't have seen what happened. And what happened was that after a year, a full year, of putting a pause to their projects, which dealt with resisting efforts of building mining in their territories, as well as advocating for better laws in those places. After a year of organizing community kitchens, the organizations that we were supporting gained so much more legitimacy in the communities that they were able, after the pandemic and once the lockdown opened, they were able to triple the number of participants, young women, people who didn't even know who these groups were. They started to participate in the initiatives that advanced environmental justice in those regions in ways that we wouldn't have imagined because we're not there. So I would say to those donors of Green Grants, thank you. Thank you for trusting us. And thank you for trusting the grantees that they will know what to do with the money in much better ways. And that only happens when you trust that whoever's in the frontline experiencing the problem has the best solutions and has the best means to understand how to, yeah, remove obstacles and there's a lot of adaptation that needs to happen locally. One donor might say, well, what does that have to do with anything? Well, don't ask those questions. Just learn. Learn and listen because it might actually be that you learn something in your own life that might be transformative, actually. And that's the beauty of giving, that people who give with trust actually are experiencing the joy of their lifetimes because they are observing how things happen. And that might actually create insights in your own life that you thought were already solved. And no, you don't.
Kavita Ramdas Laura, Sanam, this makes me think about your question about the radical idea that you wish wasn't radical. Yeah. Right. So in a way, Laura, what you're saying is I'm hearing a response to this question that Sanam has been asking on this podcast, which is, is there a radical idea that you have that you wish was not considered radical? It was just the norm. It was just the norm. And are you heading in that direction with what you're saying? Is that part of it? Yeah.
Laura Garcia I think so. The hope that it instills in me is something that I wish everybody could have. And, and the irony, the immense irony in philanthropy is that it gives less than 2% and less than 1% and less than 0.1% to these type of initiatives in the global South or majority countries for grassroots communities, for women, for indigenous peoples, for people of color, for marginalized populations of any type, you know, people with disabilities, et cetera. Those people, the people who are in the margins, creating hope in the world are receiving a tiny, tiny fraction of where philanthropy is, you know, placing their, their bets and their money. So the radical idea is what if we saw that reversed? What if we saw actually that, you know, 99% of the funding that philanthropy gives in the world is for women that are planting mangroves in Bangladesh to adapt to climate change? Like what would it happen in the world? I think that the COP, the conference of the parties and the negotiations of climate would be very different because they would be, everybody would be seeing the effect of that. And when you have that, I think that you have no longer a space in the world and in our, in our culture and in our westernized ways of thinking that, that is the fittest where we say, well, you know, there's nothing else to do with climate change. No, there's like so much and it's happening right in front of us.
Sanam And, and Laura, again, it's like, I literally, everything you say from the climate change space, I can, I can cut and paste and put it in the peace space. It's exactly the same. It's, you know, we say that the burden of responsibility, that the agenda of responsibility to protect communities sits on the shoulders of women, but the power, those who are most powerful are abrogating that responsibility.
Laura Garcia Yeah.
Sanam But this point around, you know, flipping the, the script on the, on the funding, you know, we saw at the beginning of this year with the Trump administration, the complete sort of decimation of USAID and overseas development aid, which in Europe also we've seen and, and also the hike in militarization that, that that's happening. You know, $40 billion of USAID money that has disappeared. really how much of that money was getting to the ground, how much of it was actually reaching people who needed it and those who were the service providers at the local level, how much was really, and how much of it was just sitting in Washington or in, you know, like back in contract, going back into contracts for, for Western companies or, or Western organizations. The other side is we are seeing in the peace space, the real threats of Europe spending $800 billion on militarization or the U.S. military budget just ballooning and, and the global military budget reaching $1.3 trillion or whatever it is right now. What are the effects of that in terms of research and development for climate or new generation of climate activists, or again, these, these organizations at the community level that are taking on the biggest burdens with the least resources already?
Laura Garcia WARS mean total destruction of the environment. So that's the first thing that I would say, uh, that is why environmental justice or working and caring for the environment cannot be separated for a stance against war in Gaza and for a stance against war anywhere else. Because war not only takes extreme amounts of energy from fossil fuels, it also destroys, um, (.) environments and it destroys ecosystems. Even the testing of weapons does that, let alone war. And again, something that I would say, which is a small parentheses, we work in Green Grants for environmental justice, which means that we're not just caring for the planet, we're caring for the people and we're caring for equity because equality and all of these issues around social justice are very much embedded in making the environment thrive together with us as humans. I think that, um, I agree completely with you in like how peace building is actually always seen in the margins of those who are taking the decisions here. So it would be important for us to, to consider that now with regards to the slashing of aid and, and, uh, and, and funding, many of the folks that are in Green Grants network globally, um, were telling us that they were actually happy that USAID ceased to exist. the nuance that I want to create here is that, um, there was obviously a lot of fraud and unjust ways of managing that funding. And that funding was never isolated from American politics in different regions in the world. So obviously they saw that. And many activists around the world were seeing that like, there was a lot of red tape and there was a lot of agenda and imperialist agendas, uh, you know, on how, how, how to win the hearts and minds of people through funding, but winning for what? There were a lot of things happening there and many practices within USAID that were very criticized by many people, but there was also developing conversations within USAID folks around localization and around making sure that the funding went with more flexible ways for communities to be involved and to actually be the final recipients of this, uh, funding and not have kind of helicopter top-down approaches, um, that didn't involve the communities. Having said that, USAID was massive. So of course there were many good things about it. And of course, many, many, many people depended on it, uh, in health services, in countries, et cetera. But one activist from Kenya, I remember just told me, you know, it's also not good that our local governments were used to receiving funding and were disincentivized to like actually listening to us on what our taxes should be made for because they were just like receiving funding from the U.S. So again, with nuances, because I am in no way a defender of having kind of a closed USAID at all. I think that it should have continued to improve. With that in mind, I'm wondering what the ideal scenario would be. And the ideal scenario would be that you would have funding that actually encouraged local governments to listen to the people. And that funding would actually go to those communities. But it is a shame that Global North countries not only continue to extract, they're not giving anymore. So it does, it does create a huge gap. And that gap is something that we are seeing in the projects that we support because they were indirectly connected with USAID funding and to improve lives of people and to improve environmental issues in different regions.
Kavita Ramdas I mean, I was just thinking, Laura, the work that the IM Defensoras does, for example, with the women who are defending human rights and then the environmental defenders, I mean, I think you said something earlier that Sanam and I think about a lot, which is that if you think about the environment as though it is separate from human beings, then that's really problematic because, of course, we live as part of and we are able to live because of our natural environment. And I think that same thing is true for the ways in which we think about war and militarism, right? Because our desire as human beings is to live in a state of peace and security. Security for ourselves, human security, and well-being and security for the natural environment around us. And when those are constantly undermined, I mean, actually, it's interesting, I was just thinking the word undermined has the word mine in it, right? Like, I mean, it's so strange that you think of it being actually dug out from underneath you. And that is literally what extractivist industry is doing. So I really appreciate you making that connection because I think for a long time also in feminist movements, we haven't built those kinds of intersections and that kind of like cross-movement solidarity. If you're working for peace, you can't not be concerned about the environment. If you're working in an environment, you can't not be concerned about what's happening to women's bodies. So, you know, I think about the fact that I work for International Planned Parenthood Federation, and their response to the crises of war that Sanam and her partners are working on is, oh, we'll provide humanitarian sexual and reproductive rights services, which then, you know, FCDO or the...
Sanam After they've been raped. //S02: After they've been raped. After they've been raped, right?// So we're not going to prevent the war. Correct. That create or prevent the crisis that creates the conditions for...
Kavita Ramdas But we'll give you then a grant so that you can provide, you know, from post-traumatic services or, you know, sexual and reproductive health services or abortion services to people who are traumatized or people who are fleeing or people who are migrating. And I just think that, for me, the radical hope for us, if we were in charge, I think we would be saying, we need to be doing this together. Yeah. We would not be doing this after the case. Yeah. (.)
Laura Garcia Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. I just want to say that this all is making me think of sometimes what we observe happening in the wrong ways for many conservation, like nature conservation movements, not movements, but actually philanthropists and very large organizations, which is fortress conservation, meaning basically we evict the people forcefully living in a forest and we make that forest be a national park and nobody will touch that national park and we will put military there to actually save the forest. And thousands of indigenous people who have been, by the way, the best stewarders and protectors of their land and their resources get evicted. They establish military personnel there to protect the forest because the forests need to be protected, for example. And that's, that type of conservation, fortress conservation mindsets, are definitely not the solution. Quite the contrary, the best way in which you can protect natural resources is to allow people who have been sustainably living in those territories to continue deciding for their own territories and natural resources and protecting them. And I'm thinking about that kind of false solution. As you also talk about peace building, it reminds me of the history of Mexico, where colonization happened with a narrative of, well, they can't leave alone together because they fight too much, so we're going to take over. And I do think that there's colonialist practices in peace building that are actually around taking more power and digging the hole deeper. So yeah, and a similar situation happens with whenever you have people that are not in the front lines, that are not directly connected to environmental problems, solve those environmental problems. And we see it every day. What is it that gives you hope now? That nature is incredibly resilient. So the moment that you put very little resources to try to protect nature, nature then does the homework. And I love that. I love seeing how in a very destroyed, eroded land, there's people that are actually giving life to it back, and then connecting with Earth's power to just move forward. So I feel a lot of hope when I see that.
Sanam That's wonderful. That reminds me, there was a ceasefire in Aleppo, back in the height of the war at some point. And within a day, the birds had come back and people could hear. And so peace is the norm. It's like peace and life.
Laura Garcia Yeah. Yeah. Nature wants health and it will fight for it. We just need to give it a chance.
Sanam This was If You Were In Charge, a podcast brought to you by ICANN, the International Civil Society Action Network. Get in touch and tell us what you think at info at ICANNpeacework.org and follow our newsletter. Like and subscribe and please tell everybody else who might like the show. My thanks to ADA Productions for making the show possible, to Little Monster Media for our music, and of course to my amazing co-host, Kavita Nandini Ramdas. And finally, to all of you for listening. We'll be back soon. Thank you.