And we share a common future as yet untold.
We humans are but one of thirty million species weaving the thin layer of life enveloping the world.
The stability of communities of living things depends upon this diversity.
Linked in that web, we are interconnected — using, cleansing, sharing and replenishing the fundamental elements of life.
Our home, planet Earth, is finite; all life shares its resources and the energy from the Sun, and therefore has limits to growth.
For the first time, we have touched those limits.
When we compromise the air, the water, the soil and the variety of life, we steal from the endless future to serve the fleeting present.
Humans have become so numerous and our tools so powerful that we have driven fellow creatures to extinction, dammed the great rivers, torn down ancient forests, poisoned the earth, rain and wind, and ripped holes in the sky.
Our science has brought pain as well as joy; our comfort is paid for by the suffering of millions.
We are learning from our mistakes, we are mourning our vanished kin, and we now build a new politics of hope.
We respect and uphold the absolute need for clean air, water and soil.
We see that economic activities that benefit the few while shrinking the inheritance of many are wrong.
And since environmental degradation erodes biological capital forever, full ecological and social cost must enter all equations of development.
We are one brief generation in the long march of time; the future is not ours to erase.
So where knowledge is limited, we will remember all those who will walk after us, and err on the side of caution.
All this that we know and believe must now become the foundation of the way we live.
At this Turning Point in our relationship with Earth, we work for an evolution from dominance to partnership, from fragmentation to connection, from insecurity to interdependence.
I believe the final Declaration of Interdependence is a powerful, moving document that sets forth the principles that should underlie all of our activities. We had the declaration translated into a number of languages including French, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, German, and Spanish, and took copies to give away in Rio, one of the first tangible products of the David Suzuki Foundation.
As we were doing this and setting up the foundation office, Tara was organizing ECO's involvement in Rio and the logistics of hotel, food, travel, shots, and so on. As the time to leave approached, I was increasingly anxious and worried, but the girls saw the trip as an adventure and opportunity. They were so innocent. Despite my concerns, we took off in a state of excitement and hope. I had to fly to Europe at the end of the conference, but Tara had arranged for the children to have a post-Rio reward of a visit to the Amazon.
We landed in Rio, and, as I had feared, it was hot and the air was heavy with pollution from the traffic. I still tended to worry about details — where would we stay, what about food, how would we get around, what about toilets — but Tara is the one who makes those arrangements. My children just ignore me—“Oh, Dad, stop being so anal” is the way they put it. Tara had arranged for an apartment overlooking the fabled Copacabana Beach, but we had too much to do to enjoy the resort.
Tens of thousands of people arrived in Rio de Janeiro to attend the Earth Summit, which included the official un conference, housed at Rio Centro and ringed by armed guards demanding passes to enter; the Global Forum, for hundreds of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) from all over the world; and the Earth Parliament, for indigenous peoples. Each conference was many miles away from the others. I don't doubt that this was a deliberate decision to keep the NGOs and indigenous people as far away from the official delegates as possible, if for no other reason than to minimize the contrast between well-heeled representatives staying at fancy hotels and the rabble like us on minimal budgets staying in the cheap parts of town.
With such distances between summit events, the media had to make decisions about what to cover, and usually Rio Centro was where they hung out because telephones, fax machines, and computers were set up there. As it was, the fun and excitement were to be found among the NGOs, whereas the delegates in business attire were trapped in long, serious, and deadly boring deliberations behind closed doors, completing the final wording of documents to be signed later, when the world leaders arrived.
It was a circus. I hated it. The city was uncomfortable and overrun with cars, and everywhere we went, there were crowds of people trying to be seen or heard. If you're not anal like me, Rio is a wonderful place to visit. The beaches are lovely (although the water is polluted and best left alone), the sun always shines (although it has to make its way through the haze) and there are nightclubs and restaurants galore. We went to churrascarias, amazing places where meat is brought out on skewers and one can fill up on enormous servings of food while children outside beg for leftovers. As in all big cities, but especially those in developing countries, the contrast between the world that tourists inhabit and the extreme poverty in slums is difficult to accept. To prepare for the conference, Brazilian authorities had forcibly removed street people from downtown Rio so that the official delegates wouldn't have to confront the contrasts.
The girls had brought three issues of their newspaper and among them spoke English, French, and Spanish. ECO had registered as one of the thousands of NGOs and applied for a booth where they could display their papers, posters, and pictures and meet people. Tara and I had been asked to speak at a number of NGO events, and before the end of our presentations at each session we would say, “I think you should hear from the ones with most at stake in all that's going on here” and bring the girls onstage to make short submissions.
The media began to hear about them by word of mouth and went to their booth for interviews. It was a good story to have these cute girls speaking so seriously and passionately. David Halton from CBC took the girls to a favela, where street people lived, and interviewed them for a long story. Jean Charest, Canada's newest federal environment minister, visited the booth to talk to the girls, but they were frustrated because they felt he was more interested in telling them things than in listening to them. The girls were articulate, passionate, and telegenic, and their plea to be remembered while delegates made big decisions affecting their world was so simple and undeniable that it cut through all the rhetorical flourishes and political posturing.
At one of the events at the Earth Parliament, I gave a short talk and then yielded the stage so that Severn could also make a speech. I didn't know it, but in the audience was James Grant, the American head of UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, and he was so moved by Sev's remarks that he asked her for a copy of them. He told her he was meeting Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney that evening and wanted to give him that speech in person. I never heard whether he did or not, but we learned later that Grant had run into Maurice Strong and told Maurice he should give Severn an opportunity to speak.
The next day, Tara and the girls were scheduled to leave Rio to take their trip to the wilderness camp in the Amazon. But in the morning, we received a call from Strong's office inviting Severn to speak at Rio Centro in a session for children. Three other girls, representing various youth groups, had been selected ahead of time to speak, and now Strong added Sev to this group. One girl was from Germany, another from Guatemala, and two, including Sev, were from Canada. Each was to speak for no more than three or four minutes.