Accelerating the world’s shift away from fossil fuels will require strengthening frontline communities’ ability to say to “no” to fossil fuels and “yes” to sustainable alternatives. The ability to say “no” is increasingly under threat from repressive governments and fossil fuel companies. In this session, we will hear from Indigenous and minority communities from the Amazon and Mekong regions about challenges they’ve faced and lessons learned from their work. We will also discuss ways the international community and Global North can provide allyship to their struggles to defend their communities and the planet.
This session was curated in partnership with EarthRights International.
Director of Strategic Impact and Campaigns, EarthRights International
Keith Slack is Director of Strategy and Campaigns at EarthRights International. Prior to joining EarthRights, Keith spent nearly two decades building and directing Oxfam America’s Extractive Industries Global Program. In that role, he led campaigns and advocacy to promote greater transparency and respect for the human rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities. Keith worked previously for the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights and in the human rights program of Catholic Relief Services’ Peru office. He served as a nonresident fellow at the Carnegie Council on Ethics in International Affairs. Keith has published numerous peer-reviewed articles on human rights and natural resource issues. He holds a master’s degree in international relations with a focus in international human rights law from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a BA in political science from Vassar College.
Co-Founder & Executive Director, EarthRights International
Ka Hsaw Wa is Co-founder and Executive Director of EarthRights International and a member of the Karen ethnic nationality from Myanmar (Burma). He received his M.A. from the School for International Training in Intercultural Leadership and Management. In 1988 after he was captured and tortured, he participated in the 1988 student uprising calling for human rights, democracy and an end to military rule. Afterwards, he traveled clandestinely to remote areas of Burma to interview witnesses and victims of human rights abuses and exposed these abuses to the international community.
In the course of this investigation, he realized that his people face another threat—that of transnational corporate investment aimed at exploiting Burma’s resources and learned that these abuses were all connected to the
exploitation of natural resources in the name of development. In response, Ka Hsaw Wa and two American lawyers founded ERI in 1995. Ka Hsaw Wa has received the Goldman Environmental Prize, the Reebok
Human Rights Award, the Conde Nast Environmental Award, the Sting and Trudie Styler Award for Human Rights and the Environment, and the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership.
