Blair Palese

Blair Palese has more than 25 years experience as a campaign and communications strategist for a broad range of environmental and human rights organisations internationally. She is co-founder and CEO of 350.org Australia, focusing on divestment from fossil fuel and halting new fossil fuel projects, and a communications advisor to the Antarctic Ocean Alliance, a coalition of 30 organisations working for large-scale marine protection in Antarctica.

Blair is also a writer and editor, including a role as Editor-in-Chief of Green Pages magazine in Australia from 2009 - 2011. She is on the board of Greenpeace Australia Pacific and was a founding committee member of Human Rights Watch in Australia. Her work in Australia has included consulting to a wide range of organsations including The Pew Enrivonment Group, the Climate Group, the Climate Institute, Planet Ark, Greenpeace Australia Pacific and as a chair for the Green Building Council of Australia. She has also worked for a range of companies including Climate Friendly and Ecos Corporation as well as government agencies the NSW Sustainable Energy Authoriy and BASIX, the NSW Government's Building Sustainbility Index. While at the Climate Institute, Blair co-authored the organisation's founding report "Top Ten Tipping Points on Climate Change". She has taken part in two consensus projects in Australia as the drafter of the outcome reports by citizens taking part in developing recommendations on the issues of how to regulate genetically modified food and on how to prepare for climate change impacts.

In 1998, Blair coordinated Greenpeace's international campaign to green the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, and co-authored "How Green the Games", an anlysis of the green initiatives of Sydney Olympic organiers. In 2008 she joined the Greenpeace team in China to review Beijing's environmental achievements and co-authored the report "China after the Olymics - Lessons from the Beijing Games" http://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/news/stories/climate-energy/2008/green/.

While in the UK in the 1990s, Blair was the Communications Director for Greenpeace International and Head of PR for The Body Shop globally. During that time she worked on campaigns including efforts to protect 19 Ogoni protesters threatened with execution for their participation in anti-Shell oil protests in Nigeria with human rights campaigner Richard Boele, efforts to halt French nuclear testing in the Pacific, preventing the dumping of Shell's Brent Spar oil platform at sea, the successful effort to ban radioactive waste dumping at sea and a global ban on international waste trade from developed to developing world nations with Greenpeace International. In 1996 Blair addressed the United Nation's Commission on Sustainable Development on the importance of media coverage to support efforts at solving major environmental issues.

As Communications Director for Greenpeace USA in Washington, DC, Blair worked on the successful ban of large-scale driftnet fishing in international waters and protecting Antarctica from development through an Antarctic Treaty agreement as part of Greenpeace's Antarctic World Park Base camapign.

She began her career as production manager for the Washington Monthly magazine and interned while at New York University at ABC News and ABC's Good Morning America.

Related

• "Climate Proofing Your Finances: making your money fossil free", May 2014, The Australia Institute, commissioned by 350.org Australia and Market Forces
• "Fossil Free Indexes, The Carbon Underground: The World’s Top 200 Public Companies, Ranked by the Carbon Content of their Fossil Fuel Reserves", April 2014.
• Climate Proofing Your Investments: moving funds out of fossil fuels", March 2014, The Australia Institute, commissioned by 350.org Australia and Market Forces.
• "Screening out Fossil Fuel Exposure from the ASX 200", March 2014, The Australia Institute, commissioned by 350.org Australia and Market Forces.
• Disconnected: ANZ’s Fossil Fuel Financing", December 2013, 350.org Australia, Market Forces and Greenpeace Australia Pacific.
• "Whitehaven Coal: Impacts Report", October 2013, 350.org Australia and Quit Coal.
• "Climate Institute founding report Top Ten Climate Change Tipping Points ""
• Vision for Circumpolar Protection", The Antarctic Ocean Alliance [1]
• "Green Cross Australia National Peoples' Assembly report on climate change mitigation and preparedness in Australia ""
• "First Consensus Conference citizens' report on GMO foods in Australia ""
• "Greenwashing an Olympic-Sized Toxic Dump""
• "Palese Says Beder Was "Outdated, Incorrect and Unworthy""
• "Facts vs. Factoids: Sharon Beder Responds"
• "From Green Warriors to Greenwashers"