Friday 15 November 2013

CUSJ Appeals to Canadian Climate Delegation at COP 19 in Warsaw


Canadian Unitarians for Social Justice
A national faith-based organization founded in support of Unitarian values
P.O. Box 40011, Ottawa, ON, K1V 0W8
President, Rev. Frances Deverell                                                                          president@cusj.org

Prime Minister Stephen Harper,
House of Commons,
Ottawa, ON, K1A 0A6

November 14, 2013


Dear Prime Minister Harper,

On behalf of members of Canadian Unitarians for Social Justice across the country, I would like to express our gratitude that the Canadian Government will be matching donations for the victims of Typhoon Haiyan and has sent the DART emergency response unit. We have been deeply moved by the images of horrible devastation and are proud of this national expression of Canadians' compassion.

However, a critical piece is missing in our response. It is time to acknowledge that such storms are linked to the changing climate and to increase our efforts to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. This connection was movingly expressed Monday at the UN COP 19 Warsaw Climate Change Conference by the chief negotiator for the Philippines, Yeb Saño.  He linked the devastation of Haiyan to climate change and announced that he will fast "until a meaningful outcome is in sight."

Canada does not currently have a good record in this regard. Recent reports suggest that Canada will not even meet its current weak commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17% by 2020.

The recent IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) report notes that to limit the rise in global temperature to 2°C , considered the threshold limit to prevent dangerous interference with the climate system , global emissions of greenhouse gases ( GHG) emissions must be reduced to less than half of what they were in 2010 by 2050 . Emissions must then be phased out by 2070. To achieve this, 66% to 80% of fossil energy reserves currently known will have to remain underground.  We need a change in direction in Canada.

Canadian Unitarians For Social Justice joins Mr. Saño in calling for aggressive emission reduction targets.  I appeal to you today. Please work to make the post 2020 climate treaty a serious document that will get the world, and most especially Canada well on the way to a low emissions future.  Canada must participate constructively to make this a productive, forward-moving conference that will help address the greatest challenge of our generation.

In the wake of this terrible tragedy and as a further expression of Canada's compassion for the victims, it is time to join with others at the Warsaw Climate Conference to create the solutions.  Let us begin today by redoubling our own national efforts to meet, and even exceed, our own 2020 targets.  Let us do this for the well-being of coastal cities around the world.  Let us do this for the well-being of our children and grandchildren.


In faith that a better future is possible if we have the will to make it so;




Rev. Frances Deverell
President,
Canadian Unitarians For Social Justice




Cc:  The Hon. John Baird, Minister of Foreign Affairs; The Hon. Joe Oliver, Minister of Natural Resources; The Hon, Leona Agglukkaq, Minister of the Environment; The Hon. James Moore, Minister of Industry; MP Thomas Mulcaire, Leader of the Opposition; MP Justin Trudeau, Leader of the Liberal Party, and MP Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green Party of Canada.

We Cannot Afford To Procrastinate On Climate Action


We Cannot Afford to Procrastinate On Climate action
by guest blogger Lyn Adamson, ClimateFast


November 11th. A day to remember the horrors of war and remember all those who have died in the past, and commit to building a world where there is peace. But how can we have peace in the future if we do not reverse climate change? Massive storms, fires and drought threaten to make huge areas of the planet uninhabitable. This day is also the first day of the Conference of the Parties (COP19) talks in Warsaw, Poland. A place where something could be done about this threat to our future. It is also the day after a devastating super typhoon hit the Philippines, killing thousands of people.

In Poland, the Philippines lead negotiator, Naderev 'Yeb' Saño, addressed COP 19 yesterday:
Typhoons such as Haiyan and its impacts represent a sobering reminder to the international community that we cannot afford to procrastinate on climate action. Warsaw must deliver on enhancing ambition and should muster the political will to address climate change.
"The Philippines has now begun the painful assessment and recovery process following this following this weekend’s storm, which has now hit landfall in Vietnam.
"It has been recognized as the strongest tropical cyclone to make landfall in modern history, spanning over 600km and with winds of 315km/h and gusts of up to 380km/h. Officials estimate up to 10,000 people have died in Tacloban and elsewhere, within hundreds of thousands more displaced....”
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/11/11-1 - for full transcript go to
http://tcktcktck.org/2013/11/cop19-philippines-speech-moves-plenary-tears/58705

Saño spoke of his brother, who has spent the last three days gathering dead bodies from the rubble and is going hungry because supplies have been cut off from his island. Yeb Saño is fasting in solidarity with his countrymen:
"In solidarity with my countrymen who are now struggling for food back home, and with my brother who has not had food for the last three days … I will now commence a voluntary fasting for the climate. This means I will voluntarily refrain from eating food during this COP, until a meaningful outcome is in sight. Until concrete pledges have been made to ensure mobilization of resources for the Green Climate Fund as this process cannot afford a fourth COP in a row with the GCF empty. Until the promise of the operationalization of a loss and damage mechanism has been fulfilled; until there is assurance on finance for adaptation; until we see real ambition on climate action in accordance with the principles of the Convention."
"The UNFCCC has been called the 'Project to save the planet.' It has also been called 'saving tomorrow today'. We can fix this. We can stop this madness. Right now. Right here. … let Poland be forever known as the place where we truly cared to stop this madness….Can humanity rise to the occasion? I still believe we can."
A number of us from the ClimateFast team are fasting in solidarity. Ideas for safe fasting and different kinds of fasts can be found at http://climatefast.ca/about-fasting  Will you join in for a day?

Please send a message of concern to your Member of Parliament, and to the Prime Minister.

You can send a letter to your MP modifying the sample letter on our website at  http://www.climatefast.ca/sample-letter. Members of Parliament should be swamped with letters and phone calls by concerned Canadians. Please tell your MPs that you support sending funds to help those suffering from the devastation there. Humanitarian aid such as money and the Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) are very important in the short term but we need longer term action too. We need a price on carbon, no more subsidies to fossil fuel companies, and a renewable energy plan for Canada. To underline the words of Yeb Saño, we must ensure mobilization of resources for the Green Climate Fund. The warming oceans will be causing more and more high magnitude storms – until we turn things around and get CO2 levels to drop, not keep rising.

The fossil fuel companies are a huge lobby for business as usual – which is very destructive to our planet and to human communities. We have to make ourselves a match for them – and we can.

Please invite your friends too! Send a message during COP 19!
The ClimateFast Team,
Hungry for Climate Leadership

Sunday 10 November 2013

Free, Prior, and Informed Consent

Free, Prior, and Informed Consent

Thursday, November 7th, the Tsilhqot'in people had their day in court – the Supreme Court of Canada.  The question to be decided was – who really has title to Canada’s vast wilderness areas – the crown?  Or the indigenous people who live there?  Twenty years ago the Tsilhquot’in Nation blockaded and then went to court to save some of its intact, traditional lands from industrial logging.  The claim area comprises some 438,000 hectares of remote and beautiful territory in the Chilkotin region of British Columbia, home of the Xeni Gwet’in, one of six Tsilhqot’in communities. 

The BC Supreme Court decided, in 2007, that they hold the Aboriginal rights to hunt, trap, and trade, including the right to catch and use wild horses throughout the entire territory.  The court went further.  It found the Tsilhqot’in Nation had proven Aboriginal title to approximately 40% of the Claim Area because they controlled that territory and used it year after year to sustain their communities and their culture since the Crown had asserted sovereignty in 1846.  The Supreme Court of Canada has also recognized the idea of Aboriginal title in Delgamuukw v. BC (1997).  The 2007 decision was overturned in a higher court that decided that the small spots (i.e.  reserves) where aboriginals had title met the requirements of law and was enough.  The Supreme Court will either confirm the original decision or the higher court decision.

A busload of Tsilhqot’in people including eleven elders who had participated in the first court case twenty years ago travelled across the country to attend. On the way they shared their stories and songs with First Nations across the country who will all be affected by the outcome of this case.  I give my gratitude to the lawyers and the people who attended a closing workshop to explain the case before they all went home.  They told us their feeling that the singing and the prayers all across the country had strengthened them for the court experience and they were proud to have done well.  Although we won’t hear the results for likely six months, the people were pleased that the judges had gone after the government lawyers with a series of straightforward, simple questions, and that the government case had apparently, in their words, “unraveled”.  The Tsilqot’in are very optimistic they will win.  But even if they don’t, they have stood up and told their stories of who they are and of their relationship to the land.  Even if they lose, they know who they are.  They are there, occupying and using the land in the traditional ways, and cannot be easily dismissed.

I learned a few interesting things at the workshop:
·      There are three layers of law that intersect with each other for the court to consider.  1) Tsilhqot’in law coming out of their traditional culture 2) Canada’s law and 3) International law.  When indigenous peoples negotiated with colonial governments they did it from the perspective of their own laws and ways of looking at the world.  Canada negotiated from a Western European cultural and legal perspective.  Finally, there is a growing body of international law including Human Rights law and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples through which we are developing an international understanding of how countries should relate to their First peoples.
·      International law in the 1700’s was the Doctrine of Discovery.  In this Papal document it was declared that aboriginal people were not humans with souls. They were savages, suitable to be slaves, and the land could just be expropriated from them without payment.  This doctrine was the foundational document for the colonial era and basically gave Kings permission to take what they wanted – in Africa, and in South, Central and North America.  And they did.  This is the foundation on which the relationship between our First Nations and other Canadians has been built.  One has to ask, is an apology enough?  If you don’t do something about such a disrespectful, hurtful, and totally false set of premises, how can an apology mean anything?  Canadians are obliged now, to acknowledge this false basis for a relationship of respect, and to put in place a legal framework that will support a new and healthier relationship with our indigenous brothers and sisters.
·      In the early historical documents we said that Aboriginal people don’t have a religion.  And yet, their spiritual traditions are so powerful that they can stand up, in their traditional garb and with their drums, songs, and ceremonies, showing Canadians what it is to have a relationship with the earth that sustains you.  They do not glorify God – rather they humble themselves before the creator, giver of all life.  They are reminded every day that they must see how to live in harmony with the earth, as brothers and sisters to the wildlife.  We live interdependently with all life on this planet as well as the water, the earth, the air, and the fire.  Life is sacred.  Every word you speak and every action you take matters.  So they find the will, the money, and the energy to come to court and tell Canadians the truth.  Aboriginal people must have a place and a role in Canadian Society.  Their contribution to our well-being will be to help us think about our relationship with the earth, and how we do development. 
·      In the colonial approach, economic matters always trump Indigenous rights.  Canadians are worried as to what will happen if aboriginal title is confirmed.  Who will win and who will lose?  Will aboriginal people allow any development?  Will aboriginal people just take the money and throw it away and we’ll still have to take care of them?  Will we just be transferring the wealth and power from one greedy batch of people to another greedy batch of people?  I don’t believe any of those tired stereotypes!  It is my hope that we will all learn what aboriginal people know about using the land without destroying its capacity to sustain us?  I dream of a true partnership.
·      I learned that there was a fear or maybe even an expectation that the workshop participants shouldn’t hold their hopes too high.  I began to realize that I was meeting in a room of Chiefs and lawyers who were discussing next steps and strategy.  The experience has been that even when a court case is won, nothing changes.  These laws are not enforced.  Industrialized companies continue to come on to new land and start exploring, with government permission, without having discussed anything with the First Nations who live there. The human rights of First Nations both as individuals and as peoples for justice are ignored.  The Doctrine of Discovery continues to reign supreme. 
·      What is the alternative?  Free, prior and informed consent.

The following is taken from a handout at the workshop:

The Supreme Court has called the protection of Aboriginal and Treaty rights an “underlying constitutional principle” and a “constitutional value.”  The rights in s.35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, are described as “a national commitment.”  Governments cannot simply impose their will on Indigenous peoples.  The Court has called for reconciliation of pre-existing Aboriginal sovereignty and assumed Crown sovereignty.  The perspectives of the common law and Aboriginal peoples must be reconciled, with equal weight placed on each.

The Supreme Court has defined a mandatory constitutional obligation that is described as “the duty to consult.”  But this duty requires more than just informing indigenous peoples about a project.  Canadian courts have consistently said that where there are impacts on Indigenous peoples’ rights, appropriate accommodation is also required.  In the Delgamuukw and Haida Nation decisions, the Court added that, on “very serious cases,” the full consent of the Aboriginal nation would be required. 

Free, prior, and informed consent.

As I read further in the handout, I learn that this is a commitment to a process between equals, not a mandate to give either the Crown or Indigenous peoples a legal power to veto or to unilaterally decide.  People must be fully and adequately informed.  They have a right to time to investigate the circumstances and determine what impact, if any, the project will have.  They have a right to accommodation when there are adverse impacts.  And if they deem that it is a very serious situation, and that the government or the industry has not fully understood the impact of their intentions, they have the right to refuse consent.  The rights and interests of each side must be weighed equally.  In this legal context, if both parties come to the table in good will, most situations should find resolution through negotiation, respect, and accommodation.  But if the project involves permanent destruction of the land, the First Nations can say no—accommodation has not been achieved.

I would like to see us try to live with First Nations in this kind of spirit of mutual respect.  Surely it is in the interest of all Canadians and for the planet as a whole, for us to do so.


Monday 7 October 2013

Endings and Beginnings

Closing Circle, ClimateFast

It was a beautiful evening in Ottawa for our closing circle.  We were blessed to have the presence of Anishnawbeg Spiritkeeper Barbara Hill and two of her fellow drummers, Judith Fransom and Nellie Corbiere, to welcome new arrivals and share the smudge to bless our circle.  



People arrived from many directions to join in our circle.  Some came from our partner organizations.  Many Unitarians showed up.  Some came from our facebook event page.  We even had tourists from parliament hill join in.  After an opening prayer and song from the First Nation Singers, Rev. Frances Deverell dedicated the service to endings and beginnings.  She talked about the importance of marking the end of the fast, but also of taking the energy from the fast out into the world to make people in all walks of life aware of the importance of taking action on climate change.  We then lit our candles and sang together – This Little Light of Mine.

Rita Bijons gave the opening words:  We Belong to the Earth By Salish Chief Seattle.



We were blessed to have about 15 singers from Just Voices sing our Song For The Climate:
We need to wake up 
We need to wise up 
We need to open our eyes 
And do it now now now 
We need to build a better future 
And we need to start right now

Sunday 29 September 2013

Why People of Faith Should Engage to Stop the Pipelines


Speech for Ecology Ottawa – Ottawa East Pipeline Protest 2013 09 29

It is a great honour to stand before you to talk about why I believe the environment and our relationship to it is a matter of Faith.  Thank you to the Algonquin people for their permission for us to meet and speak together on this unceded land.  My thanks to all the Unitarians across Canada who have encouraged and supported me.  Thanks to ClimateFast and these activists from Toronto who are in day nine of a 12-day fast.  Thanks to Ecology Ottawa and Ben Powless and to all of you for coming.  Thank you to the great mystery, the spirit of love, that gives us the capacity to work together towards the common good of all humanity and indeed of all life.

I have to come to believe that climate change is the great challenge of our generation and it is our obligation to do what we can to solve it.  When we read the science we know that we are headed on a collision course with the life support systems of the planet.  We don’t know how much time we have but we fear it is very little.  It will take an enormous effort by all of us working together to turn things around.  With politics in their current state it is difficult to believe we can do anything.  Pause.  We must believe that if we take action we can change things.  As Maud Barlow puts it, hope is a moral imperative.  

If we stop hoping, we will do nothing.  In two more generations half of the territory that we now occupy as humans will be desert.  The sea level will have risen 6 feet.  How many people will see their land go under water. How many millions of people will die off?  Will we lose whole cultures and identities?  Imagine Bangladesh, or Florida, under water! What will happen to our civilization under these stresses?  What kinds of costs will we face?  And what we do with the climate refugees?

If you are an active part of a faith community, then you know that religious community is all about relationships:  relationships to yourself, to the rest of the community, to the earth, and to the great mystery that none of us can ever really understand.  Throughout time religions have served to help people live together in peace.  They have taught us what is a good way to live and what is not.   It is time to reflect on our personal and collective relationship to the earth?  

I and my colleagues in ClimateFast are in our ninth of twelve days of Carbon Fasting or food fasting on Parliament Hill.  Our fast is as a prayer to raise consciousness and political will to dramatically change our policies on greenhouse gas emissions.  We will not see the kind of political will develop without a very broad change of heart.  How do we make that transformation?  We have to start with ourselves.   What do we stand for? What is it that we believe?  What are we here for?  What’s missing in my story? We each need a strong sense of purpose and a deep understanding that our relationships with each other and with the earth are the ground of our being.

From this place, you choose to put your energy where it matters.  You do what is under your control to do, to move things in the right direction.  If all of us do this, the people around us will see it and respond.  Some will join us and the energy will shift.

Standing against these pipelines is a strategy to stop the tar sands from expanding.  We don’t want anyone to burn all that oil and further pollute our atmosphere.  Standing against these pipelines protects our rivers, lakes and streams from dangerous spills of dilbit that can’t be cleaned up.   Standing against these pipelines defends the traditional ways of our First Nations brothers and sisters.  We are protecting mother earth, our only home.

It is time to move Canada into the twenty-first century – the renewable energy century.  It is time to build the solutions rather than continue this terrible pollution from carbon energy.  It is time for all of us to pull together, in common effort towards a sustainable lifestyle for humanity on this planet. 

Attending this rally will not be enough.  What else can you do?  Take inspiration from ClimateFast.  Visit us on the hill.  Join our closing circle next Wednesday at 7pm.  Write politicians at all levels.  Write the newspapers.  And after Clayton Thomas Mueller’s comments – write your First Nations communities and let them know you support them.  Talk to your family and friends.  This is not easy work.  No one wants to listen.  Try starting light.  Ask them what they are doing to reduce their own footprint and compare notes.  Keep in mind, you will need to be ready.  You may have to step out of your comfort zone and commit civil disobedience.  Our fast is a prayer for a very big change of heart all over the world.  We have to start believing that life on this planet is worth saving, and that we can do something about it if we try. 

Together we can let our politicians know that their political choices matter to us and that what they do is critical to the well being of our children and grandchildren.  When the people want it enough, the politicians will follow.

Thank you for listening.  Thank you for giving me the honour of speaking from my heart.

All Our Relations

Rev. Frances Leigh Deverell