Anja Light has been a rainforest activist since 1986, when, while
backpacking at 18, she stumbled upon one of the world's first international
tropical rainforest conferences in Malaysia and joined the Australian
Rainforest Information Centre (RIC).
In the 14 years that she has been an active member of RIC she has visited
more than 20 countries on rainforest issues and given hundreds of
presentations, concerts and workshops to raise awareness of the plight of
the world's rainforests and indigenous peoples. She has also attended many
international conferences as a speaker and a participant and published
papers on the subjects of rainforests and deep ecology.
Much of her activist work has taken place in Japan where she first visited
in 1989. She initiated the formation of a national network of Rainforest
Action Groups that are still campaigning to reduce Japan's consumption of
tropical timber. Despite her limited Japanese ability, she managed to
organise many demonstrations that were covered nationally (and sometimes
internationally) by media. In the 10 years she has been visiting Japan, she
has spoken to groups, held workshops or performed in concerts in over 100
cities.
In 1998 she made a music CD in Japan, whose sales support the
international projects of the Rainforest Information Centre.
In Australia she is well known in her hometown of the Gold Coast through
her international protesting exploits. After a non-violent direct action
protesting uncontrolled logging (the first of its kind) in Malaysia, she
was jailed for 2 months. She pleaded not guilty to the charge of 'criminal
trespass with intention to annoy' holding that the owner of the barge she
was supposed to have been annoying actually testified that he enjoyed her
singing and playing guitar at the top of the crane!
Her notoriety in the Australian media no doubt helped her inclusion in the listing of the 100
top achievers in the past 100 years of Gold Coast history and also in her
success as a finalist as the Young Australian of the year in 1994.
Her activism has spread beyond rainforests and indigenous rights with her
participation in Trident Ploughshares 2000 - a continuing attempt to
dismantle nuclear weapons systems in the U.K. She launched this campaign in
Japan where it now has a growing following, and joined the actions in
Scotland in 1998 which resulted in jail time and, more importantly, the
opportunity to represent herself in court pleading that international law
prohibits nuclear weapons.
In the past few years as a Project Manager of the Rainforest Information
Centre, she has helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for
ecological projects in PNG, Ecuador and India. Her goal now is to gain
experience on the ground working in projects in Ecuador and to put to good
use the wide variety of networks she has been working with during the past
15 years to protect forests by delivering models of ecologically benign
development.
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