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Non-government organisations from Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have signed an open letter urging Australia to stop new fossil gas projects.

The letter was published as a full-page advertisement in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times, coordinated by The Australia Institute.

The groups say that Asia’s energy systems are shifting to use more renewable energy and less gas. They highlight that new gas projects will exacerbate the climate crisis, undermine regional security and work against the interests of both Asia and Australia.

Key points in the open letter:

• Japan can achieve 90% clean electricity by 2035 and already on-sells Australian gas to third countries.
• Solar and wind are already cheaper than gas-fired electricity in Korea, with energy storage costs also declining quickly.
• Taiwan is implementing a carbon price and already has a rooftop solar mandate, policies that will reduce the role of gas in its energy system.

“This letter is about telling Australians that Asia is serious about climate action and phasing out fossil fuels,” said Yasuko Suzuki of Japan’s Kiko Network of community-based climate groups.

“The science is as clear in Asia as it is in Australia — real climate action means no new fossil gas.”

“The dirty gas projects proposed by Japanese companies in Australia will damage communities in Australia, Japan and around the world,” said Ayumi Fukakusa from Friends of the Earth, Japan.

On this episode of After America, Allan Behm, Director of the International & Security Affairs program at the Australia Institute, joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the situation in the Middle East and the sense of helplessness creeping into American policymaking.

This discussion was recorded on Friday 4 October 2024 and things may have changed since recording.

Guest: Allan Behm, Director, International & Security Affairs program, the Australia Institute // @Mirandaprorsus

Host: Emma Shortis, Senior Research for International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @EmmaShortis

Show notes:

The Odd Couple: the Australia-America relationship by Allan Behm (2024)

‘In a largely uneventful and inconsequential US vice presidential debate, no one can claim victory’ by Emma Shortis, The Conversation (October 2024)

Theme music: Blue Dot Sessions

Introduction

The Anti-Trans Disinformation Handbook is for the media, civil society, and Governments for combating anti-trans disinformation.

Trans and gender diverse people deserve the freedom to be themselves, to enjoy the same rights and protections as everyone else, and to feel safe in their communities.

However, in recent years, our community has increasingly become the target of campaigns to erode our rights, our access to health care, and our freedom to live our lives happily and authentically. A major strategy of these campaigns is disinformation.

Disinformation is false information and media, produced with the intention to mislead the reader, often for political purposes. Anti-trans groups spread disinformation about trans and gender diverse people, our health care, and rights in order to sway public opinion and policy against the trans community.

Their goal is to prevent our community from having the freedom to live our lives, and to build popular support for a highly regressive political agenda. Many of the groups involved in anti-trans campaigns are also opposed to reproductive rights, LGBTSBIQA+ equality, and an inclusive society.

The state of Missouri’s expert witnesses in defending their ban on gender affirming care for minors are far from reputable sources.

Introduction

How do you build a broad coalition, a united front, despite frictions in ideology and political positioning? Are there examples from other countries that have been able to do this?

The above question was posed to members of the Global Grassroots Support Network (GGSN) and they have generously shared their insights with you below.

Community Answers

Recognize that Broad Coalitions are not Long-term

I can tell you first hand, it is impossible to maintain a broad coalition for a long period of time. Unless you find some sponsor who’s willing to pay and keep everybody together. Other than that, coalitions get formed when there’s a common cause. You find the common denominator.

What is it that brings you all together, and that’s what you can work on. It’s going to have to be something that’s very general and vague, because the more specific you get, the more particular it gets to each individual group. So at this point you’re wanting to build on ideology.

A full-page advertisement published this morning by the Australia Institute warns that government policies and actions are overwhelmingly “nature negative” despite the NSW and Federal governments co-hosting the world’s first “Global Nature Positive Summit” in Sydney today.

Published this morning in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times, the advertisement highlights that Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek approved extensions to three major coal mines covering an area almost the size of Sydney just weeks before the summit.

Helen Clark ONZ joins Dr Emma Shortis on this episode of After America to discuss the US-China relationship and how Australia and New Zealand can play a constructive role in the Asia Pacific.

This discussion was recorded on Wednesday 2 October 2024 and things may have changed since recording.

Join President José Ramos-Horta at 6pm AEDT, Tuesday 8 October for an evening of conversation at the Sydney Opera House, presented by the Australia Institute as part of its 30 Years of Big Ideas.

Guest: The Rt Hon Helen Clark ONZ, former Prime Minister of New Zealand and United Nations Development Programme Administrator // @HelenClarkNZ

Host: Emma Shortis, Senior Research for International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @EmmaShortis

Show notes:

‘In a largely uneventful and inconsequential US vice presidential debate, no one can claim victory’ by Emma Shortis, The Conversation (October 2024)

Introduction

How do we make it accessible and support individuals to share their stories, especially if they do not feel safe doing so?

The above question was posed to members of the Global Grassroots Support Network (GGSN) and they have generously shared their insights with you below.

Community Answers

1. Identify the Purpose for Sharing and Risks Involved

I think it is helpful to firstly be clear on what people want to get out of it e.g. you can’t promise they’ll get a policy change from sharing their lived experience. You need to provide a high level of support with a focus appropriate to what the person wants to get out of it.

They’ll need different support (like comms training for the first one, or therapeutic support for the second one).

Don’t underestimate how emotional it might be even if they don’t expect it, include aftercare as part of the package.

Make sure there is a clear risk assessment and do it with the person so they can think through the risks and safety plan/ decide not to share their story.

Hyeyoon Jung and Oliver Hannaoui

As interest in understanding the economic impacts of climate change grows, the climate economics and finance literature has developed a number of indices to quantify climate risks. Various approaches have been employed, utilizing firm-level emissions data, financial market data (from equity and derivatives markets), or textual data. Focusing on the latter approach, we conduct descriptive analyses of six text-based climate risk indices from published or well-cited papers. In this blog post, we highlight the differences and commonalities across these indices.

Introduction

How do you simplify your message and discourse for your target group when creating a campaign message?

As civil society organizations, we sometimes create our message in a format that is difficult to understand to create a rights-oriented language, which creates a barrier to access to our campaign target group. 

The above question was posed to members of the Global Grassroots Support Network (GGSN) and they have generously shared their insights with you below.

A guide to the Coalition Building topic in the Commons Social Change Library, including key concepts. 

Introduction

Welcome to the Coalition Building topic in the Commons Social Change Library. To help navigate within the broad scope of this topic, we start by highlighting some key concepts used to discuss coalitions. Following this, we have collated introductory resources, frameworks, tools and guides for building capacity in coalition relationships, resources for understanding the roles and tensions that can emerge in coalitions, and examples that highlight lessons for building coalitions that contribute to lasting change.

We are very grateful to have learned from Dr. Anna Szilágyi, a long-term partner and friend of Over Zero, about the power of labels, metaphors, and divisive linguistics in either facilitating conflict or unlocking our shared humanity.

Dr. Szilágyi is an expert in communication, media, and politics who explores the linguistic dynamics of public speech and private interactions. She has taught classes at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Hong Kong, Central European University in Budapest, and Saint Louis University in Madrid. Her writings have appeared in academic journals and books, including The Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict and Advances in the History of Rhetoric. She has also written articles and provided commentaries for media outlets in different parts of the world, including Global Voices, Público, Quartz, Rappler, and Vice News. Her global educational program, “Words Break Bones” equips journalists, professionals, and citizens with crucial linguistic skills to detect and counter patterns of wounding, divisive, and discriminatory speech.

Read the full interview here.

We look forward to continuing to bring you interviews from relevant experts across research and practice.

Covering political violence and violent extremism can be a fraught endeavor for the media. In an environment of polarization, social tension, and widespread misinformation, it is essential but also challenging to avoid inadvertently spreading false narratives, fueling conflict, or providing platforms to extremists.

In partnership with Protect Democracy, we’re working with organizations like the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection to compile best practices into guides for newsrooms looking to accurately and responsibly cover political violence and violent extremism in a range of contexts.  

Each guide includes core principles, key questions reporters and editors can ask to guide coverage, examples of thoughtful coverage from a range of outlets, and links to additional resources on conflict sensitive reporting.

Additional guides will be posted on this page as they are developed. 

Media Guides:

• Reporting on Political Violence Risks Throughout the Election Cycle

This report explores the connection between two escalating crises: the systematic targeting of LGBTQ communities and democratic backsliding worldwide.

It examines how the rhetorical, political, and physical attacks targeting the LGBTQ community are, in addition to a critical rights issue, a key tactic in the authoritarian playbook, cloaking themselves as culture war politics as usual.

LGBTQ scapegoating is not random. It is not a natural consequence of polarization or an expected backlash to rights advancements, but rather a strategy to deepen divisions and erode democracy.

To care about democracy is to care about LGBTQ scapegoating.

Read Decoding LGBTQ Scapegoating here.

The report provides a framework for better understanding LGBTQ scapegoating, identifying its political goals, and distinguishing it from “politics as usual.” 

It outlines six goals of LGBTQ scapegoating: 

• Stigmatize: By censoring discussions and depictions of marginalized groups, perpetrators further stigmatize them, reinforcing their status as scapegoats.

This refresher guide focuses on Over Zero’s core area of expertise: Unpacking the narrative patterns and underlying psychosocial dynamics that precede and occur throughout identity-based violence.

We release this guide in the wake of Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel and the Israeli government’s ongoing assault on Gaza – violence that has collectively killed tens of thousands and displaced millions more. As we’ve supported our partners in better understanding and addressing the dangerous narratives playing out in the United States related to this violence, they have requested written guidance on the core concepts surrounding communications and violence for their work and for personal reflection.

Our hope is that this guide is a very small contribution in supporting partners who are leading their communities in finding a different way forward, toward rejecting identity-based violence and acknowledging, valuing, and celebrating our shared humanity. We share it with humility and compassion, noting that the violence abroad and here at home affects many of our partners and their communities directly.

Despite the national unity that initially followed the January 6 Capitol insurrection, conversations surrounding the attack quickly became politicized and the subject of heated disinformation as polarized narratives about “what happened” entrenched.

Developing a shared narrative of and ensuring accountability for political violence is critical for its non-recurrence. Over Zero, in partnership with New America’s New Models of Policy Change Initiative and Protect Democracy, conducted research to: 1) better understand how Americans are thinking about the events of January 6th, and 2) identify alternative inroads for engaging cross-partisan Americans in conversations surrounding January 6 and related accountability efforts. .

Amid the Select Committee’s subpoena to Donald Trump and continued conversations on accountability for January 6, we are sharing a recent report: Sacred Values, Willingness to Sacrifice, and Accountability for the Capitol Insurrection: Exploring How Deeply and Why Americans Hold Their January 6-Related Views.

In partnership with Protect Democracy, Laura Livingston co-authored Towards Non-Recurrence: Accountability Options for Trump-Era Transgressions. This paper applies historical case studies and transitional justice frameworks to explore the various considerations and tradeoffs that should inform whether and how the U.S. pursues accountability for wrongdoing that occurred during the Trump administration. It grapples with a common question: What measures could be taken to ensure transgressions—from criminal misconduct to democratic norm violations—do not recur?   

The paper specifically interrogates the following: 

• What do we mean by ‘accountability’?

• How would accountability work towards non-recurrence?

• What are the risks and limitations of an accountability scheme?

• Which kinds of transgressions should be held to account?

• Which instruments are available to generate accountability?

• Who are the appropriate parties to pursue accountability?

• Who must legitimize an accountability scheme?   

  Read the full paper here.

Working paper authored by Rachel Brown, Sadia Hameed, Heather Hurlburt, Laura Livingston, and Alexandra Stark. Access the full paper here.

U.S. philanthropy is keenly focused on re-invigorating and renovating democracy, supporting a wide range of actors and approaches. Successful strategies to strengthen formal and informal institutions, and reverse polarization, will need to include strategies to prevent and build resilience against political violence. International experience teaches that the risks of violence endure—and sometimes reach their heights—amidst efforts to reform dysfunctional systems and address democratic backsliding.

In other words, rising risk of political violence is not just an outcome of democratic failure, but a side effect of efforts at democratic renewal. As such, philanthropy needs to prepare to minimize and mitigate violence as part of longer-term efforts to renew U.S. institutions and build bridges among American communities.

In this paper for the National Endowment for Democracy, Laura Livingston highlights the offline, contextual dynamics that contribute to the resonance, spread, and impact of online misinformation, and implications for civil society responses. Access the full paper here.

“Misinformation, while normally consumed online, is not purely an online problem. Offline dynamics like intergroup tensions, competing world views, and institutional distrust compounds, reinforces, and amplifies the particular features of social media that serve to spread misinformation. Solutions to curtail the spread of disinformation need to account for the offline context that fuels online content.”

Access the full paper here.

The report, “What Immigration Issues Do Americans Hold Sacred? A Psychological Journey into Attitudes Towards Immigrants,” digs deeply into how respondents think about immigration issues through the lens of sacred values, threats, norms, and social identity. Download the full report here.

Undertaken in partnership with the Center for Inclusion and Belonging at the American Immigration Council, we ran a nationally representative survey to assess whether immigration issues are considered sacred (e.g., non-negotiable moral rules rather than values that can be deliberated) by Americans today, and if so, why? This report describes sacralization patterns across 14 immigration issues and examines Americans' mental models on the subject, revealing how social identity, perceptions of immigration threat, and other aspects of one's experience and worldview influence sacralization of immigration stances.

Co-authored by Nichole Argo, PhD (Over Zero) and Kate Jassin, PhD.

In this guest blog post for Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement (PACE), Laura Livingston and Rachel Brown provide an overview of the vulnerabilities that brought us to January 6 and urgent priorities for philanthropy in stemming future risks for political violence.

“In the wake of the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection, addressing risks for political violence remains an urgent priority. Preventing future violence requires understanding and creating resilience to the dynamics and vulnerabilities that brought us to the current moment.”

Access the blog post here.

In the immediate wake of the January 6th insurrection, Over Zero’s Dr. Nichole Argo, Rachel Brown, and Samantha Owens sat down with PACE to discuss what civil society groups and funders can do to mitigate the possibility of political violence in the immediate-term as well as near- and longer-term scenarios. Read the interview here.

“It’s important that messaging in this moment goes beyond condemning recent, specific acts of violence; it needs to tie these acts to a bigger picture, identifying them as the inevitable consequence of the sustained stoking division, fear, and distrust in democratic institutions by leaders in recent years.”

Read the full interview here.

Following the release of the U.S.-focused “Counteracting Dangerous Narratives in the Time of COVID-19” guide, Over Zero, in collaboration with Caleb Gichuhi, has developed a globally-focused set of resources on counteracting dangerous narratives in times of uncertainty, including the current COVID-19 pandemic. Access the full guide here and the workbook here.

As the pandemic and related economic downturns continue, we are witnessing intensifying narratives that demonize, scapegoat, and otherwise target marginalized groups. We’ve also seen governments and political elites use the pandemic as a pretense to tighten their grip on civil society, the press, and others working to support vulnerable populations. As questions abound surrounding how the vaccine will be distributed, these dynamics may further intensify and entrench. 

We also know that community leaders, civil society organizations, and individuals have shown incredible resilience in navigating and pushing back on these dynamics. These resources aim to support such efforts amidst periods of threat and uncertainty, including the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Foreign Affairs, Rachel Brown, Heather Hurlburt, and Alexandra Stark discuss how the coronavirus pandemic has heightened risks for political violence globally. Access the full article here.

“As the United States has witnessed over the past ten days, a public health crisis can highlight inequalities and contribute to domestic unrest. In fact, UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently warned the Security Council that the pandemic poses a significant threat to international peace and security.”

Access the full article here.

In the face of COVID-19, the actions of leaders — be they formal, informal, long-standing, or emerging leaders — will shape how we as a society respond to the challenges of this moment.

Over Zero has developed a guide — “Counteracting Dangerous Narratives in the Time of COVID-19” — for such leaders. Access the full guide here and the guide summary here.

This guide offers insights for analysis and action to prevent increased division and identity-based violence and other harms. It seeks to:

1) Equip leaders with additional tools to identify and understand the relationship between communication and group-targeted harm and violence, in part by illustrating how these dynamics are playing out in the face of COVID-19 thus far; and

2) Suggest ways in which leaders can prevent division, hatred, and violence amidst the increased risks created by COVID-19.

Access the full article here.

In a Lawfare article, Over Zero’s Regional Director, Europe, Laura Livingston, discusses how Hungary’s government has leveraged the coronavirus pandemic and group-targeted rhetoric to further consolidate power. 

‘In the face of what the U.N. labels “the most challenging crisis since World War II,” governments across the world have introduced sweeping measures purportedly aimed at containing the novel coronavirus. These policies span border closures, enhanced surveillance, dramatic speech and media restrictions, election postponements, and shuttering of legislatures and courts. While some forbearance of civil liberties is reasonable in the face of a grave threat, the pandemic has already served as an opportunity for would-be authoritarians to consolidate the power they have long coveted.’

Access the full article here.

Access “The Science of Polarization and Insights for Bridge-building” here.

Over Zero’s Director of Research and Field Advancement, Nichole Argo Ben Itzhak, writes on the science behind polarization and its implications for practice in a piece for Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement (PACE). This piece is adapted from a presentation to PACE members and grantees given during its Member Meeting in November 2019.

‘..for actors who seek to build bridges amidst polarization, using the lens of social identity and intergroup dynamics can enable you to better understand what may be able to be controlled or “nudged”, and what cannot. Bridge-building efforts focused on the end-goals of fostering “bipartisanship” or “civility” will likely not be sufficient…’

Much of the content in this blog draws upon a recent report by Over Zero and New America.

In September 2019, Over Zero convened civil society representatives from the Visegrád four or “V4” (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia) working to combat discrimination, xenophobia, hate speech, and other group-targeted rhetoric and violence. Access the report here.

This event took place as part of a series of convenings seeking to offer a regional lens to negative trends in the region – growing polarization, ethnic nationalism, and group-targeted rhetoric and violence – and promising strategies for pushing back. This report captures key discussion points and takeaways from the convening.

Access the report here.

In a Toda Peace Institute Policy Brief, Over Zero provides readers with approaches to counteract hateful and dangerous speech online and a deeper understanding of this speech and the factors that enable it to resonate, spread, and drive offline action.  

“Throughout history, as new channels for communication have emerged, they have tapped into and interacted with the surrounding context and dynamics, at times fomenting and amplifying intergroup tensions, protest movements, and violence - even genocide. Social media, as a new communication platform, inevitably impacts the information ecosystem and broader offline context. In so doing, these platforms create both challenges and opportunities for responding to harmful communications online.”

Policy paper by Dr. Nichole Argo Ben Itzhak, Rachel Brown, Heather Hurlburt, Laura Livingston, and Samantha Owens. Download the full paper here and the paper. summary here.

The rise of violence and hate speech, the increase in public rhetoric that seems to condone if not encourage violence, and the declining legitimacy of U.S. democratic institutions are all well-documented. The 2019-2020 period brings a set of political and cultural events — including the run-up to a U.S. presidential election and census — that will likely further escalate tensions and increase the risk of violence and instability. Research on international violence and peacebuilding reveal that a great deal can be done to prevent (and, if necessary, de-escalate) violence and increase resilience — if leaders with influence and resources are ready to face these challenges squarely now. With this in mind, this paper reviews insights and lessons learned from social science and international peacebuilding — positioning them amidst the specific U.S. experience — to identify and discuss those areas most likely to bolster U.S. resilience in the face of political violence.

We need not look to far-future hypothetical scenarios to understand the ways in which AI can cause harm: it is already happening. There is over a decade of case studies from around the world, research, analysis and recommendations to draw from. More than ever before, Australia is in a position to move from identifying problems and toward taking steps to remediate and mitigate them. Digital Rights Watch urges the committee to take this task seriously, and to recognise that there is nothing about AI that is inevitable. The government can—and should—intervene.

Critically, much of the AI hype—both negative and positive—serves the interests of companies who stand to profit the most from widespread adoption of their products in a low regulation environment. We should not allow our laws and policy to be shaped by AI Industry leaders for their own purposes, especially given that those leaders are generally not based in Australia, and represent a different set of values that do not always apply well in the Australian context.

You can read our full submission below: