Aim

Help us change the story at the Paris climate talks and give grassroots voices – ignored by governments and corporate media – a platform

Help us change the story at the Paris climate talks - New Internationalist appeal

“As a journalist from a developing country like the Philippines, there is an urgent need to know what will really happen in December. I really believe that there is a need for alternative media to cover how activists will be playing their role in the summit.” Iris Gonzalez, Filipino journalist.

The UN climate talks in Paris (COP21) are right around the corner. This is a big moment in the fight for climate justice. From 30 November to 11 December, world leaders and country negotiators meet. But we know that when they gather to thrash out a climate deal, corporate lobbyists and their media mouthpieces will be there in force. Representatives of frontline communities whose very survival is at stake have little or no influence over the outcome, and are sometimes even physically shut out of the talks, as happened at Copenhagen. Grassroots voices and positive solutions will be excluded, their stories side-stepped by corporate media – but we can help provide them with a platform.

What we want to do

We want to cover the real story – from inside the UN talks and on the streets – reporting the voices and perspectives that the mainstream media usually ignore and giving majority world voices more space to be heard. But we need your support to make this happen. With your help we will send Jess Worth and Danny Chivers (two New Internationalist reporters) and Richard Roaf (our filmmaker) to the Paris negotiations to report from the frontline on the real story of what’s going on. You can follow our journey everyday throughout the talks. Together, we’ll...

1. Provide a platform for marginalised voices: we’ll provide a platform for frontline communities and other voices you don’t usually hear, through interviews, short films and articles that they would write for New Internationalist
2. Explain what’s really going on: we’ll report from inside the talks and out on the streets from the protests and grassroots activists
3. Create an alternative media hub: this online hub will bring together alternative, grassroots and progressive perspectives on the Paris negotiations, and tell you how to support the campaign for climate justice if you can't get to Paris yourself

We know that the solutions to climate change are not going to come from inside the conference centre. They are going to come from the Indigenous people across North America who are stopping tar sands pipelines in their tracks and the communities who are putting democratic renewable energy into practice across the world. Working together, we can share these stories and others like them with a global audience and support majority world campaigners and grassroots activists from around the world. We will challenge the rich governments’ narrative and, unlike Copenhagen, we will move on from Paris inspired to build the powerful movement that we need to achieve climate justice.

This crowdfunder appeal will cover:

• £2,500 to pay frontline and majority world campaigners to write articles and blogs for us
• £2,302 to build, maintain and promote the media hub
• £750 to seek out and create multimedia content in advance of the talks
• £3,440 to produce and publish multimedia content every day from Paris
• £504 for travel & equipment costs, including recording tools for grassroots activists
• £500 to cover crowdfunders’ 5% fee

More about us

New Internationalist has been reporting from the frontline of the struggle for global justice for over 40 years. We’re a not for profit workers co-operative. We don’t have rich financial backers or big corporate advertisers and this means that our journalism is always completely independent. But it also means that if we are going to report properly from the grassroots in Paris we’re going to need your support. If you can contribute to this crowdfunder then you can work with us to amplify the voices and the ideas and the actions that don’t have the backing of the corporate media.

What others say about us

‘New Internationalist is independent, lively and properly provocative. Read it!’ Archbishop Desmond Tutu

‘If you would like to know something about what’s actually going on, rather than what people would like you to think was going on, then read the New Internationalist.’ Emma Thompson, actress and campaigner

'New Internationalist is full of intelligence and useful insights. Everyone who wants to understand the world should read it' George Monbiot, writer and environmental activist

Thank you for your support.

Please promote our appeal far and wide with friends, family and more!

Video credits: many thanks to envirobeat, Climate Tracker - GCCA, elleprovocateur, djhrocks09, ecolabs1, Platform London, Daniele Zanni https://www.flickr.com/photos/syymza/, Annette Bernhardt https://www.flickr.com/photos/mtumesoul/, Lauri Myllyvirta & Rico Shen.

This project successfully funded on 6th November 2015