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“We do not believe we have the skills"
Climate CEO's leaked admission on Palestine
Alex McKinnon
February 14, 2024
A couple of weeks ago I published an interview with climate activist Kavita Naidu, who publicly resigned as Climate Action Network Australia’s Senior Pacific Strategist in January due to CANA’s silence on Palestine and Gaza.
In October CANA abstained from signing a statement by Climate Action Network International calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Naidu claimed CANA management had pressured staff members to avoid discussion of Gaza and Palestine in CANAchat, an internal chat group for employees of CANA’s 150+ member organisations.
In a leaked email sent on October 25, then-acting CANA CEO Barry Traill asked CANAchat members “to now *stop* making commentary on the issue on this forum- CANAchat, and to consider carefully how they discuss this in any public forum in our movement”.
Naidu also said the following about how the issue of Gaza had exposed the “white supremacy” in the mainstream climate movement:
There’s a huge fracture between the youth, the people of colour, the Indigenous and the queer members of CANA and who I call the stiff-necks — usually just privileged older white cishet men and women.
The mainstream climate movement in Australia is a very polite, corporatised space. It doesn’t feel like a movement — 95% of the focus is on mitigation, electoral power and replacing fossil fuels with renewable electricity. The only people who talk about justice, human rights and land are the Indigenous activists, those of colour and some of the younger and more progressive people.
In an email sent to CANAchat members yesterday, CANA CEO Glen Klatovsky addressed the leak and the broader issue of CANA’s silence on Gaza.
“As CANA CEO, I want to recognise we have struggled to respond adequately to this issue of justice, which is a priority for many of our members,” Klatovsky said. “I acknowledge the time it has taken for our response, and I apologise unreservedly for any harm caused due to our actions or as a result of messages shared on CANAchat.”
Klatovsky also admitted to personally vetting messages posted by CANAchat members for references to Israel, Palestine or Gaza.
“I have been moderating messages before they are published in the listserv,” Klatovsky said. “The intent was to de-escalate conflict within the movement, but I acknowledge this approach is problematic.”
On February 1, I sent a list of questions to CANA asking, among other things, if Klatovsky “has been deleting subsequent references to Israel, Gaza and Palestine from CANAchat”. A day later Klatovsky replied that “CANA is not going to make any comment”.
Klatovsky also made a concerning admission regarding CANA’s current ability to support staff members that speak out about Palestine.
Klatovsky said the next scheduled retreat for the leaders of CANA’s “committed groups” — those CANA member organisations that pay for “the highest level of membership available” — would not formally discuss the climate movement’s position on Gaza and Palestine as “we do not believe we have the skills, representation or preparation time to safely facilitate a session that explicitly addresses our movement’s engagement with issues arising from the Israel/Palestine conflict”.
Committed CANA member organisations who have attended past CANA retreats include Greenpeace, Oxfam, the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Sunrise Movement, WWF and the Climate Justice Union.
Klatovsky also outlined the steps CANA is taking to address this lack of ability, including “reaching out to experts in conflict transformation and deep democracy”. I don’t know what that means either.
I’ll have more on the climate movement’s ongoing struggle to adequately respond to Israel’s war on Gaza next week.
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