Green Liberty in the boat of M4D

Green Liberty (Zaļā Brīvība)

The Green Liberty has been founded in 1991 and registered as a non-profit NGO in 1993 (then as the Green Library of Environmental Protection Club). In 2000, the organization re-registered with new name - Green Liberty.

Green Liberty’s mission is to develop a society where people live in harmony with each other and their environment. The Green Liberty aims at informing people about social and environmental implications of current trends in consumerism, trade and globalization; empowering people to make meaningful decisions connected with their lives directly and indirectly; and opposing abuses of power.

The Green Liberty organizes press briefings, conferences, exhibitions, public lectures, expositions, and runs webpage and online campaigns. Green Liberty publishes environmental information, organizes different cultural and environmental actions, as well as does studies on socio-environmental issues and works on sustainable development and lifestyles, development issues and particularly on fair trade, climate and energy and waste related issues. Green Liberty also advocates government on sustainable development and environmental policy integration in various sectoral policies.

Green Liberty has a longstanding experience working with issues about sustainable consumption. We have been involved in several projects related to the topic, e.g. EU 7^th FW funded project “Action Town” (http://action-town.eu/) looking for the ways NGOs can provide new insights for research in sustainable consumption and production with the goal of reaching absolute decoupling of economic growth from resource use. Green Liberty has published consumer guides (http://www.zb-zeme.lv/images/viss%20kopaa.pdf and http://www.zb-zeme.lv/images/stories/brosura_a6.pdf) on sustainable living and regularly worked with media to popularize sustainable living in society. We have also done several studies on sustainable consumption and related topics, e.g. „Current Status and recent changes in consumption and production patterns in Latvia”, background report for UNEP.

The Green Liberty participates in local and international networks (including CAN Europe, European environmental bureau, European Eco-Forum and FairFood) and co-operates with civic and state organizations in Latvia and abroad.

Role of the Green Liberty in the project

The Green Liberty among other organizations from four EU member states is Media4Development project partner. The role of the Green Liberty in this project is to cooperate with project partners and to implement joint and national activities involving media representatives, policy makers and anybody who is interested to raise general public awareness about global development issues, their connection to our lives and about the influence of our everyday choices on global challenges. To succeed in these tasks, the Green Liberty will participate in face-to-face meetings and virtual communication between the partners to give input on the agenda, to share best practices, to support each other, to contribute to the better achievement of the project results.

National activities organized by the Green Liberty in 2015

In 2015 the Green Liberty will organize a joint activity of the project – an international policy roundtable about financing for development. The roundtable is rather timely for Latvian policy makers, media and general public because of Latvian Presidency of the Council of the EU during the first part of this year. Thus, roundtable discussions are going to be directly linked with awareness of the EYD2015, strengthening the post-2015 agenda and engagement in issues of global importance that, among generating jobs and economic growth and developing the base for digital Europe is one of the priorities of the Latvian Presidency.

To reach general public and to bring development cooperation issues closer to people’s daily agendas the Green Liberty will provide several national activities: official and unofficial national meetings and discussions with policy makers, and campaigns in social media linked to EYD2015 thematic months involving policy makers. The Green Liberty will inform public and policy makers about general, EU level and national topical issues of development cooperation with the help of generated bulletins, articles and mass media supplements, media monitorings, and opinion pools.

Thus, the Green Liberty is responsible for national journalists’ participation in training and study trips, for Latvian national broadcasting companies and other corporations’ involvement, cooperation with national policy makers, and dialogue with general public.

Ask, share and participate: inga@zalabriviba.lv