Starting the conversation for Earth Summit 2012
Concordia recently hosted an event as part of national tour of the We Canada's Dialogue for Earth Summit
February 21, 2012
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On February 15, Concordia University hosted a stop on We Canada’s Dialogue and Action for Earth Summit 2012.
Members of We Canada are visiting educational institutions — from elementary schools to universities — as part of a cross-country tour to mobilize Canadian leadership in sustainability in preparation for the upcoming Earth Summit 2012, also known as Rio +20 and the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development.
The goal of the tour is to “empower civil society by offering an analysis of current trends in sustainable development and to hold the microphone to Canadian voices” with ideas to be brought to the table at this year’s summit from June 20 to 22 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
“We undertook this initiative because I, personally as well as the other We Canada members, believe that the Earth Summit has the potential to bend history in a new direction towards a bright new future where democracy, transparency, human rights and peace prevail,” said Aleksandra Nasteska, co-founder and communications director for We Canada, who opened the dialogue.
Keynote speaker Désirée McGraw provided a more critical look at Canada’s role in the upcoming summit. McGraw is co-founder of Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project in Canada and is a Canadian delegate to the Rio Earth Summit.
“Casting my memory back to 1992, the Canadian government really was a leader,” McGraw said. “Now we don’t, unfortunately, occupy that same leadership role.”
She focused her remarks on Canada’s devolution from “leaders to laggers to laughingstocks to obstructionists,” citing, among other examples, the government’s stance on climate change.
“Climate change is not just an environmental issue … it is an economic issue, it’s a national security issue, it’s a health issue, it’s the issue that affects all of the other issues,” she said.
“We are the only country that has pulled out of Kyoto and that wears that rejection like a badge of honour.”
For the interactive part of the lecture, participants were asked to answer a series of questions, including one issue they would like to see discussed at Rio +20. These questions were then shared with the audience and will be presented at the summit.
Third-year journalism student Lesley De Marinis is an intern with Concordia’s University Communications Services (UCS). If you are interested in being an intern with UCS, please submit an application before March 20 to Karen McCarthy, Director of Internal Communications at Karen.mccarthy@concordia.ca.
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