The city that (almost) never sleeps, Oslo

31 May 2015

Neoka Naidoo blogs from her CAN Leadership Development Fellow study trip to Oslo this week. 

The almost 23 hours of travelling welcomed a beautiful end in Oslo. I had chills of excitement and nervousness coursing through me. There were many hurdles to conquer.

The first hurdle was addressing Norwegian civil society. Public speaking is not my forte but I was calm explaining to a room of 40 people about South Africa‘s energy battle and the sense of how renewable energy is perceived. I explained how South African’s energy is tightly interwoven with our development, and how this is used as an argument by the fossil fuel industry to peptuate our reliance on fossils fuels.

This was accepted and known by the civil society present even as a 1st world nation with an open government. The retail of fossil fuels riddles the Norwegian carbon ‘low’ record with blemishes that can’t be easily removed. Civil society plays a vital role in pointing this out and providing alternatives. With extended sunlight hours we were able to capitalize on working into the wee hours of the morning. We met with lots of different organisations: Zero, WWF Norway, Friends of the Earth Norway, Naturvernforbundet, Youth and Environment and ETC-group. The variation of the groups was great, and allowed us to get a variety of opinions. But think what I found more interesting was the fact we had some of the same fights.

One of the prominent examples is getting the government to divest the biggest pension fund in the world out of the fossil fuel industry. There was sustained pressure from civil society and whilst I was in Oslo there was the long awaited victory. The Parliament of Norway decided before their scheduled voting parliament that there would be measures to move the pension fund out the fossil fuel industry. Norway might midnight sun but the civil society are the ones that shines and this is just one example of how collaboration of like-minded people can achieve something unbelievable.

Norway might be a 1st world country but they are dealing with post-industrial issues that need to be addressed immediately.

I think I had a great realisation that as global civil society we have the same problems and we are not alone. We as a movement are addressing injustices and not just climate change related issues. We all know that ‘Growth for the sake of growth is the same ideology that the cancer cell uses.’ – Edward Abbey