The activists were described in their press release as "climbers", as some mountaineering skills were required to reach the spot where they aimed to hang the banner at the top of a beachfront high-rise hotel hosting a World Business Council conference. But the Durban [South Africa] municipality said the activists should have gotten permission and had four of the foreign activists deported - which only brought further publicity to their cause of combating climate change.
Climbing is nothing new to Greenpeace. Its executive director, Durban-born Kumi Naidoo, scaled an oilrig off the coast of Greenland earlier this year to protest drilling for fossil fuels in the Arctic.
African environmental groups GroundWork and Earthlife Africa joined their international counterparts Urgewald and BankTrack in another creative protest in the opening week of COP17, one that relied less on physical prowess than wit. In condemning banks for financing coal exploitation, their alleged crime was described as "bankrolling" climate change - pun definitely intended. Of the two African banks cited as the biggest "climate killers", South Africa's Standard Bank and Nedbank, the environmental NGOs were heartened that at least one bank took the accusations seriously enough to issue a formal response.
Nedbank countered the environmentalists' slogans with its own "Go Green!" approach, pointing to a set of standards for managing environmental risks in project financing. These voluntary guidelines were dismissed as more "greenwashing" by the accused financiers of dirty energy.
The battle of the slogans continues. Most ubiquitous, in conference banners and shouted at protests seems to be: "Keep the coal in the hole, keep the oil in the soil!" An add-on, referring to the Canadian tar sands controversy, is "Keep the tar sands in the land!"
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