Where to start on campus

Looking to move your campus on an issue of sustainability (one with implications on the environment and social justice, and quite possibily on the other bottom line)?
Or have you been pushing the university to adopt a policy, strategy, sustainability office, or signing the President's Climate Committment.. but your student group isn't getting very far?

Here's another recommendation from the research...

 Form a core working group to campaign on an issue and a multi-stakeholder group. Work closely with existing sustainability organizations or Public Interest Research Groups (if they exist) as well as the student union.

A core group of students is key. You need people who are interested in research, public speaking and meetings, report writing, finances and more. They should be committed - and you should constantly try to bring in more people.
The Sierra Youth Coalition recommends forming multi-stakeholder groups to work on issues, because of the amount of support you can gain from working with different partners on moving plans forward. You can also gain significant knowledge about key people and make new and important relationships.
At Dalhousie, a professor from the group brought ideas to senior administrators and the issue was on the minds at the top before students even got to a formal presentation on a office of sustainability.
There are often many student groups with which to partner on campus. Try to look for and talk with others who may be allies - but not necessarily ones who would come to mind (i.e. cultural groups, religious groups, program associations, etc.) You could find support in these groups through endorsements of your proposal, or individual volunteers and interest. Public Interest Research Groups on campus can also be great sources of interested activists, research potential and other resources, and may be keen to pick up your issue.

• SYC Campus Tools – Multistakeholder Guide

• In Ontario the PIRG listings can be found here: OPIRG

Sustainabilify your student union

by Darcy Higgins
Cross-posted at Campus Sustainability is Step One

The Association of College Unions International has come up with a new resource for student unions and university student services wanting to go green.

Information and the report can be downloaded here at the ACUI website.

I don't have prior knowledge about this organization.

This information may be useful for those student unions looking to look at sustainability within their own operations, and also looking to make changes in other areas of campus - what sorts of events and best practices can be achieved throughout campus.
Included is information on STARS, a new sustainability rating system out of the US.

Post a comment if you think this report is helpful or if you have any other ideas on student unions & sustainability.

Mining act review full of good intentions

--Greg Boyle--

In light of the Ontario government’s recent extension of the Mining act consultations (the first time they have listened to first nations and NGOs I think!!) I would like to make a few comments about how the recent Ontario government call to amend the mining act can be effective. The spirit of the governments call to amend this act was to remove the terrible policies inherent in it that partially led to the events at KI and countless other conflicts between mining companies and First Nation’s people. Whether this spirit comes to life is another question. In order for the Mining Act to effectively minimise conflict it will be vital for the amendments to:

• Recognise and clearly establish the ability and right of First Nations and municipal governments to withdraw lands from staking for mineral claims;
• Require the Free, Prior, and Informed Consent of First Nations, as well as consultation with municipalities and surface rights holders (landowners), before mineral exploration at any level and development of any sort occurs;
• Establish a permitting system for mineral exploration, advanced exploration, and mine development that will allow for meaningful public consultation and the setting of enforceable conditions on the permitted activities

In addition to the reforms necessary to the mining act, other provincial policies that are counterproductive to the intentions of minimising social conflict and environmental harm need to be addressed. Specifically, it is necessary that as part of the reform to mining practices the provincial government:

• End the exemption of mining activities from the provincial Environmental Assessment process;
• Revise the Municipal Planning Act and Planning Policy Statement to remove the designation of mineral development as the highest priority land use in areas of high mineral potential.

We as youth and citizens of Ontario trust that the process to reform the Mining Act and other relevant provincial regulations and policies will be continue to be undertaken in a transparent and inclusive fashion, including representation from First Nations, municipalities, and non-governmental organizations. We all look forward to contributing to this process in the months and years ahead.

Getting out of the classroom

by Darcy Higgins
Cross-posted at Campus Sustainability is Step One

"This is the best thing that's come out of the York strike."

Students don't often have a lot of time on their hands, but many remain active - on campus sustainability and beyond. Sustainability for students also means going beyond the university campus, "greening the campus and community", and working on political gains, learning how businesses are changing and having impact in strengthening the work of environmental organizations.

The current strike at York University didn't hurt as environmental and theatre students came out to support the acting out of street theatre at a rally for green energy outside of the Ontario energy minister's office.
See a teaser of their show below, featuring "curious" George Smitherman off on his tour of world renewable energy sources (see The wind at his back).

Find coverage of the rally with photos and audio at the Toronto Social Justice Magazine.

Young people, including past and present from campuses in Scarborough, also went out to support a proposal for a wind turbine research off the Toronto coast at a community meeting today. A little extra time is getting these students into trouble, and pushing other generations to consider the need for a greener future.

Campuses moving past the green phase

by Darcy Higgins
Cross-posted at Campus Sustainability is Step One

If you believe James Lovelock, we’ve got the whole thing lost. But most of today’s students go by the logic of James Hansen, whose research is echoed by climate author Bill McKibben whose writing and speaking engagements have been giving students reasons for hope. But this hope comes with restrictions. At the first major conference of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) in 2006, McKibben told students and sustainability staff about the decade or less left to take action to stabilize global greenhouse gas emissions.
Students have taken this to heart and are doing interesting things across the continent, and indeed throughout the world. Through a new movement known as “campus sustainability”, students in universities and colleges are stepping up their actions to force institutional change, aware that the need now exists for more significant actions than the those taken in the smaller “greening the campus” movement of the 1990s. Universities are taking actions because of the concerted effort of their students. Universities are going beyond policy efforts like signing the Talloires Declaration, to implementing offices of sustainability to examine their own efforts, and committing to carbon neutrality. They are doing so because of the effective strategies of a very interesting new student movement, one which contrasts significantly from that of the 1960s.
Students began to take organized stances on political issues in the United States in the 1930s, but rumblings occurred even earlier. “The first recorded rebellion occurred in 1766 at Harvard University, over the poor quality of butter served in the commons. The rallying call of the protestors was, “Behold our Butter stinketh” . Fast-forward to 1962, the year of Silent Spring, a student movement again stirred in the United States, and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) met to author the Port Huron Declaration.
“We believe that the universities are an overlooked seat of influence”, the statement read. Because of this institutions’ permanence, social influence, educational and knowledge distribution, its sometimes negative influences, and its openness to all viewpoints, it was believed to have the potential ability to change societal thinking in a significant way. These, at least, are facts, no matter how dull the teaching, how paternalistic the rules, how irrelevant the research that goes on. Social relevance, the accessibility to knowledge, and internal openness: these together make the university a potential base and agency in a movement of social change” (Hayden 1962). This is by-in-large the same argument made by Michael M’Gonigle and Justine Starke in Planet U: Sustaining the World, Reinventing the University. This time, about sustainability.
Two years after the Port Huron Declaration, the radical student movement began at the University of California Berkley with tactics and goals much different to those of today. Students throughout the 60’s reflected the direct action techniques used in protests in the peace-ecology movements of anti-nuclear proliferation and the Vietnam War. But they also challenged the basic structures of the institutions. When little of the movement’s deep desires were impacted by the protests, the early 1970s proved to be a sober second look at the tactics with a renewed look at the issues. A book written by Ralph Nader and Donald Ross at that time provided insightful commentary into the less visible problems of the 1970s. “Pollution can’t be solved by a sit-in, but university students have the means to test chemicals dumped by a company and warn the public, and even come up with sound pollution abatement measures. This is a much stronger technique.” Problems of continuity within student activism were met with the creation of Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) in Oregon and Minnesota, and in Canada, at the University of Waterloo.
The student movement since the 1960s has mimicked the broader environmental movement in becoming more sophisticated. This can be seen in its strategies, institutionalizing and networking of its organizations, and its use of technology. With end goals having generally changed from deep institutional change or destruction, to societal transformation to sustainability (environmental and social justice aims), strategies are also much different. Sustainability organizations are becoming institutionalized within student unions and often use a great deal of professional style, such as report-writing and fundraising. The work is being accomplished by a very small proportion of the student body at any one campus. The sustainability initiatives put forth by students somewhat challenge the underlying structure of their institutions as students are actively demanding further input in university and college governance. The initiatives are generally good for the campus, even financially, and university administrators need not fear, but work with the proposals.
With the environment as the top issue among Canadian youth, campus sustainability becomes the most important branch of today’s student movement. Student action is much less visible than it was decades ago when protests and campus police shootings made headlines. Campus sustainability initiatives do make the news, but generally “sexier” solutions like renewable energy projects or green roofs get more press than a change in ethical purchasing policies or comprehensive sustainability assessments.
Although the university can be a bastion of free thought and innovative research, the ideas can be difficult to get past the research or the classroom because of the traditions and culture of the centuries-old institution. However, outside factors that have influenced the popularity of the environmental movement in 2007 helped to turn things around. By providing outside pressure, external influences such as the wake-up call of Hurricane Katrina; the film An Inconvenient Trut;, various reports by the International Panel on Climate Change and economist Nicholas Stern; and federal inaction on climate change in Canada and the United States have acted as catalysts for change.
Bigger fishes, like the President’s Climate Commitment that sets goals and action plans for carbon neutrality, are much easier to move ahead today. In Ithaca, New York, at Cornell University and Ithaca College, the Commitment was signed with relative ease, compared with the petitions needed to sign a sustainability policy or the attempt to stop the paving of a Redbud forest, just a few years earlier. Evidence for this change is seen elswhere. In some cases though, work is still difficult. At the University of Waterloo where the environmental movement of the late 1980s helped spur an innovating greening the campus program, the current campus sustainability movement has been met with resistance from the top.
An even greater level of institutional change will be required to affect student participation in university governance and make a massive difference in campus sustainability. But this is what was attempted and failed by SDS. The more urgent aspects of global sustainability can’t wait for these snail-paced institutions to change. It is difficult enough in two or four years for students to move universities to adopt minor greening initiatives. These projects take student leadership and a significant commitment of time.
Perhaps it is those campuses that have already embraced sustainability upon student demand, where students should now begin prodding for further institutional change and democratic governance. After working closely with administrators on sustainability initiatives for a few years, students may be in a better place to work for deep-seated change. Let that be a challenge to the students of present sustainability leaders like Arizona State University, Oberlin College or the University of British Columbia.

It's Time for the youth

By: Greg Boyle

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique... You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open... There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than others.

I agree with many leaders that the world needs to recognize that there is only one superpower on earth, I just don't agree with who they think that is. I believe that this power is the collective will of the youth. We have yet to have our “awakening” where this will is narrowed to a point. The youth movement is strong, and the potential of this very force can be seen when there are more youth votes in American idol than all youth votes in North American elections. Try and imagine if we all honed our collective will towards one common cause. Solving climate change is one such cause that the future generations of not only humans, but of the whole planet are depending on us to undertake. It is the single most dangerous and threatening issue facing humanity in its entirety. We are tied into and ultimately leaders of the movement of movements. We have and will have to stand up to intense media biases and social assumptions, yet we have been successful and must be successful in the future; more so than any other movement before us. There is no one single answer for this dilemma, its solution will be born out of thousands of successes in thousands of fields.

There are numerous outlets for us a youth to channel our knowledge and desire for change. Through the Sierra Youth Coalition (SYC), Canadians under 26 can network and channel their desires for environmental and social change. The SYC is also part of and founding members of the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition (CYCC) and Energy Action. These are both coalitions of very powerful youth groups all focused on the same common goal... a green and healthy future for all. We must ally ourselves as Sierra Youth with the hundreds of other organizations striving for a sustainable future. We must take into consideration that in order to achieve sustainability, we must champion our social issues as well, allowing everyone to work together equally towards a common future.

This election is another method/outlet for youth to express ourselves and to shine our will onto the floor of the House of Commons. We NEED to put the environment first, for above all things stand this issue. The economy depends on it now more than ever with the need for a new green economy. Health care is stressed both due to a poor environment and a re-direction of funding to industry subsidies, corporate tax cuts and to fund an illegal war for oil. A shift away from an oil based economy to an environment and people based economy will lead us out of Afghanistan, and into a new, green world order. One guided and kept in check by youth.

An Alaska Native speaks out on Palin, Oil, and Alaska

An Alaska Native speaks out on Palin, Oil, and Alaska
By Evon Peter
evonpeter@mac.com
9/8/2008

My name is Evon Peter; I am a former Chief of the Neetsaii Gwich’in tribe from Arctic
Village, Alaska and the current Executive Director of Native Movement. My
organization provides culturally based leadership development through offices in Alaska
and Arizona. My wife, who is Navajo, and I have been based out of Flagstaff, Arizona for
the past few years, although I travel home to Alaska in support of our initiatives there as
well. It is interesting to me that my wife and I find ourselves as Indigenous people from
the two states where McCain and Palin originate in their leadership.

I am writing this letter to raise awareness about the ongoing colonization and violation of
human rights being carried out against Alaska Native peoples in the name of
unsustainable progress, with a particular emphasis on the role of Sarah Palin and the
Republican leadership. My hope is that it helps to elevate truth about the nature of
Alaskan politics in relation to Alaska Native peoples and that it lays a framework for our
path to justice.

Ever since the Russian claim to Alaska and the subsequent sale to the United States
through the Treaty of Cession in 1867, the attitude and treatment towards Alaska Native
peoples has been fairly consistent. We were initially referred to as less than human
“uncivilized tribes”, so we were excluded from any dialogues and decisions regarding our
lands, lives, and status. The dominating attitude within the Unites States at the time was
called Manifest Destiny; that God had given Americans this great land to take from the
Indians because they were non-Christian and incapable of self-government. Over the
years since that time, this framework for relating to Alaska Native peoples has become
entrenched in the United States legislative and legal systems in an ongoing direct
violation of our human rights.

What does this mean? Allow me to share an analogy. If a group of people were to arrive
in your city and tell you their people had made laws, among which were:
1. What were once your home and land now belong to them (although you could live
in the garage or backyard)
2. Forced you to send your children to boarding schools to learn their language and
be acculturated into their ways with leaders who touted “Kill the American, save
the man” (based on the original statement made by US Captain Richard H. Pratt
in regards to Native American education “Kill the Indian, save the man.”)
3. Supported missionaries and government agents to forcefully (for example, with
poisons placed on the tongues of your children and withheld vaccines) convince
you that your Jesus, Buddha, Torah, or Mohammed was actually an agent of evil
and that salvation in the afterlife could only be found through believing otherwise
4. Made it illegal for you to continue to do your job to support your family, except
under strict oversight and through extensive regulation
5. Made it illegal for you to own any land or run a business as an individual and did
not allow you to participate in any form of their government, which controlled
your life (voting or otherwise)

How would this make you feel? What if you also knew that if you were to retaliate, that
you would be swiftly killed or incarcerated? How long do you think it would take for you
to forget or would you be sure to share this history with your children with the hope that
justice could one day prevail for your descendents? And most importantly to our
conversation, how American does this sound to you?

To put this into perspective, my grandfather who helped to raise me in Arctic Village was
born in 1904, just thirty-seven years after the United States laid claim to Alaska. If my
grandfather had unjustly stolen your grandfathers home and I was still living in the house
and watching you live outdoors, would you feel a change was in order? Congress
unilaterally passed most of the major US legislation that affect our people in my
grandfathers’ lifetime. There has never been a Treaty between Alaska Native Peoples and
the United States over these injustices. Each time that Alaska Native people stand up for
our rights, the US responds with token shifts in its laws and policies to appease the
building discontent, yet avoiding the underlying injustice that I believe can be resolved if
leadership in the United States would be willing to acknowledge the underlying injustice
of its control over Alaska Native peoples, our lands, and our ways of life.

United States legal history in relation to Alaska Natives has been based on one major
platform - minimize the potential for Alaska Native people to regain control of their lives,
lands, and resources and maximize benefit to the Unites States government and its
corporations. While the rest of the world, following World War II, was seeking to return
African and European Nations to their rightful owners, the United States pushed in the
opposite direction by pulling the then Territory of Alaska out of the United Nations
dialogues and pushing for Statehood into the Union. Why is it that Alaska Native Nations
are still perceived as being incapable of governing our own lands, lives, and resources
differently than African, Asian, and European nations?

Let me get specific about what is at stake and how this relates to Palin and the
Republican leadership in Alaska and across this country. To this day, Alaska Native
peoples are among the only Indigenous peoples in all of North America whose
Indigenous Hunting and Fishing Rights have been extinguished by federal legislation and
yet we are the most dependent people on this way of life. Most of our villages have no
roads that connect them to cities; many live with poverty level incomes, and all rely to
varying degrees on traditional hunting, fishing, and harvesting for survival. This has
become known as the debate on Alaska Native Subsistence.

As Alaska Governor, Palin has continued the path of her predecessor Frank Murkowski
in challenging attempts by Alaska Native people to regain their human right to their
traditional way of life through subsistence.

The same piece of unilateral federal legislation, known as the Alaska Native Claims
Settlement Act (ANCSA) of 1971, that extinguished our hunting and fishing rights, also
extinguished all federal Alaska Native land claims and my Tribe’s reservation status. In
the continental United States, this sort of legislation is referred to as ‘termination
legislation’ because it takes the rights of self-government away from Tribes. It is based in
the same age-old idea that we are not capable of governing our people, lands, and
resources. To justify these terminations, ANCSA also created Alaska Native led for-
profit corporations (which were provided the remaining lands not taken by the
government and a one time payment the equivalent of about 1/20th of the annual profits
made by corporations in Alaska each year) with a mission of exploiting the land in
partnership with the US government and outside corporations. It was a brilliant piece of
legislation for the legal termination and cultural assimilation of Alaska Natives under the
guise of progress.

Since the passage of ANCSA, political leaders in Alaska, with a few exceptions, have
maintained that, as stated by indicted Senator Ted Stevens, “Tribes have never existed in
Alaska.” They maintain this position out of fear that the real injustice being carried out
upon Alaska Natives may break into mainstream awareness and lead to a re-opening of
due treaty dialogues between Alaska Native leaders and the federal government. At the
same time the federal government chose to list Alaska Native tribes in the list of federally
recognized tribes in 1993. Governor Palin maintains that tribes were federally recognized
but that they do not have the same rights as the tribes in the continental United States to
sovereignty and self-governance, even to the extent of legally challenging our Tribes
rights pursuant to the Indian Child Welfare Act. What good are governments that can’t
make decisions concerning their own land and people?

The colonial mentality in and towards Alaska is to exploit the land and resources for
profits and power, at the expense of Alaska Native people. Governor Palin reflects this
attitude and perspective in her words and leadership. She comes from an area within
Alaska that was settled by relocated agricultural families from the continental United
States in the second half of the last century. It is striking that a leader from that particular
area feels she has a right, considering all of the injustices to Alaska Native people, to
offer Alaskan oil and resources in an attempt to solve the national energy crisis at the
Republican Convention. Palin also chose not to mention the connection between oil
development and global warming, which is wreaking havoc on Alaska Native villages,
forcing some to begin the process of relocation at a cost sure to reach into the hundreds of
millions.

Our tribes depend on healthy and abundant land and animals for our survival. For
example, my people depend on the Porcupine Caribou herd, which migrates into the
coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge each spring to birth their young. Any
disruption and contamination will directly impact the health and capacity for my people
to continue to live in a homeland we have been blessed to live in for over 10,000 years.
This is the sacrifice Palin offered to the nation. The worst part of it is that there are viable
alternatives to addressing the energy crisis in the United States, yet Palin chooses options
that very well may result in the extinguishment of some of the last remaining intact
ecosystems and original cultures in all of North America. Palin is also promoting off
shore oil drilling and increased mining in sensitive areas of Alaska, all of which would
have a lifespan of far fewer years than my grandfather walked on this earth and which
would not even make a smidgen of an impact on national consumption rates or longer
term sustainability. McCain was once a champion of protecting the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge and it is sad to see, that with Palin on board, he is no longer vocal and
perhaps even giving up on what he believes in to satisfy Palin’s position.

While I have much more to say, this is my current offering to elevate the conversation
about what is at stake in Alaska and for Alaska Native peoples. Please share this offering
with others and help us to make this an election that brings out honest dialogue. We have
an opportunity to bring lasting change, but only if we can be open to hearing the truth
about our situations and facing the challenges that arise.

Many thanks to all those who are taking stands for a just and sustainable future for all of
our future generations,



*This essay is a personal reflection and should not be attributed to my tribe or organization