A fresh face at Greenpeace.
Nov. 19th, 2009 03:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_future_modernes posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
politicsIntroducing Kumi Naidoo as new Greenpeace International Executive Director
Greenpeace has earned a reputation as the quintessential radical environmental group, facing down oil tankers and crusading against nuclear plants. Today, the organization’s new executive director, a veteran of racial justice struggles in Africa, is tipping the group’s focus from whaling ships to the disenfranchised communities of the global south.
Kumi Naidoo, who began his activist career as a teenager in apartheid South Africa, doesn’t mark a sea change in Greenpeace’s agenda. But he does represent a subtle shift toward an environmental perspective that harmonizes ecosystems with social systems. Environmentalists have often painted themselves into a corner as insular and overwhelmingly white. Now, with the Copenhagen conference approaching—and leaders bristling at emissions regulations just as they’ve skirted financial reform and the global food crisis—Naidoo occupies a vital pivot point between two movements, seeking combat ecological and economic exploitation simultaneously.
Greenpeace has earned a reputation as the quintessential radical environmental group, facing down oil tankers and crusading against nuclear plants. Today, the organization’s new executive director, a veteran of racial justice struggles in Africa, is tipping the group’s focus from whaling ships to the disenfranchised communities of the global south.
Kumi Naidoo, who began his activist career as a teenager in apartheid South Africa, doesn’t mark a sea change in Greenpeace’s agenda. But he does represent a subtle shift toward an environmental perspective that harmonizes ecosystems with social systems. Environmentalists have often painted themselves into a corner as insular and overwhelmingly white. Now, with the Copenhagen conference approaching—and leaders bristling at emissions regulations just as they’ve skirted financial reform and the global food crisis—Naidoo occupies a vital pivot point between two movements, seeking combat ecological and economic exploitation simultaneously.
