Indian chief Noah Sealth probably did not make a speech or write a letter stating that neither his tribe nor any white man could own the wilderness to establish reservations or title deeds. Although the inspiring conservationist arguments for which it has gone down in history are worthwhile without the need for historical rigor.
The reality is that both the awareness of the necessary defense and protection of the environment and the discourse on sustainability occurred well into the 20th century and when the scientific evidence on the climate crisis made it unstoppable. At most, the question was already trying to alleviate it.
This was referred to from the political scene, after the consensus of numerous scientific forums, figures of the stature of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, who included in their political agendas as early as the 1980s the concept of “global warming” as a threat to the planet after a 1974 CIA report already warned about it.
Shortly before, the UN had done so at the Conference on the Human Environment that it held in Stockholm in 1972, although after a first international declaration warning of a problem that was more real than latent, the next appointment was delayed neither more nor less than 20 years, until that in 1992 the Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro.
It was here that a significant event occurred that does not appear in its final declaration or in its most significant agreement, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, but which marks a before and after in the discourse on sustainability: the intervention before the plenary of a girl of barely 12 years old giving an emotional speech to the participants.
It was the young Canadian Severn Suzuki, who together with three friends, founders of the Environmental Children’s Organization, started a campaign to raise the money needed to travel to Rio and participate in the summit, to which they had previously registered. Her message from the speaker’s rostrum could not be more concrete or more accurate: a whole denunciation of the situation of the planet and human hypocrisy. It is the speech –practically forgotten– that we offer in its entirety.
Hi, I’m Severn Suzuki and I represent ECO (Environmental Children’s Organization).
“We are a group of 12 and 13 year olds from Canada trying to make a change: Vanessa Suttie, Morgan Geisler, Michelle Quigg and myself. We raised the money ourselves to come here, five thousand miles away, to tell you adults that you need to change your ways.
â€Coming here today I am not going to hide my objective: I am fighting for my future. Losing my future is not like losing an election or losing a few points in the stock market. I am here to speak on behalf of all generations to come. I’m here to speak up for starving children whose cries are ignored by everyone. I’m here to talk about the countless animals that die on this planet because they have nowhere else to go.
â€I am afraid of sunbathing because of the holes in the ozone layer. I’m afraid to breathe the air because I don’t know what chemicals are in it. I used to go fishing in Vancouver, my home, with my father, until a few years ago we found a fish full of tumors. And now we know that animals and plants become extinct every day and disappear forever.
â€Throughout my life I have dreamed of seeing herds of wild animals and jungles and forests teeming with birds and butterflies, but now I wonder if they exist for my children to see too. Did you have to ask yourself these things when you were my age? All this is happening before our eyes and we continue to act as if we have all the time we want and all the solutions.
“I’m just a kid and I don’t have solutions, but I want you to realize: you don’t either. They don’t know how to fix the holes in our ozone layer. They don’t know how to return the salmon to unpolluted waters. They don’t know how to bring an extinct animal back to life. And they cannot recover the forests that used to grow where there are now deserts. If you don’t know how to fix it, please stop destroying it.
â€Here, you are surely government delegates, business people, organizers, journalists or politicians, but in reality you are mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, and all of you are children.
â€I am just a girl, and I know that we are all part of a family made up of five billion members, thirty million species, and we all share the same air, water and land. Borders and governments will never change that.
â€I am still just a child, but I know we are all in this together and we must act as one world behind one goal. Even though I’m angry, I’m not blind, and even though I’m afraid, I’m not afraid to tell the world how I feel. In my country we waste so much… We buy and throw away, we buy and throw away, we buy and throw away… And even so, the countries of the north do not share with the needy. Even if we have more than enough, we are afraid of losing our wealth if we share it.
â€In Canada we live a privileged life, full of food, water and protection. we have wath watches, bicycles, computers and TV. Two days ago, here in Brazil, we were surprised when we spent some time with some children who live on the streets. And one of them told us: ‘I wish I were rich, and if I were, I would give all the street children food, clothes, medicine, a home, love and affection.’
“If a street child who has nothing is willing to share, why are we who have everything so greedy? I can’t help but think that these children are my age, that where you are born makes a tremendous difference. I could be one of those children living in the favelas of Rio, I could be a starving child in Somalia, a child victim of war in the Middle East or a beggar in India.
â€I am still only a child, and I know that if all the money spent on wars was used to end poverty and find environmental solutions, the Earth would be a wonderful place.
â€At school, even in kindergarten, we are taught how to behave in the world. You teach us not to fight with others, to fix things, to respect each other, to make amends, not to hurt other creatures, to share and not to be greedy. So why do they do the things they tell us not to do outside the home?
â€Don’t forget why you attend these conferences: you do it because we are your children. They are deciding the kind of world we will grow up in. Parents should be able to comfort their children by saying: ‘Everything is going to be okay’, ‘this is not the end of the world’ and ‘we are doing the best we can’. But I don’t think they can tell us that anymore. Are we even on your list of priorities? My father always says: ‘You are what you do, not what you say’. What they do makes me cry at night. They educate us by telling us that they love us; I challenge you: please make your actions reflect your words.
Thank you.”
