David Suzuki Foundation Climate Team Reaches out to Culturally Diverse Communities Across the Country

RangiChangi commends the new work that the David Suzuki Foundation climate team has taken on. The DSF is walking the talk, and is attempting to engage all the people of this vast land more directly. In its commitment to “working with all Canadians to build a collective voice for action on climate change”, the DSF has hired two new climate campaigners whose job is to engage ethnically diverse community members in dialogue on climate action. The dynamic Winnie Hwo and Harpreet Johal  have been working with climate team lead Ian Bruce to build the DSF’s “Race to the Top” project. Time is of the essence, and they are advancing their work quickly. The team has been meeting with Vancouver Lower Mainland community leaders such as Mo Dhaliwal and S.U.C.C.E.S.S. chair Dennis Chan. Both stated that the “key to successful communication is more about listening than talking.”

A key component of their work is reaching out to ethnic Chinese Canadians via Canada’s Chinese media. The Overseas Chinese Voice is one of the two major Chinese language radio stations in Metro Vancouver. On March 12, Dr. David Suzuki was invited to share his views and knowledge on climate change and solutions with the Lower Mainland’s Chinese Canadian audience on Andy Cheung’s Saturday hotline show, and the response to the discussion was high.

The Race to the Top team has also extended its community outreach work to the Greater Toronto District where they explored opportunities to engage new and young Canadians on environmental issues. You can read more about their experiences on the DSF climate blog. We salute the DSF for these important first steps in building a more inclusive dialogue on the issue of climate change and the environment. – Kate Castelo

Beyond Pollution: China’s Eco-Revolution, by Joanna Wong

Joanna Wong is a Vancouverite currently living in Beijing. She has been based in China for the last four years working in project coordination in the environmental sector. Joanna worked chiefly with the energy campaigns of the Green Long March, a nation-wide youth environmental movement, which takes the inspiration for its name from China’s revolutionary long march of the 1930s, as well as the China Youth Climate Action Network and the China-based actions of 350.org. The experience gave her a window into how quickly China’s environmental movement is growing, and she had an opportunity to develop relationships with some of China’s leading young environmentalists. Joanna is a contributor to the  Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada’s blog ‘The National Conversation of Asia’, where this article was originally published.

RangiChangi believes that Joanna is forging critical communication and understanding between Chinese and North American cultures and is building an international environmental constituency. She was recently selected as a fellow for a public service program called Action Canada – a national fellowship program  for promising young Canadians that offers an 11-month leadership development and public policy program. – kc

   “With over 20 percent of the overseas Chinese population living in Canada, it’s time we ask about what a more eco-friendly China means for our side of the Pacific.

Yes, we’ve all seen the pictures: coal-streaked skies and bleak industrial towns. China is seriously, cancerously polluted.Environmental slogans about our shared “one planet” have never been more accurate: toxins, pesticides and other scary chemicals from China regularly reach the western coastlines of Canada as they float to the Arctic.

Yet while China may be the earth’s most polluted country, it is also arguably its greenest.

Here are the numbers: Last year China invested $34 billion in clean technology and will soon become the world’s largest producer – and consumer – of alternative energy.

In the upcoming 12th Five Year Plan, China’s economic blueprint until 2015, the government is expected to put US$1.5 trillion towards green jobs and industries.That kind of money could pay off Canada’s some $40-billion dollar national deficit and buy a Prius hybrid car for every citizen in the country.

Upwards of 3,000 Green organizations form the largest and boldest part of China’s civil society. Even once-controversial Greenpeace is regularly quoted in state newspapers.

Yet despite Canada’s diverse Asian population, when it comes to green work, we often don’t speak the same language. Non-profit RangiChangi  is one of Canada’s few voices on multicultural environmentalism – the idea that diverse communities should ‘work together for a fair and healthy planet.’

China is poised to lead the world in clean energy. Chinese environmentalists are speaking up on both sides of the Pacific.

For our collective future, we need to listen to what they have to say.”  - by Joanna Wong

Indian Environment Minister: American lifestyle “most unsustainable in the world today.”

From the Guardian Weekly 03.12.10:

Jairam Ramesh has attacked the new Indian taste for the American lifestyle, the “most unsustainable in the world today.”  Ramesh said the world was paying the price for “the US model of development” that India and China have embraced.   “I shudder to think what will happen if we follow the suburban model of urbanisation.”

Read the rest of this article here.

Human Causes of Global Climate Change

 

UNEP: http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/climate-change-global-processes-and-effects1 Please click on image to enlarge.