"They said ‘Palestine is out of scope’"

A few weeks ago I spoke to Kavita Naidu, a climate campaigner who resigned from Climate Action Network Australia in January over the organisation’s silence on Gaza.

Now another climate campaigner has come forward, echoing many of Naidu’s criticisms of Australia’s mainstream climate movement — that the near-silence on Gaza from many climate organisations is a symptom of systemic racism across the wider movement, and that people of colour within the movement are tokenised and silenced. They’ve asked that they and their former organisation remain anonymous.

Felice* is an architect who has been organising in a faith-based climate movement for nearly five years. Recently they made the decision to resign after the organisation repeatedly refused to take a stance on Israel’s war on Gaza, support growing calls for a ceasefire, or even to encourage respectful and compassionate conversations about the issue.

“It’s untenable for me to be there and use my Muslim identity to organise and show politicians and whoever else that Muslims care about climate,” Felice says. “Rather than staying somewhere and trying to change an entrenched paradigm from within, I’d rather go out and find other people who I don’t need to convince to do the right thing. I feel that process is such a waste of time and energy. It doesn’t get anywhere.”