Сhapter TWELVE
IN ITS EARLY YEARS, the David Suzuki Foundation (DSF) had to acquire a membership base that would support the projects we had planned. That meant we had to become adept at getting our message out.
We picked up experience in organizing press conferences and writing press releases, articles, op-ed pieces, and other documents, and the day came when the communications group, headed by David Hocking, established a Web site. I was slow to recognize the role the Internet would play in raising our profile, and I was nervous about committing the funds. Now I appreciate the importance of that investment.
Jim Hoggan, president of the largest communications and public relations company in western Canada, found our work interesting and worthwhile. He offered his expertise on a voluntary basis. He brought great integrity—he advises his clients that they should never deliberately lie, deceive, or cover up. Jim helped us develop the most effective ways to get our message out, and ever since he joined the board, he has devoted countless hours to our communication effort.
AS THE FOUNDATION BECAME more sophisticated and better equipped to tackle issues, we felt ready to take on some big ones. And of all environmental crises confronting us today, climate change looms as the largest.
Cited by the Canadian parliamentary all-party Standing Committee on the Environment as a threat second only to all-out nuclear war, global warming nonetheless can seem a slow-motion catastrophe that will not kick in for generations, and so it has been difficult to raise public concern about it.
Jim Fulton's political connections paid off when he persuaded Gerry Scott, a longtime strategist in the provincial New Democratic Party, to join us in taking on the foundation's climate change campaign. The challenge was to educate the public about what climate change is, what the scientific evidence is for its cause, and what the solutions are. Most environmental funding agencies were established to finance work on more immediate challenges such as toxic pollution, deforestation, or destructive developments. Global warming has implications on a much more immense scale, and it was extremely difficult to fund the project. I despaired over whether we could find the kind of money we would need to make a difference.
Stephen Bronfman of Montreal had joined our board in the early years. He became convinced that climate change was a serious issue and made a multiyear financial commitment to Gerry's group, becoming the largest individual contributor to the issue in Canada. Assured of this solid base of support, Gerry pulled together a small band of experienced and dedicated people and began to get the matter onto the Canadian public agenda. For such a small team, they carried out a remarkable series of studies and activities.
Gerry invited Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface, the largest flooring company in the world, to join our campaign to get industry leaders to start working to cut emissions and make money doing it. Ray stepped up to the plate and is now on the DSF board.
The group commissioned papers including “A Glimpse of Canada's Future,” “The Role of Government,” “Taking Charge: Personal Initiatives,” “Keeping Canada Competitive,” and “Canadian Solutions.” But by far the most remarkable was “Power Shift,” a study by energy expert Ralph Torrie, showing that with technology already commercially available, Canada could reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent in thirty years.
We brought Dr. Joseph J. Romm to Toronto and Ottawa to talk about his 1999 book Cool Companies, which cited dozens of North American companies that had already reduced their emissions by more than 50 percent and remained highly profitable. Since then, the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation has begun to track “reducers”—companies, cities, regions, provinces and states that are making serious reductions in harmful gas emissions while saving tens of millions of dollars.
When The Nature of Things with David Suzuki broadcast a film by Jim Hamm showing many examples of opportunities to make money by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the DSF put together a series of events in Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver, with speeches, previews of the film, and exhibitions of energy-saving technologies such as windmills and then-unknown gas-electric hybrid cars. We knew we had to get on with demonstrating that there are alternatives to the polluting ways that are creating climate change, since neither governments nor businesspeople were leading the way.
It was hard work to get media attention until DSF employee Catherine Fitzpatrick had the brilliant idea of looking at the medical implications of burning fossil fuels. She concentrated on the direct effects of air pollution—not the spread of new diseases in a warmer world or starvation from drought and failing crops, but the direct, day-to-day, physical effects of air pollution on people. If we couldn't get attention for climate change as a monumental threat, we could bring attention to the more personal costs of burning fossil fuels.
Sharing a joke with Gerry Scott when he was director of climate change work with the David Suzuki Foundation
This strategy worked. Using government data, the doctors and scientists Catherine commissioned produced a report entitled “Taking Our Breath Away.” It found that air pollution, much of it from burning fossil fuels, was prematurely killing sixteen thousand Canadians a year. A plane crash killing all occupants is a great tragedy, but imagine a full jumbo jet crashing in Canada every week: you get an idea of the magnitude of these preventable fossil fuel–induced deaths from pollution.
And every fatality is just the tip of an immense iceberg. For every death, there are many more serious lung problems requiring hospitalization, including surgery. For each hospitalization, there are many more days lost from school or work, then many more with reduced productivity because of low-grade problems of bronchitis and asthma.
“Taking Our Breath Away” was the first DSF report to be translated into Canada's other official language, French, as “À couper le souffle.” Doctors recognized the significance of the report, and English- and French-speaking physicians supported our call to reduce air pollution. Federal and provincial medical societies also signed on to our initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for health reasons.
One of the first people to buy in was Dr. David Swann, chief health officer for the province of Alberta. I was stunned when he was fired for taking this position. This is Canada, yet here was Alberta behaving like some tin-pot government vindictively punishing a public servant for deviating from the government line. Dr. Swann fought back and eventually won reinstatement, but he soon left public service in the province. Taking a stand on climate change in Alberta took courage.
In concert with other organizations, Gerry commissioned papers that looked at the impact of climate change on Canada's national parks. Jay Malcolm, a forestry professor at the University of Toronto, concluded that global warming would dismantle the species balance of our most prized parks: some species could adapt to higher temperatures, but others would have to move to remain within a viable range.
A 2004 DSF study, “Confronting Climate Change in the Great Lakes Region,” looked at the hydrological implications of climate change on lakes Superior, Michigan, Erie, Huron, and Ontario, which constitute the largest area of fresh water on Earth. The report concluded that the effects would be catastrophic.
The Nature of Things with David Suzuki did a series of programs on global warming, including a two-hour special. Polls showed that Canadians were becoming increasingly concerned about climate change, and I like to think that both the David Suzuki Foundation and The Nature of Things played an important part in increasing that awareness and concern.
The evidence of climate change is now overwhelming, and to me nothing is more compelling than the cover story in the conservative National Geographic magazine in September 2004. Presented on a foldout page, the 400,000-year record of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, teased from the Antarctic ice by researchers, reveals a curve that in about 1990 suddenly soars above the highest level found in all that time. That curve then leaps straight up.
But personal observations, even if anecdotal and not statistically significant, are compelling too. When Tara and I camped above the Arctic Circle in June 2005, we saw and heard firsthand evidence of shrinking glaciers, melting permafrost, and newly arrived plant and animal species. Arctic peoples speak of global warming as a well-established fact that has changed their habitat and already threatens their way of life.
Yet, despite the overwhelming consensus of climatologists and the most painstaking assessment of scientific literature in history, in 2005 the media continued to treat climate change as if it is a controversy, as if there is still doubt. They give far more space than is warranted to the small number of “skeptics” who deny global warming is occurring. This is tragic.
Accepting that the danger is real, society can look for solutions. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions means buying time to switch to alternative, nonpolluting energy sources and enjoying the direct benefits of a cleaner environment, better health, and the conservation of valuable, nonrenewable fossil fuels. If by some miracle the crisis passes, those nonrenewable fossil fuels will still be there, our homes and businesses will be more efficient, and our environment will be cleaner. Acting on climate change is a win-win situation, whereas doing nothing will make the corrective measures much more difficult, much more expensive, and perhaps too late.
After the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, an intergovernmental negotiating committee was established to meet and work out a framework within which the climate convention could be assessed. In 1995, the Conference of the Parties (cop) to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change was established to meet annually in a different country. At the meetings, terms of the protocol were refined, progress assessed and scientific information updated. The first cop meeting in North America was held in Montreal from the end of November to early December 2005.
Thousands of delegates, NGO participants and press attended, and DSF was a prominent participant. In addition to ten staff members, eight board members took part in the meetings in different capacities. Staff worked diligently to make our position known: the Kyoto process must carry on, emissions in the industrialized nations should be cut by 25 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050 if we are to minimize the consequences of the buildup of greenhouse gases. It was gratifying to see that there was no longer a debate about whether climate change is happening or whether we should reduce our emissions. The big questions were how, and how much by when.
Stephen Bronfman, as a board member, sponsored a breakfast for businesspeople concerned about climate change. More than four hundred people attended to hear another board member, Ray Anderson. As a very successful businessman, Ray could speak to the audience as one of them and his message of “doing well by doing good” resonated strongly with the audience.
Soon after being elected, George W. Bush indicated that he would not ratify Kyoto and wanted to ignore the entire process. By the Montreal meetings, the Protocol had been ratified by enough countries to make it international law. The large U.S. delegation in Montreal had no official status but actively worked to derail the Kyoto Protocol as a failure and to recruit other countries to its plan to seek new, cleaner technologies that would reduce the need to cut back on fossil fuel use. As representatives of the most powerful nation on Earth, the U.S. contingent had a lot of clout, but the country is also the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and therefore has a big responsibility, as Prime Minister Paul Martin stated in his opening address. In the end, despite the American pressure, the rest of the world united to back the Kyoto process and continue the path toward much deeper cuts. It was a crowning achievement for the delegates and may very well be looked back upon as a watershed moment.
MANY OF US IN the David Suzuki Foundation cut our teeth on battles over the future of British Columbia's forests. From South Moresby and Stein Valley to the Khutzeymateen and Clayoquot Sound, one forest after another in pristine areas had become threatened, sparking a public outcry. It seemed natural for the DSF to be involved in forestry issues.
Taking the cue from our work on fisheries, we first asked the question, what is the economic position of forestry in the province today? Even though the number of jobs and relative contribution of tax revenues from forestry were steadily declining, the media continued to widely report that forestry contributed fifty cents of every tax dollar in British Columbia's coffers. Dr. Richard Schwindt and Dr. Terry Heaps, economists at Simon Fraser University, agreed to do an analysis of the forest industry, and we published it in 1996 as “Chopping Up the Money Tree.” They showed that the province's economy had become much more diverse than it was fifty years earlier, and that British Columbia's revenues from forestry were about five cents of every tax dollar.
The rant that environmentalists damage the economy and threaten jobs did not reflect reality. Forestry jobs were being lost, but the volume of wood cut was steadily increasing. The province's chief forester was well aware that logging practices greatly exceeded the renewable level. Huge machines were replacing men and working tirelessly and with deadly efficiency, aided by computers. Worse, despite legislation to prevent the export of raw logs, more and more were being shipped to other countries where high-quality jobs were created to process that wood. Every raw log exported cost B.C. jobs and economic potential. The DSF did an analysis showing that Washington State created two and a half times more employment per tree than did B.C., and California five times more.
It bothered me that Canadians, who have some of the best wood in the world, purchase finished products from Scandinavia. I don't believe we are so backward that we can't develop our own lines of wood products, using our own materials. We should use our precious raw logs far more conservatively and ensure that every tree cut creates a maximum number of jobs.
Jim Fulton recruited the dean of arts at UBC, the distinguished scholar Pat Marchak, to perform an exhaustive analysis of forestry in British Columbia. She ended up writing a book in 1999 with Scott Aycock and Deborah Herbert, Falldown: Forest Policy in British Columbia, widely considered the authoritative document on the subject. Pat concluded that a reduction in the volume of wood cut was needed because the current levels were not sustainable. She recommended that the use of wood be diversified to generate more jobs per cubic yard.
Could an ecoforestry code be established that might allow logging while maintaining the integrity of the forest? In 1990, DSF staff member Ronnie Drever wrote a report published as “A Cut Above,” which outlined nine basic principles of what has since come to be called ecosystem-based management (EBM). Although parks and other protected areas, if sufficiently large and interconnected, can help somewhat to protect the biodiversity that sustains our economies, the future is bleak unless land outside parks is developed carefully and sustainably through EBM.
Even before “A Cut Above,” we knew it was possible to log extensively in a sustainable fashion. Vancouver Island forester Merv Wilkinson has logged his forest selectively since the 1950s and removed the equivalent of his entire forest, yet has more board feet of timber growing now than before he began. In Oregon, the family-owned company Collins Pines has been in forestry for 150 years and today does some US$250 million in annual business, yet its forests are considered among the most pristine in the state. Thousands of employees earn a living from those forests, and the company remains globally competitive though all logging is carried out selectively, not through clear-cutting.
Canadian icon and hero Merv Wilkinson demonstrating
sustainable forestry at his Wildwood farm
But forest companies whose shares are publicly traded on the stock market are driven by the need to maximize return for their investors. There is little incentive to practice sustainable forestry when to do so would mean restricting the volume of trees cut annually to perhaps 2 to 3 percent—nature's annual increase in size. Clear-cutting an entire forest and putting the money in investments would generate double or triple the interest; investing the cash in forestry in Borneo or Papua New Guinea could make perhaps ten times the return. Or the money could be put into something else, like fish, and when they're gone, into biotechnology or computers. Money can grow faster than real trees.
One result of the pressure on forestry companies to reduce their cuts is that increasingly they “high-grade,” logging the most valuable species and ignoring the rest. It's a worldwide problem. In the Amazon, mahogany has been high-graded throughout much of the vast forest. Today in British Columbia, it's clear that companies are high-grading cedar at an unsustainable rate. Cedar occupies such a central place in coastal First Nations culture that the DSF commissioned two studies, “Sacred Cedar” in 1998 and “A Vanishing Heritage” in 2004, that showed how little cedar is being left for traditional use in totem poles, canoes, masks, and longhouses.
We also published a report on culturally modified trees (CMTS), which are trees that have been used by First Nations cultures on the B.C. coast over the millennia. Partially carved canoes emerging out of logs can be found decaying on the ground, and cedar trees still stand that reveal long scars where bark was stripped for clothing; some show vertical house planks have been removed without killing the tree. CMTS are precious artifacts that testify to First Nations occupation and use of the land long before the arrival of Europeans.
In addition to the report, called “The Cultural and Archaeological Significance of Culturally Modified Trees,” we initiated an archaeological training program that enrolled dozens of representatives from eleven coastal villages to become CMT technicians. This generated jobs for First Nations communities, as forestry companies, required to inventory and protect these artifacts, hired such trained personnel to identify CMTS within their logging domain on government land.
WE WANTED THE FINDINGS from our reports to reach a wider audience, and in 1994 the foundation met with Greystone Books, a division of Douglas & McIntyre, the highly respected B.C. publisher. The DSF and Greystone would copublish books meant for a wide audience, and although profit was not the foundation's primary goal, we hoped the books would find an audience big enough to make them relatively self-sufficient. By 2005 we had published twenty books on a wide range of issues. It's been a lot of work, but it has been very satisfying to me to have authored or coauthored ten of them.
As the foundation grew, it seemed to me we needed a different kind of book, a philosophical treatise that would define the perspective, assumptions, and values that underlie our activities. As I began to write it, it forced me to consider matters more deeply. The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature brought the fundamental issues into sharp focus for me. To my surprise and delight, the book became a number 1 best-seller in Canada and Australia and continues to sell. As with other books, I signed over my royalties, so that book alone has brought the foundation close to can$200,000 to date.
THE CORNERSTONE OF THE foundation is its relationship with First Nations peoples and communities, and that has remained strong through the years. We understood that the First Nations along the coast of what is now British Columbia have occupied the land for millennia, and that the traditions that had evolved in their relationship with the land would tend to make them better stewards than governments and companies. We also knew that since treaties had never been signed, coastal First Nations should have sovereignty over their land.
Miles Richardson, one of the DSF's founders, is a very political man, having been president of the Haida Nation for twelve years before being appointed chief treaty commissioner for B.C. to encourage progress on treaties between Canada, B.C., and First Nations. Miles is a big man, literally and figuratively, with a formidable intellect, a huge zest for life, and a relish for facing its most difficult problems. He likes to remind us that as human beings we possess foibles, idiosyncrasies, weaknesses, and beauty. He more than anyone has tried to teach me to revel in the here and now and take pleasure in what I am doing in the moment.
When, in 1998, an opportunity arose for the DSF to work on coastal issues in B.C., Miles urged us to look at forming relationships with local First Nations communities so that we could work together and find ways of protecting forests and fish while creating sustainable ways to make a living. With chronic levels of unemployment in Native communities reaching well above 50 percent, even those who have taught us much of what we know about Mother Nature become so deprived of employment and income that they must accept the sacrifice of much of their surroundings. Having cleared the readily accessible trees in the south and around Prince Rupert, forest companies now coveted the rich forests of remote communities in the central and north coast and Haida Gwaii.
In the winter of 1997–98, Jim Fulton asked Tara to step into a staff position. He knew she was the only person who could be the foundation's “diplomat” and establish relationships with the eleven small First Nations communities within the temperate rain forest of the central and north coast and Haida Gwaii. The territory of these communities represented a quarter of all the remaining old-growth temperate rain forest in the world. He believed the best and right way to protect the forests and fish was to work with First Nations to help realize their sovereignty over the territory. Tara and I didn't have the vision Jim and Miles did, and we couldn't clearly understand how the nations would unite, but Tara subordinated her misgivings and began to travel alone into each community to meet the leaders, elders, and families in the villages.
Long before these first forays, Tara (and our family) had already established deep friendships in two of these villages, Skidegate and Bella Bella, as well as Alert Bay and others to the south. We had been adopted by two families and had long felt a responsibility to make a contribution to their villages.
In many First Nations communities, a schism has been created between traditional chiefs, who inherit their position, and the chiefs and band councils elected under rules imposed by the Department of Indian Affairs. We were well aware the traditional chiefs would be supportive, whereas elected councils had to prioritize jobs and development. But we didn't want to exacerbate community division, so we decided to go through the “front door”—the elected councils—hoping to meet the traditional chiefs and elders later with each council's blessing. We wanted to be completely open and forthright in our dealings with each community. In the past, environmentalists had enlisted the support of individual band members to fight to protect certain areas, but when the battle was over, the Native people sometimes had to deal with debt and ill will left behind. Many band councils were understandably suspicious of our motives.
Tara visited these remote villages to explain what the David Suzuki Foundation was and to explore partnerships in areas of common interest. We made no secret that our concern was the conservation of the old-growth forests, but we also acknowledged First Nations sovereignty over them and our willingness to work with First Nations to gain recognition of their rights. We hoped our science, fund-raising activities, and contacts might be useful.
In general Tara was made welcome and treated with respect, but she was sometimes berated by the councils. Once, when she had returned from a trip and I was quizzing her about the experience, she burst into tears as she recalled the loneliness, the pressures, and the humiliation. One band council member had chastised her: “Greenpeace and all you goddamned environmentalists . . .” Many First Nations are understandably wary, having watched a succession of do-gooders like us too often abandon them with promises unfulfilled.
Many of the communities situated in the rain forest in the mid- to north coast of British Columbia are extremely isolated, some reachable only by boat or floatplane. Often they suffer from chronic high unemployment and thus are vulnerable. To secure a small medical center and the promise of a handful of jobs, a community may have to sign agreements that will allow a company to liquidate their forests in a matter of years. One of the most pernicious practices Tara observed in the late '90s was what government and company employees called “consultation.” Forced by the courts to consult First Nations, a company representative would fly into a community, call or bump into a few people and chat about their families, health, and local gossip, then call that a consultation.
Visiting the villages makes one re-examine concepts of wealth and poverty. I once visited a remote village of some two hundred people. When my plane landed, dozens met me at the dock. That night my hosts put on a feast in my honor. Tables sagged under platters piled with salmon, crab, halibut, herring roe, bannock, moose meat, eulachon, clam fritters, dried seaweed, and desserts. After dinner, the head of the band council opened the speeches by saying the band was poor and required money to buy things the people needed; that was why they had allowed logging in their territory.
When it was my turn to speak, I pointed out that in my affluent neighborhood of Vancouver, where there were probably three times as many people in one block as there were in that village, after twenty-five years I knew fewer than twenty of my neighbors by name. There was a park half a block away in which I didn't allow my children to play alone. Our home and car had been broken into several times. Even with thousands of dollars, I said, I could never have bought a feast like the one they had prepared for me. They were rich in what we had lost—community, land, and resources.
Yet Canadians have no right to tell First Nations they should live in some romanticized version of a museum-like state, frozen in time. These are twenty-first-century people who need boats and motors, computers and plane tickets. Can they protect their traditional values and their surroundings while finding ways to sustainably generate income for the things they need, in a manner acceptable to them? The decisions are theirs.
Although conservation was a serious issue to all the villages, jobs—community economic development (CED)—were the first priority. We accepted this challenge and set about turning ourselves into a CED organization, opening a DSF office in Prince Rupert and hiring Jim MacArthur, and then Sandy Storm, to run it.
AFTER EXTENSIVE RESEARCH for a CED model, we learned of a program called Participatory Action Research (PAR) that we thought might be of interest to the First Nations on the coast. For more than half a century, the program has been used successfully by peoples as diverse as Inuit in the Arctic and Sami in Russia.
PAR is based on a bottom-up philosophy whereby the knowledge, expertise, traditions, and skills within the community form the basis of its economic development. One of the first steps in the process is to hold community workshops to determine what people see as the community's strengths and what they want the community to be a decade or two later. Next, projects are identified and priorities developed. Soon, traditional mapping is used to determine how new jobs can be built from old. The PAR approach identifies a job here, another there, until collectively they add up to a significant number and help to keep the money circulating within the community. A par-trained worker is sent to live for up to three years in the community that is seeking a strategy for economic development. He or she gets to know the people, identifies their skills, abilities, and needs, then works with them to find opportunities and solutions until the adviser is no longer needed.
Michael Robinson, current chief executive officer of the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta, has had a lot of experience with PAR and advised us in a series of workshops on the method. Tara began to discuss the PAR process with elders and leaders, taking other advisers into the villages with her. She developed an all-female team that besides herself included an economist and former head of the Vancouver Stock Exchange, Ros Kunin; a lawyer and now judge, Jane Woodward; a PAR expert, Joan Ryan, and a politically experienced First Nations member from Yukon, Lula Johns. People began to refer to them affectionately as the Spice Girls.
As Tara became a familiar visitor in the communities, we began to learn what priorities each village had. The first community to which we sent a PAR worker was Nemiah, a village on the east side of the coastal mountains. The Xeni Gwet'in (Nemiah) people's territory in the drier Chilcotin Plateau includes the headwaters of some of the richest sock-eye runs on the coast. Nemiah is about a four-hour drive on dirt roads from the town of Williams Lake.
Several people applied for the par position, and the band chose Roberta Martell, a garrulous, energetic, and tough young woman who had the drive to achieve all we and the community had hoped for and more. One of her first recommendations was to establish a community-owned laundromat in Nemiah. She started a community garden to provide fresh vegetables and organized the building of two straw-bale houses that were cheaper, more energy efficient, and of better quality than the kinds of homes built for the community under government cost allowances. She recognized the tradition of horse riding presented an economic opportunity to establish trips for tourists.
The par team in Nemiah. Left to right: Roberta Martell, Bonnie Meyers, Maryann Solomon, and Francy Merritt.
Roberta's greatest achievement was to recognize three young women who had the energy, vision, and connections to continue the process of economic development after she left. A film was made about the Nemiah project and broadcast internationally.
WHEN JIM FULTON ASSIGNED Tara to be a diplomat, he spoke of the need for coastal First Nations to unite in recognition of common values and goals if the fish and forests of B.C. were to be sustained. Both Tara and I knew such an initiative would have to come from the First Nations themselves, and while Tara worked on community economic development issues, we watched to see if it would be forthcoming. Tara knew our limited resources could not create jobs on the necessary scale: we hoped leverage could come when a powerfully united coast met with government.
In British Columbia, most First Nations are represented in what's called the B.C. First Nations Summit; delegates meet in Vancouver regularly to discuss issues of mutual interest. In the fall of 1999, timing our overture to coincide with a summit meeting, we invited leaders from the communities Tara had been visiting to meet us and each other to discuss some forestry information. Almost all accepted our invitation.
At the meeting, Art Sterritt from the Gitga'at community of Hartley Bay, and Gerald Amos of Kitamaat village, seconded by several others, commented on the novelty and significance of the gathering and suggested the DSF call a conference of all communities in the central and north coast and Haida Gwaii. We were delighted to do so. We invited the eleven communities, plus Nemiah, to a two-day meeting at the Musqueam Reserve in Vancouver in March 2000 and raised the money to pay all expenses. Members from all twelve communities attended.
After a prayer and welcome from the Musqueam hosts, each attendee made a statement about what he or she was most concerned about and hoped might result from this gathering. To commemorate the millennium, the meeting was called Turning Point. As these tremendously competent elders and leaders spoke, it was clear they had open hearts, and I felt they were desperate to be heard by us. Discussions ensued, and there were tribal differences about historical disagreements and overlapping territory, but all continued work to define various challenges and ponder a unified approach. One discussion group drafted the powerful declaration:
Declaration of First Nations of the North Pacific Coast
PREAMBLE
The North Pacific Coast is a rich, varied and fragile part of the
natural world.
The connection between land and sea with people has given rise
to our ancient northwest cultures.
We recognize this life source is under threat like never before and
that all people must be held accountable.
This united declaration is the foundation for protecting and
restoring our culture and the natural world.
We are the ones that will live with the consequences of any actions
that will take place in our territories.
DECLARATION
We declare our life source is vital to the sustenance and livelihood
of our culture and our very existence as a people.
The First Nations of the North Pacific Coast inherit the responsibility
to protect and restore our lands, water and air for future
generations.
We commit ourselves:
• to making decisions that ensure the well-being of our lands and waters.
• to preserving and renewing our territories and cultures
through our tradition, knowledge and authority.
• to be honest with each other and respectful of all life.
We will support each other and work together as the original people
of the North Pacific Coast, standing together to fulfill these
commitments.
The DSF attended Turning Point in a supportive role, providing funding, organization, research, and contacts. We made it clear that while we believed the land belonged to the First Nations communities and supported their struggle to have that ownership recognized by government, we wanted the forest and marine ecosystems in which they dwell to remain healthy and productive in perpetuity. People have lived there for thousands of years and need those resources to make a living; parks that exclude First Nations use of the land are not a solution. Our outlook differed from those of environmental groups who just sought more “acres” of parks and protected areas.
We organized and funded many more Turning Point conferences. We brought in First Nations people whose land claims had been settled, to speak of what happened after. As the union strengthened, we worked hard organizing countless separate meetings with forestry companies, mayors of coastal communities, tourism operators, loggers, truckers, government officials, and other environmental groups, who all began to recognize and support the power of the Turning Point process and participants.
The New Democrat provincial government was under pressure to come to some kind of accommodation because the forestry companies knew that until land-title issues were settled, logging in the central to north coast forests would be increasingly contentious. On April 4, 2001, Premier Ujjal Dosanjh signed two documents, one of which set in motion negotiations with the provincial and federal governments and the Turning Point communities on what was termed a government to government to government basis. It was an acknowledgement that the First Nations and the “stakeholders” had legitimate rights.
As the Turning Point organization grew in strength, the foundation's role diminished, and eventually it was time to disengage ourselves. In September 2003, in a formal celebration in Skidegate village on Haida Gwaii, we were thanked and farewells were made. The DSF received a drum, symbol of the heartbeat of the people, and we gave each community a gift of fossilized cedar leaves, a symbol of tenacity and survival.
The foundation moved on with its many other projects, but Tara and I had made friendships and developed relationships that continue today and that we will cherish for our lifetimes.
A POSTSCRIPT LED TO one of the most painful episodes of my adult life. When the David Suzuki Foundation agreed to complete independence for Turning Point from our list of projects, the major funder of that initiative expressed a reluctance to transfer its funds directly to Turning Point. We had worked closely with the Lannan Foundation for years, but Turning Point was a newly independent organization without a track record; the funder wanted to continue contributing through DSF. We would be responsible for how those funds were used by Turning Point. Jim knew this was not wise and asked the funder to give directly to Turning Point, but this was not an option. Reluctantly, we agreed to handle the funds and carry out “due diligence” with Turning Point.
When we initially set ourselves up as a double-barreled organization in 1991, the project-based institute arm had chafed under the limits imposed by the fund-raising foundation arm. Now DSF staff found themselves in the position of being like the hated government “Indian agents” of the past, giving the money but making Turning Point jump through hoops as required by Revenue Canada.
Unfortunately, we were in the midst of the long, drawn-out federal audits of every dime of our spending that have plagued us in recent years and cost the DSF over $100,000. We had to be equally demanding of Turning Point. Moreover, we had to ensure the funder's wishes were carried out.
Inevitably, this arrangement led to an explosive confrontation and a formal severing of ties between our two organizations. For DSF, it meant relief from the burden of legal responsibility for those funds and being the bad guy demanding accounting, but the bitter resentment at the role we played is a painful legacy of what remains one of our proudest achievements.
PERHAPS THE MOST FREQUENT question I'm asked after I give a speech is, “What can I do?” We used to say, “Think globally and act locally,” but in my experience problems seem so immense that individuals contemplating them feel insignificant and helpless. The slogan disempowers, rather than motivates. The eminent philosopher-priest Thomas Berry suggests that to be effective globally, we must think and act locally, and I agree.
In the late '90s, the DSF contacted the Union of Concerned Scientists, an influential group of scientists in the U.S. who had developed a list of suggested activities to reduce our ecological footprint. We worked with them to modify their suggestions, numbers, and analysis for Canada.
Each of us affects nature—air, water, soil, energy, other species—through what we eat, how we move about, and where we live. Focusing on food, transportation, and housing, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the DSF came up with ten of the most effective things individuals can do. When I first read the list, I threw it aside and exclaimed, “Come on, get serious. This is too easy!” But Ann Rowan, who was heading the project, showed me the scientific rationale underlying each suggestion and convinced me.
We called these ten steps the Nature Challenge and asked Canadians to make a commitment to implement at least three of them in the year ahead:
1. Reduce home energy use by 10 percent
2. Choose energy-efficient home and appliances
3. Don't use pesticides
4. Eat meat-free meals one day a week
5. Buy locally grown and produced food
6. Choose a fuel-efficient vehicle
7. Walk, bike, carpool or take public transit one day a week
8. Choose a home close to work or school
9. Support alternative transportation
10. Learn more and share information with others
We kicked off the project at events in six Canadian cities: Toronto, London, Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary, and Vancouver. Each event was sold out, thanks to performances by comedians, musicians, and other celebrities, including some in the media. Tara and I both spoke, and we tried to sign up as many people as possible to do their bit to make a difference. It's working: the current number as I write is more than 140,000, including dozens of mayors, entire city councils, and premiers—with thousands of constituents signing on, no politician could refuse to do something concrete as well.
THE DSF INITIATIVE FOR which we have the highest hopes is Sustainability Within A Generation (SWAG), the name adopted from the title of a report we commissioned in 2003.
David Boyd is a lawyer who headed the Sierra Legal Defence Fund in Vancouver. He is now an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria in B.C.'s capital city and a writer who covers environmental issues from a legal standpoint. His book Unnatural Lawexplores the way different countries have legislated environmental protection. Though polls indicate the environment is the major concern of Canadians, Boyd found Canada ranks near the bottom in related legislation and performance: it is number 28 out of 30 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Only Belgium and the United States rate lower.
The DSF contracted David to write a document suggesting how society might achieve sustainability in areas such as waste, energy, food, and water. He cut through divisive issues and came up with a remarkable report that arose from a simple question: what kind of country do we want a generation from now? Do we want a land where the air is clean and there are no longer epidemic levels of asthma? Of course. Do we want to be able to drink water from any lake or river? Naturally. Do we want to catch a fish and eat it without having to worry about contaminants? Sure. Everyone agrees with these goals, so now we have consensus and a target that gives us direction.
If we know that in the long term we want to achieve sustainability, it is helpful to choose a target date. David chose the year 2030 and then divided society's needs into nine areas:
Generating genuine wealth
Improving efficiency
Shifting to clean energy
Reducing waste and pollution
Protecting and conserving water
Producing healthy food
Conserving, protecting, and restoring Canadian nature
Building sustainable cities
Promoting global sustainability
In Boyd's analysis, it is possible to achieve sustainability in each area if we begin to work toward it immediately and aim to reach concrete targets set within specific time frames. The report “Sustainability Within A Generation” has garnered a positive response; when Jim Fulton and I presented it to Canadian prime minister Paul Martin in February 2004, we learned he had already read it and enthusiastically embraced it. He promised to try to exceed our targets in all areas but one—energy.
We had recommended that subsidies to the fossil fuel industry be stopped. The prime minister admitted frankly that such a step would have huge political ramifications in oil-rich Alberta and couldn't be taken. But he did promise to try to level the playing field for renewable energy sources, to which he did commit a billion dollars from the sale of the government-owned oil company, Petro-Canada. After our meeting, the prime minister sent the document to senior bureaucrats with instructions to see how the recommendations could be embedded in government infrastructure, which would ensure that even with changing governments, the basic goal would remain in place.
David Boyd was appointed in 2004 on a contract to advise the Privy Council of Canada, a high-powered body of advisers to the government, where he met regularly with senior civil servants. Politicians change, whereas bureaucrats remain; if civil servants embrace the principles of “Sustainability Within A Generation,” they could help shift government infrastructure and attitude.
The Board of the David Suzuki Foundation. Left to right: Severn, Wade Davis, me, Mike Robinson, Tara, Peter Steele, Ray Anderson, Stephen Bronfman, Jim Hoggan, and Jim Fulton. (Absent: Stephanie Green and Miles Richardson.)
I also presented the report to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities in Ottawa to a very positive reception. The Australian Conservation Foundation is now writing an Aussie version of SWAG.
In November 2005, John deCuevas, a colleague of Tara's when she taught at Harvard, invited a group of thirty-five funders, scientists, environmentalists, and activists to meet us for a dinner and then spend the following day in discussion at Harvard's Faculty Club. I presented “Sustainability Within A Generation,” which was embraced with enthusiasm. The group recommended that the DSF document be Americanized, and two researchers have been hired to work on this. The group wants to put together a blue-ribbon panel of scientists, economists, athletes, celebrities, and politicians to be ambassadors for SWAG.
“Sustainability Within A Generation” has been a galvanizing and unifying focus within the foundation because all of our projects are tied to the goal of sustainability within its 2030 time frame.
WHEN THE RADIO SERIES It's a Matter of Survival was broadcast in 1988, I was overwhelmed by the speed with which the planet was undergoing human-caused degradation. Since the foundation opened its doors, the signs of danger have been rising.
Human beings are not specially gifted in speed, strength, size, or sensory acuity compared with the other animals we evolved with on the African plains. Our great evolutionary feature was our brain, which conferred memory, curiosity, and inventiveness that more than compensated for our lack of physical attributes. Foresight, the ability to look ahead and recognize both dangers and opportunities, guided us into the future. That was what got us to this moment in time, when we are the most numerous, powerful, and demanding mammal on Earth.
We have been repeatedly warned that we are on a dangerous path. We must not turn our backs on the core survival strategy of our species by subordinating ecological concerns to the demands of the economy, political feasibility, and personal ambition.
The battle to save Mother Earth remains urgent and must continue.