Councillor Maya De Souza

Talking to young people - Green politics

2012-01-28T09:17:00.000Z

I had the pleasure of talking to the bright young girls at South Hampstead High School just last Friday about green politics. They were clearly knowledgeable about the environment as well as about current affairs. The Euro-zone crisis was top on their minds. But I soon realised that there is still a big gap between the idea of the environment being important and seeing it as a political issue.

To them green politics is about an issue that all accept is important and has to be dealt with - but what has it got to do with real politics? That's about real issues like the threat of insolvency to countries, jobs, growth etc. A resident made a related point to me at my surgery - that our talk about the environment is perceived as talking about trees and plants rather than people!

How far from the truth! I should have pointed out that wanting to put the environment to one side and talk about the pressing issues is a bit like wanting to talk about saving your new TV when your house is about to be washed away.

But its clear that we also need to explain better why action is necessary on the environment now and why it is interconnected with everything else. We need to explain why green politics is important not just some work on the environment as an add on.

To many of us it seems obvious. People live within an ecosystem - without it we cannot survive. For the 6bn people ( and expected to be 9bn by 2050) on a planet that is already exploited to its full, which suffers from water scarcity, fuel scarcity and real threats to food security to avoid conflict or famine or both we need to live very differently. Otherwise our fragile ecosystems will collapse.

And there is a way that does allow us to bring things into balance but it is one that challenges consumerism and the idea that owning more and more is the ultimate aim of human existence. It has a different perspective of human beings - as creative and social beings that achieve real well-being through friendship, family, community and creativity.

It places a high premium on a fair distribution of resources so that we don't need enormous amounts of growth so that just a little trickles down to the very poorest. It also places a high premium on respecting the world we live in and depend upon.

This means changing things so improve our democratic structures to challenge the power of the big corporations which are unable to look at the world through a different lens. It involves people coming together to say they want a different approach.

It means managing our economy so that we can ensure high enough levels of employment but without making the economy all about growth driven by advertising and a manic need to buy more and keep up with the neighbours. It means addressing a financial services sector that seeks higher and higher returns without an interest in the longer term, and ensuring that banks aren't so big that we have no choice other than to prop them up and we need a fairer system nationally and internationally. That's essential if we aren't going to be on a constant search for growth.

Thats' not to say that growth isn't needed for Africa - it is - nor that we don't need it now in the UK. We do need it to get out of recession.

So still more work to show why we need green politics and a green perspective not just an environmental policy as an adjunct to business as usual (or at least seeking to save business as usual).

Losing Small Wars, Frank Ledwidge

2012-01-28T08:03:00.001Z

This is a great book.....

Visit to India

2012-01-14T22:27:00.001Z

Just back from Goa (and a day in Mumbai). On a superficial level, at least, much has changed since my last visit 4 years ago with large amounts of construction - apartment blocks where not seen before and new roads some in slightly surprising places.

On the positive side, people do not seem unduly worried about finding work - hope I was talking to the right people as based on a slightly small sample of friends, people I bumped into, drivers, and the odd shack owner. At least in the tourist business all looks good. Now very often Russian tourists as well as Indian and western tourists. And some of the tourist areas despite like the Palolem strip though jammed from end to end (or almost because there is one protected area with amazing forest coming almost to the shoreline) seems reasonably well organised and the water clean.

There is also a new vibrant community of artists, writers and others. I went to a book launch at Litterati by a world renowned photographer Dayanita Singh, who now lives in an old house in my mother's village - and in fact previously the family house of her great uncle's family. It was a great setting outside in the garden at the back of another old Goa house - this one crammed with books and not just the old moth eaten, monsoon battered books that we would read as children in our parents house. The reading was attended by a collection of writers one even all the way from West Africa, another who is a well-known biographer of Graham Greene, but also architects (one of whom arrived in his electric car) and an assortment of the new Goa intelligentsia. And it’s an intelligentsia from all of India and from Goa too - cosmopolitan and breaching all those sectarian divides.

The old city of Panaji is now better protected and Fontainhas always a pretty part of the town near the old Rua D'Ourem reasonably well looked after but without being a dead village of holiday homes as we see far too often in the pretty old towns of the West. We visited architects here as well as going to a lovely little tea shop and outdoor restaurant. The old Portuguese Secretariat, previously the palace of Adil Khan an earlier ruler of Goa, is to be restored as well bringing this landmark building back into public use.

That was all the good part - and of course much much more! But there are also lots of challenges which it seems as if Goans are seeking to tackle but they are not easy to resolve. The constant talk is about corruption and a political system which operates through people building up vote banks by buying people over - jobs, money etc! How to break out of this system is the intractable problem that none of us know the answer to. Whilst Sri Anna Hazare goes on hunger strike for the whole of India, Goans struggle to figure out how to deal with this issue locally. My feeling is that we need political parties with a real clear mission, and by that I don't mean the BJP, but people who are putting forward a real platform not simply to be less corrupt than the last lot. In that way, perhaps they can build up a real following not simply one based on how much money one has to pay out. But we also need the people who constantly complain about the politicians not to expect them to bend the rules in their favour. So two limbs here - new political parties and a social compact amongst ordinary people. How much easier it is to say things than to get them done!

As you would expect, I noticed the environmental challenges too. The most obvious not surprisingly is the waste issue with huge amounts of waste strewn all over the place sadly even in some beautiful spots like the lake outside Karmali station where we went for some early morning birdwatching. Though there are some collection systems this doesn't seem to be the case in all places. And though there are some signs of waste being scavenged and recycled there is still a lot that isn’t. I wonder whether Goa doesn't need to be taxing plastic bottles or at least seeking to bring some sort of plant that uses recycled plastic as a resource into the area. Or otherwise even a waste to energy incinerator would be better than burning plastic in the fields! Lots of opportunities here and Goan politicians are aware of this - a very long serving politician who had been an Environment Minister said to me a few years back that he had tried to commission a waste to energy incinerator many years back but there had been too much opposition! It looks as if the NIMBY issue is a worldwide one!

I also worry about the water quality even in the sea especially on the long tourist strip in the north. It seems to be affected by the large number of boats in the area and possibly poor infrastructure in the surrounding area. But it’s still beautiful - and I’m sure action can be taken to improve it.

The destructive open cast mining system is temporarily halted as a result of public interest litigation. So well done to campaigners here and good results from the court system as well!

The other issue is highways construction which seems to continue – too much to gain here for the politicians with the potential for cuts and lots of contracts to award. The most worrying is widening of a national highway that cuts across this populated coastal strip. I fear that it will bring HGVs along this route cutting up villages and towns. Surely we don’t need a large highway through such a densely populated area! Local people have mixed feelings because of congested roads with some being keen and others worried about devastation to their areas.

The plans for additional smaller roads cutting across fields is also a worry to people who fear losing the last quiet tracts of land – and these can be beautiful with coconut trees and paddy fields, kingfishers and herons, mango and cashew blossom etc. I hope that just as with how waste can and should be dealt with, Goa leapfrogs the Western world and goes for a system of clean and quiet trains and maybe folding bicycles for journeys at either end. I fear this is a yearning for a quieter more peaceful era of my childhood holidays, but it will be so much more pleasant and safer too.

So I hope with courage, determination and imagination Goa manages to leapfrog the West in terms of systems of transport, waste, energy use etc. It has all the potential for doing so – with an educated and aware middle class, entrepreneurship, capital availability etc – and being at that crossroads where it is possible to take the path that avoids being locked into a system of high energy needs and other serious environmental problems.

Encountering Gaia

2011-03-06T12:30:00.002Z

Its Sunday today and finally some time to do some thinking and writing - mainly the Green view on Camden Council's environmental proposals: a new Sustainability Plan and a Transport Implementation Plan. Both major planks of a path to turning Camden into a greener society with a lighter footprint on this earth. We mustn't lose sight of this whilst the battle to protect the post-war welfare settlement continues.

But first, I look for some spiritual sustenance and pick up Stefan Harding's book on Gaia. We met him last year at a book festival in Keswick and I remember still his ability to marvel at the mountains in front of us and the flight of a bird of prey above us. His thesis is the Gaia hypothesis - the physical world and the biological world are not seperate and distinct but part of a system and it is by being in balance and the biological world sustaining this equilibrium of gases that the whole earth lives on.

He goes beyond James Lovelock and asks us to recognise this in our lives. He refers to the original Greek ideas, not so different from Indian (vedic) theory which see all matter as one.

"Gaia, mother of all,
the foundation, the oldest one,
I shall sing to Earth.

She feeds everything in the world.

Whoever you are,
whether you move upon her sacred ground,
or whether you go along the paths of the sea,
you that fly, it is she who nourishes you from her treaure store"

There are even better lines and words:

"From the eternal voic, Gaia danced forth and rolled herself into a spinning ball. She moulded mountains along her spine, valleys in the hollow of her flesh. A rhythmn of hills and stretching plains followed her contours. From her warm moisture She bore a gentle rain that fed her surface and bore life".

I like Harding's recommendations for one's personal life: "..find a special place outside where you can go on a regular basis to connect with the animate Earth....search for a place where you can spend time exploring and deepening your relationship to the great living being that is our planet. ...It might help to have several Gaia places, some less wild perhaps, closer to home, and otehrs further out in wilder country for extended visits and overnight communion under the sparkling light of the stars".

I resolve to walk up to Waterlow park when I am done and to sense nature once again, and to look for a summer holiday place that allows one some overnight communion under the sparkling light of the stars!

Resurgence: A Green Agenda for the Copenhagen Climate Summit

2009-10-06T08:08:00.005+01:00

The Resurgence Event held in Camden on 3rd October was an inspiring event with a whole range of knowledgeable and well-informed commentators, activists and politicians.

Crispin Tickell, former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, opened with the worrying if not new mesage that the world was crossing the boundary in a whole range of areas: from Climate Change to the nitrogen cycle, water availability and population. He spoke of the need leadership and bemoaned that feature of US politics where naked self interest still affects debate.

There was some optimism too - about the gains that China and India bring to the table as they are beginning to face the problems of climate change already.

He spoke of the importance of continued public pressure in the run up to Copenhagen, but wondered whether benign catastrophes would be necessary to push things along. Unfortunately, as Crispin Tickell pointed out it may take "benign catastrophes" to provide the impetus for change. It may take the actual expereince of the consequences of climate destabilization where we can see the link to climate change to help us address these grve issues.

He asked how we will cross the long and rickety division between science and policy? The key to this in his view are the Kyoto modalities or requirements, reviewing and reforming our energy systems and also our, water systems from reservoirs to drainage.

John Sauven, the head of Greenpeace bemoaned the fact that mainstream politicians and journalists don't have developed view of how to green our economies. Though some like, surprisingly enough, Adair Turner, ex-chief of the CBI, and Nick Stern, ex-Chief World Bank economist, do recognize that we need radical change and that we need to be moving away from pursuit of growth of GDP.

He made the point very clearly and forcefully that our current system based on the pursuit of self-interest by business and debt fuelled growth was is not in society's interest. The irony of the situation is that Gordon Brown, Greenspan and others, he explained, continue to retain their faith in this flawed system. And thats an important point that needs to be picked up on - its our current system with risk takers with a "I'll be gone, you'll be gone" attitude that needs to be changed. When will the leaders of the mainstream political parties wake up to this?

Later in the day, we had some excellent discussion about how we achieve this change. Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green Party, spoke about the Green New Deal as well as the need for a positive vision of a post-climate change world. George Marshall gave us environmentalists some real insight into how the ordinary person views the climate change debate and responds to this threat to their way of life by denial. It was obvious to all, if not already clear, that we needed to think much harder about how we get a much wider section of society seeking and pushing for change. Stephen Hale spoke about Green Alliance's 10 manifesto proposals which seek to develop a "common cause" across all the political parties.

I'd like to finish with Tony Juniper's excellent campaign which he is working on, on behalf of the Prince of Wales Rainforest project. A package has been put forward for addressing deforestation which leads to 1/5 of the worlds emissions - a massive contributor to climate change.

The aim of this is to address the deadlock which is expected in respect of the negotiations on Reducing Emissions from Climate Change (REDD), under the auspices of the UNFCC. This emergency package asks OECD governments to pledge action irrespective of what happens in Copenhagen. It would involve about £15 - 20 bill being spent over 5 yrs which should lead to 25% reduction in emissions worldwide. That is more than total emissions of UK and France plus others. It is apparently the cheapest way to get a big hit. Some OECD countries have alreadybought in: Norway, Brazil.

We should all sign up on line to persuade world leaders to do this in time for Copenhagen. http://www.rainforestsos.org/ or see http://www.princesrainforestsproject.org/blog/category/deforestation

Add links: Resurgence and REDD

2009 - the Year of the Environment

2009-01-01T23:19:00.002Z

2009 needs to be the year of the environment - the dawn of a Green era.

Please watch Rupert Read (propospective Green MEP for East of England) explaining why acting collectively as well as individually is essential if you want real change.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=OLG4eXHthao&fmt=18

Leading Women - the Green New Deal

2008-12-28T19:32:00.001Z

It is several months now since the Green Party elected its first Green Leader, Caroline Lucas MEP. Caroline has spent much of this time explaining the importance of the Green New Deal a strategy for taking us out of recession, addressing long term structural problems with our banking system and ensuring the nation remains working. Along with other renowned Green thinkers and activists, "the Green New Deal Group", a set of policies have been put together and in my view are crucial to our recovery.
The Green New Deal takes us back to the Roosevelt years when the US struggled to get out of the recession which saw millions lose their jobs and people flee their homes often as a result of repossession by banks and head West looking for work. This time the "Green New Deal" seeks to address a set of problems: climate change, the credit crunch and impending recession.
Job creation would be promoted and climate change combatted through investment in the green energy sector: energy efficiency and renewables. By raising the standards of insulation in our homes not only will we have higher levels of comfort and lower fuel bills but we will also reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions. Combined with seeking to make every building a source of energy through solar panels, ground source heat pumps etc even more can be done to combat climate change.
The tools would be, not only awareness raising and a small fund for subsidies, but a large £50bn fund combined crucially with skills training. An Oil Legacy Fund is proposed, paid for by a windfall tax on energy companies, which would pay for this.
And for longer term structural security banking reform is proposed which will involve separating investment banks from retail banks and tightening regulation all round.
What does this mean to me as a councillor working at a local level? It means pushing for an integrated approach by Camden which involves investing in insulation and renewables levering in money from energy companies to pay for this but also investing in and ensuring we have appropriate skills training. We have a vast deficiency in people who are able to insulated your floors or put in good quality double-glazing. Camden could be and should be doing more to use what will be a fallow period to train people up to take on these jobs. Our Green MEP Jean Lambert has also been working to have the training agenda included Europe wide (see Jean's new report "Green Work: Employment and Skills - the Climate Change Challenge" http://www.jeanlambertmep.org.uk/reports_publication.php) . This is what the Greens are asking for within Camden. We have yet to see a commitment by the Lib-Dem/Conservative administration to adopt this forward-looking integrated approach.

The Standing Committee for the Muslim Community in Camden

2008-08-16T17:21:00.004+01:00

I was invited to speak at the inaugural meeting of Camden's new Committe for Muslim Organisations which took place last Friday. I addressed the meeting along with our local MP, Frank Dobson. It was a good opportunity to make contact with a full range of organisations from different Bangladeshi community groups to Somali groups too, and useful to get a good understanding of the issues that are a concern to them.

I spoke about worklessness levels especially for women which is one of the major problems in the large Bangladeshi community. The audience recognised this as an issue as well as male unemployment. They were very responsive and clear about what they saw as solutions. They key solution for them was ensuring a skills match amongst the local BME community and the jobs that were available in the area - especially the construction sector. They did not know that a construction training centre had been set up in Kings X for just this purpose. Unbelievably this did not seem to have been communicated to these local organisations.

Other issues for the community included after school or supplementary education for their children to raise their educational levels, provision of halal meat in schools, a burial ground for muslims and a mosque and cultural centre. There has to date been cross-party support for the mosque but it looks as if the other parties are dragging their feet on finding some land. I offered to play a part in pushing the Council to find some land possibly through a s.106 planning agreement in relation to the new Euston development.

All in all it was a great evening for me - it was good to spend some time with fellow immigrants from the sub-continent and explore the issues that affect immigrants in London and try and work together to improve their situation.

Justice for Ethnic Minority Lawyers

2008-08-16T14:55:00.001+01:00

A report, published by Lord Ouseley this week, showed that black and minority ethnic lawyers are disproportionately targeted by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority.

It highlights the continuing presence of discrimination in many areas of society,and that much work is still needed before organisations like the SRA can claim to be truly fair and even-handed.

As both a lawyer and a member of the government's 14-strong Black,Asian and Minority Ethnic Women Councillors' Taskforce, I felt it was important that I responded to this report.

I would like to see the Law Society, the SRA and organisations representing BME solicitors work together to tackle these problems and show other organisations what can be done.

Rather shockingly, the Ouseley Review found 'evidence of some stereotyping' within the SRA, which led to an assumption of guilt in respect of lawyers from some communities even before an investigation had begun. It also pointed to the focus of regulation on sole practitioners (a higher proportion of black and Asian lawyers are sole practitioners) as a reason for this discrimination.

It found evidence of a greater proportion of BME solicitors referred to the Solicitors Disciplinary Board, a greater proportion of cases where a decision was made to intervene in the practice and a disproportionate number barred from student applications or admission to the roll.

While making clear its findings of institutional racism, the report also makes a broad range of recommendations to help eliminate this,from applying equality and diversity strategies to working with the Law Society to develop better systems of support and guidance.

The upside of this review is that it's clear that the public sector equality duties, which have led to impact assessments being carried out, are leading to proper investigation of practices that would previously remain hidden - something that members of the public suspect but cannot establish.

It also reveals how affected we all are by stereotypes of different communities and how this affects the ability of people to be scrupulously fair. Being fair and even-handed is something that we in the UK pride ourselves on and I hope that this report will lead to consideration as to how we can surmount this problem if we are to be a fair multi-cultural society.

For the legal profession it also raises other issues - why do more ethnic minorities become sole practitioners? What are the barriers to them achieving success in larger firms and how can this be tackled? Do sole practitioners require greater assistance and support?

This issue of support and guidance is of increasing importance as fees for legal aid practitioners are cut and lawyers in this sector, who are disproportionately BME, will have to operate on lower incomes.

There is a lot more work to be done to address these issues as well as the disproportionate representation in certain aspects of work of the SRA. I hope to see the Law Society, the SRA and organizations representing BME solicitors work together to tackle these problems and show other organisations what can be done.

Statement for Equality and Diversity Co-ordinator

2008-08-02T11:21:00.001+01:00

I am standing for the Executive, for the post of Equality and Diversity Co-ordinator. This is my official statement, that will go out with the ballot.

A committed Councillor & activist

As a committed Green Party Councillor and activist I am hugely excited by the creation of this new position on the Party’s Executive.

Working to increase women BME councillors

I have recently been appointed to a Government Equalities Office national taskforce. This seeks specifically to increase the number of women BME councillors in England and Wales, and the opportunity to dovetail this role with that of Green Party Equality & Diversity Coordinator would be exceptional.

Representing all groups  facing discrimination

I am ambitious for the role and would want diversity to mean all diversities. I would work to develop for the Party both internal and external facing strategies, helping it to reflect better all sectors of society as well as widening its local and national policy engagements with them.

Working for rights, Trades Unions & against discrimination

Currently I work as an advisory lawyer for Defra, on policy secondment to their soil protection program. I established a diversity group in Defra Legal and am currently a member of the Natural Environment Group's Diversity Group.

My other relevant experience includes:

Working for a Southall Monitoring Group speaking for minorities, especially Asian and Somali, in seeking to address problems of racial violence, domestic violence and employment discrimination.
Working in a legal aid firm in Southall, helping to bring one of the first services claims under the Disability Discrimination Act 1996.
Working for Trade Union law firm Rowley Ashworth, where my casework included race, gender and disability discrimination cases.
Seeking to address high levels of worklessness in certain sectors of the population including BME, disabled and lone parents as one of three councilors on a Camden Worklessness Taskforce.

About me
I am 39 and of East African Asian background. After graduating from Oxford University with a 2.1 in Philosophy, Politics and Economics I went on to gain a Masters in Law at University College London (SOAS), where my submission papers included comparative human rights and ethnic minorities and the law.

I would be honoured to serve as the Equality and Diversity Coordinator on the Green Party Executive and delighted therefore if you would consider voting for me.

A new job on a national taskforce

2008-06-20T14:30:00.000+01:00

I am honoured to be appointed to the Black, Asian And Minority Ethnic Women Councillors Taskforce and I believe as a Green Party member with its strong history of gender equality I have a lot to contribute.

This is a cross-party taskforce comprised of key local councillors to seek to empower other women to get involved in local politics as well as to take this message of positive action and empowerment out to Councils and political parties

Women in the UK are under-represented in Councils and at Westminster. Women councillors currently only make up 29.3% of councillors. Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Women are particularly under-presented.

They make up 5.4% of the population but their share of local councillors is only 0.9% only around one sixth of that figure, a mere 168 out of 20,000 councillors. A significant increase is needed across the UK if women and especially ethnic minority women are to be properly represented in our local democracies.

Local councils make many decisions that have a huge impact on all of us – from housing policy, the environment and education and also nurseries, after-school clubs and youth services.

Women can’t afford to leave all these decisions to men – it is vital if all interests are to be properly taken into account and good decisions made that women play a full part in local politics. Councils of course are also a stepping stone towards entry into parliament where women remain woefully under-represented. We are yet to have an Asian woman MP in the UK and have just to ethnic minority women MPs!

I’m intending to work with my fellow councillors, whatever their background, to seek to empower women, ethnic minorities in particular, and bring this wealth of talent and experience into the formal structure of the Council as well as the informal structures such as the network of liaison groups and our area forums.

Key to this will be seeking to ensure greater involvement of all parts of our community – across class, gender and ethnic groups - in these structures and for good role models and mentors to step forward. I’d also like to take some of the successes of Camden where since early 2008 we have had 3 ethnic minority women councillors to other parts of the UK.

I hope to work on this project in particular with my colleagues Geethika Jayatilaka and Nancy Jirira who are both effective and well-respected councillors and I am glad to have received a strong message of support from the Leader of the Council Keith Moffitt.”

Leader of Camden Council Green Group

2008-05-15T11:45:00.000+01:00

In the Green Party, we do things differently. We share and rotate leadership positions. The philosophy of the party is about group leadership and team work and we seek to avoid unnecessary hierarchies.

So it was natural for Adrian to step down, and for me to take this position on, as leader of Green Party group on the Council.

Also, unlike the other parties we take gender balance very seriously and to date the Green Party nationally has always had a male and female principal speaker. In keeping with this, we have sought to ensure that we have this gender balance in our Council roles.

I am pleased to be taking over at this time when the Green Party is moving from strength to strength. Alex Goodman’s recent by-election victory in Highgate was an excellent result and we were pleased to win such a large Green majority.

But the amount of support and confidence we have all around the Borough is encouraging and inspiring. stands for.

Residents have a strong concern for the things we stand for including the environment, protecting our local heritage, parks, gardens and trees to our global environment and protecting the future of our children and grand children, to good public services for all and strong healthy communities with high levels of safety, quality youth services, affordable housing and vibrant high streets.

Cllrs Oliver, Goodman and I, will work in the next couple of years on what are the three major fronts for the Green Party: the environment, good public services and strong healthy communities. We will seek to show what can be done with real determination to make a change.

It won’t be an easy task but we are determined to show to residents that the faith they have placed in us is deserved. And we know we can do so if we tap into that rich vein of knowledge, experience and public commitment that we see in residents across the Borough. That is what makes us so proud to be Cllrs in this Borough.

New Green Councillor: Alex Goodman

2008-05-02T14:09:00.000+01:00

We have a new Councillor: Alex Goodman.

This is the first time we have won a by-election in London!

Alex has lived in the Highgate area for most of his life. Alex works in Camden, as a planning and human rights barrister based at Gray’s Inn. He specialises in environmental and local government law, working on cases that support his beliefs.

Find out more on Camden Green Party’s website.