David Suzuki talks to World Wildlife--Australia about why humans are the real reason our planet is degrading at such a fast rate and how we can turn this around; 19 minutes.
Suzuki, David and Dave Robert Taylor. The Big Picture: Reflections on Science, Humanity and a Quickly Changing Planet (Greystone Books, 2009).
David Suzuki and co-author Dave Robert Taylor examine current issues facing the natural world such as suburban sprawl, sustainable transportation, food shortages, biodiversity, technology, and public policy. Most importantly, they provide solid, science-based solutions to the environmental challenges of the 21st century.
Suzuki, David and David R. Boyd. David Suzuki's Green Guide (Greystone Books, 2008).
Everyone knows that human actions affect our natural environment. With this indispensable guide, readers will learn to consume fewer resources and become part of the solution as stewards of the planet. This book recommends actions for individuals to be more green in the homes where we live, the way we travel, the food we eat, and the things we buy. It also describes how all of us can ensure that governments support sustainable lifestyles. Suzuki and Boyd provide vital tips for readers to:
create a healthy indoor environment,
decrease energy and water use,
choose eco-friendly transportation,
make simple diet changes to eat fresher, healthier food
Suzuki, David and illustration by Eugenie Fernandes. There's a Barnyard in My Bedroom (Greystone Press, 2008).
The three chapters in this book, based on previous titles by David Suzuki and Eugenie Fernandes, take Jamie and Megan on an exciting exploration of nature and its secrets. With the help of their parents and their imaginations, they discover that natural magic is all around them. Sheets and pillows, books and pens, fruits and furniture: all come from nature. They also discover that the air is not just empty space but is full of smells, sounds, water, and life-giving gases. And they discover that their backyard contains clues to the past and future: a nail from pioneer times, seeds that will grow into food, and a robin’s nest that will soon hold baby birds.
Lambert, Jill, with introduction by David Suzuki. A Good Catch (Greystone Press, 2008).
One concern in culinary circles these days is sustainable seafood. There’s a limit to how much seafood the ocean can produce, and we know we have to fish responsibly and eat only abundant species.
A Good Catch explains which are the best, most responsible seafood choices—and features them in more than seventy mouth-watering recipes from celebrity chefs across Canada.
Guided by SeaChoice, an initiative of Sustainable Seafood Canada, a brief introduction outlines what questions informed consumers should be asking about seafood and provides a quick-reference guide to the recommended choices. Learn, for example, why pink salmon is a better choice than sockeye and why trap-caught prawns are preferable to net caught ones. The book also suggests substitutions for your favorite fish that may not fit into the SeaChoice guidelines, so you can still cook your stand-by recipes knowing you’ve made a responsible decision.
This easy-to-use book and accompanying website, www.seachoice.org, represents a sea change in the way we buy and consume seafood.
Suzuki, David, Amanda McConnell and Adrienne Mason. The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature (Greystone Books, Third Edition, 2007).
Every day we hear that the bottom line for society and governments must be the economy and global competitiveness. But what are the real needs that we must satisfy to live rich, fulfilling lives? David Suzuki presents a radically different perspective on our basic needs and the real bottom line.
Dressel, Holly and David Suzuki. Good News for a Change: How Everyday People are Helping the Planet (Greystone Press, 2003).
We all know the bad news. Every day, along with all the bulletins on social upheavals and terrorist attacks, we read reports of the damage that industrial development is wreaking on our soil, air and water. We seem intent on continuing to live this way, even though many scientific experts tell us our actions are suicidal. The good news is that thousands of individuals, groups and businesses are already changing their ways. A growing number of companies are still making money while benefiting their local communities. The authors have also uncovered hundreds of working solutions that can help all of us to imagine and achieve a new and happier future. There is a spontaneous, global quest for ways to survive sustainably that is opening up a very different planetary future from the one based on endless economic and industrial demands. And, say Suzuki and Dressel, many of the technologies we need to realize our goals—to save species, to conserve soil, to right social wrongs—are already within our grasp.
Suzuki, David. The David Suzuki Reader (Greystone Books, 2003).
Drawing from Suzuki’s published and unpublished writings, this collection reveals the underlying themes that have informed his work over a lifetime. In these incisive and provocative essays, Suzuki looks unflinchingly at the destructive forces of globalization, political short-sightedness, and greed. Suzuki cautions against blind faith in science, technology, politics, and economics, and provides inspiring examples of how and where to make those changes that will matter to all of us and to future generations.
Suzuki, David, Editor. When the Wild Comes Leaping Up: Personal Encounters with Nature (Greystone Press, 2002).
In this eloquent collection of original essays, award-winning writers from the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Australia describe a personal encounter with the natural world that moved them and led to a new level of understanding or awareness. All are beautifully written and deeply felt, and all are testimonies to the transformative power of nature.
Suzuki, David and Kathy Vanderlinden. Eco-Fun (Greystone Press, 2001).
Television, video games, computers and other technologies are exciting inventions, but today they tend to dominate our lives – especially those of our children. Through interactive games and experiments, this book helps reconnect both children and adults to the natural world. It’s a great opportunity to bring families together, have fun and learn about ourselves and the world around us.
In 2004, Canada's national broadcaster, the CBC, asked Canadians to rate their greatest countrymen. David Suzuki only came in fifth — but everyone ahead of him on the list was dead. Suzuki is very much alive; indeed, his remarkable career has been a celebration of life in all its diversity, and a crusade to protect it.
Born in British Columbia's Japanese-Canadian community, Suzuki was interned with his family as a young boy during World War II. Unjust, yes, but the camp was in beautiful territory, which Suzuki spent his days exploring. Nature's glory and mystery imprinted early on him; he grew up to become Canada's premier young geneticist, an award-winning bench scientist who became a professor at the age of 33.
But something — perhaps, he says, the memory of the role that genetics had played in his family's persecution — made him restless with his fruit flies, and before long he'd embarked on a second career, creating nature documentaries for television and radio. The best-loved of them, a TV series called The Nature of Things, began its run in 1979 and has aired in some 50 countries around the world, making Suzukia kind of terrestrial Jacques Cousteau, responsible for introducing tens of millions to the world Out There.
Of course, it's been a rough time to have the Planet Earth for your beat. Vanishing species, melting glaciers, choking pollution — for the last few decades, it's been more like covering crime than wandering through the wildflowers. And that has given Suzuki his third and greatest role — as an unflagging and highly effective environmental champion. His training in TV hadn't turned him into a happy-speak temporizer — instead, he'd figured out that his combination of scientific understanding and plainspoken truth-telling made him trusted in a way that few others were. He was among the earliest to raise a cry about climate change, for instance, and he's never relented. Though he's now in his seventies, he toured Canada earlier this year, giving a string of speeches about the need for an international agreement on CO2 emissions.
Ecological science holds that everything is connected. If so, Suzuki has become one of the crucial hubs in the cultural ecology of our strained earth. Biologists talk about keystone species essential for the proper function of an ecosystem; Suzuki is a keystone guy.
"Conventional economics is inevitably destructive and unsustainable because it ignores nature's services as 'externalities'. But nature maintains the biosphere as a healthy place for animals like us. Growth is just a description of the state of a system, yet economists equate growth with progress as if growth is the very purpose of economics. So we fail to ask 'how much is enough?', 'what is an economy for?', 'am I happier with all this stuff?'. Steady growth forever is an impossibility in a finite world and our world is defined by the biosphere, the zone of air, water and land where all life exists. Endless growth within the biosphere is like the goal of cancer within our body. We need to internalize the services of nature in an ecological economics system and work towards 'steady state economics.'"
“We're in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyones arguing over where they're going to sit.”
“In the environmental movement . . . every time you lose a battle it's for good, but our victories always seem to be temporary and we keep fighting them over and over again.”
"We must reinvent a future free of blinders so that we can choose from real options.”
"It's time we stopped ignoring the environment, ... Let's not let another election go by without making this a high priority."
“Our personal consumer choices have ecological, social, and spiritual consequences. It is time to re-examine some of our deeply held notions that underlie our lifestyles.”
“The question is whether we're going to start taking the steps now to avoid the really big jumps that are in store if we don't do something now.”
“The human brain now holds the key to our future. We have to recall the image of the planet from outer space: a single entity in which air, water, and continents are interconnected. That is our home.”
In his own discipline of genetics, Suzuki has played a crucial role in informing and warning the public about the weak and risky scientific basis of many of today's commercial applications of genetic engineering. With science writer, Peter Knudtson, he wrote of his concerns in Genethics: The Ethics of Engineering Life. In an article Biotechnology: Panacea or Hype? he writes: "Every scientist should understand that in any young, revolutionary discipline, most of the current ideas in the area are tentative and will fail to stand up to scrutiny over time. In other words, the bulk of the latest notions are wrong. The rush to exploit new products will be based on inaccurate hypotheses and questionable benefits and could be downright dangerous. The discipline is far from mature enough to leave the lab or find a niche in the market. The problem is that those pushing its benefits stand to gain enormously from it."
David Suzuki was born in Canada in March 1936 to parents of Japanese descent. Following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour, the family was interned, and later, after the war, settled in Ontario. With a PhD in zoology from the University of Chicago, Suzuki went to the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 1963, where he became Professor of Zoology six years later, specialising in genetics.
During his scientific work, Suzuki became more and more concerned about both the relationship between science and society, and the impacts of human activities on the natural world. He says: "After a great deal of soul-searching I concluded that all scientific insight has the potential to be applied for good or bad and the only way to minimise the misapplication of science is an informed public." While continuing his university professorships until 2001, Suzuki gave up his laboratory research in the late 70s to become one of the most important communicators of natural science in the world and "an environmental icon" as the 2005 Right Livelihood Award Recipient Tony Clarke has described him.
From 1979 until today, Suzuki has been the anchorman of "The Nature of Things with David Suzuki", a prime time science programme on Canadian television, which has been sold to more than 80 countries. He has produced numerous other TV shows and series, and has written 43 books, whereof 17 for children.
Alyn Ware explains New Zealand's Nuclear-Free movement; 3.14 minutes.
Alyn Ware at the World Peace Forum 2006
XIX General Conference of OPANAL
Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean
Presentation by Alyn Ware
Global Coordinator of the Parliamentarians
for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament Representative of Civil Society
November 7
Your Excellencies: the Secretary-General of OPANAL, the representative of the United Nations Secretary General, the Representative of the Ministry of Foreign Relations, representatives of States Parties to OPANAL, other distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen.
I wish to thank OPANAL for the invitation to address you as a representative of key sectors in civil society that are actively promoting nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament.
At the first Conference of States Parties to Treaties that establish Nuclear Weapon Free Zones (NWFZs), which was held in Mexico from April 26-28 of this year, civil society representatives including mayors, parliamentarians, academics, scientists, government officials, media, nuclear survivors and various peace related organizations, held a concurrent forum to explore ways that civil society could support the establishment, implementation and strengthening of NWFZs. [1]
The forum indicated the strong support there is from civil society for NWFZs and also for the achievement of a nuclear weapons free world.
The Treaty of Tlatelolco and the work of OPANAL are celebrated by civil society for three major reasons:
As the establishment of the first inhabited region in which the possession and deployment of nuclear weapons is proscribed thus preventing nuclear proliferation in the region and protecting it from the threat of attack from nuclear weapons
As an example to other regions of how to establish a NWFZ despite varying political realities and relationships between countries in the region and with the nuclear weapon States themselves
As an active promoter of nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament initiatives such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the 13 disarmament steps agreed at the 2000 NPT Review Conference, the consolidation of a Southern Hemisphere and Adjacent Areas NWFZ and the promotion of disarmament education
There is a problem however in the wider public regarding knowledge about both the current threats from nuclear weapons and the continuing importance of the work of OPANAL. When I arrived in Santiago last week I went walking around the city and talked to people about OPANAL and this conference. While there was pride that Chile was hosting an important inter-governmental meeting on nuclear disarmament, most people thought that the nuclear threat had disappeared and that environmental issues were now more important.
At the 60th session of the United Nations General Assembly in October, Mayors for Peace and the Parliamentary Network for Nuclear Disarmament released a joint statement signed by over 300 mayors and parliamentarians from around the world, which highlighted the fact that there remain 30,000 nuclear weapons, many of which are deployed and ready for use at short notice. The statement also noted that the risk of nuclear weapons use - by accident, design or miscalculation – is increasing due to the proliferation of nuclear weapons to new States, the possibility of non-State access to nuclear weapons and bomb-building materials, and the expanded nuclear weapons use doctrines of the nuclear weapon States. [2]
The work of OPANAL in support of nuclear disarmament and the positive example of the Treaty of Tlatelolco are thus more important than ever.
There are many pessimists who will argue that nuclear disarmament is not possible – that nuclear weapons are required for security as a final deterrent and that those states with a nuclear capability will thus not willingly give them up. The example of Latin America and the Caribbean demolishes that argument. Countries in this region have managed to establish national and regional security and solve disputes without recourse to nuclear deterrence. In addition, two countries in the region that were developing nuclear weapons capabilities, have abandoned such programs and joined the treaty.
Tlatelolco and OPANAL have achieved a lot in the region. But unfortunately the wider goal of nuclear abolition and disarmament has not yet been achieved. In this respect there is a lot that can be done by States parties to Tlatelolco in collaboration with civil society to reach this goal.
Despite overwhelming international support for nuclear disarmament, progress has been blocked in key multilateral arenas – the Conference on Disarmament, the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conferences and the recent United Nations Summit – by a very small number of intransigent countries who have exploited the absolute consensus practice of these bodies, a practice which gives any one state the power to block even the start of deliberations.
However, the example of the NWFZs shows that it is possible for likeminded countries to take their own nuclear disarmament steps regardless of the current positions of the NWS, but with a view to bringing the NWS in when they are ready. In fact, such steps strengthen the norm against nuclear weapons thus increasing the political momentum for the NWS to join.
In October a group of six countries – Brazil, Canada, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand and Sweden – suggested that the United Nations could establish, by a majority vote, sub-committees that could begin deliberations and negotiations on a fissile material treaty, nuclear disarmament, negative security assurances and prevention of an arms race in outer space. [3] Progress in such committees would be possible because they would not be subject to the absolute consensus practice of the Conference on Disarmament and the NPT Review Conferences. The six countries announced that if progress is not made in the Conference on Disarmament over the next year they would consider putting their proposal to the UN for a vote. Such an initiative should be supported.
Also in October, the Middle Powers Initiative – an international non-governmental organization supporting disarmament efforts of influential non-nuclear weapon countries – established the Article VI Forum, a process for likeminded States to examine and develop the legal, technical and political elements and mechanisms for establishing a nuclear weapons free world. Some work on this has already been undertaken – including the Model Nuclear Weapons Convention [4] submitted to the United Nations by Costa Rica and circulated for consideration by all countries.
Practical work can be undertaken by likeminded States either through the Article VI Forum or in sub-committees of the United Nations. However, continued pressure will need to be placed on the NWS to reduce their reliance on nuclear weapons and implement their obligations for complete nuclear disarmament.
The 1996 International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on the legality of nuclear weapons was instrumental in affirming the general illegality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons and in also affirming the obligation to achieve nuclear disarmament. However, the NWS have exploited the generality of the opinion, and the fact that no timeframe for implementation was set, to evade their responsibilities. As we approach the 10 th anniversary of the nuclear weapons case, it is perhaps time to return to the Court to challenge the continuing policies and practices of the NWS and establish more specific actions required of them. The International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms, one of the pioneers of the 1996 case, is currently undertaking consultations on this proposal and would welcome contact with any other interested governments. [5]
One other initiative open to governments and worthy of note relates to the actions to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1540 [6] . The resolution requires all countries to “adopt and enforce appropriate effective laws which prohibit any non-State actor to manufacture, acquire, possess, develop, transport, transfer or use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and their means of delivery,” and also to “take and enforce effective measures to establish domestic controls to prevent the proliferation of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons and their means of delivery.”
New Zealand, in its report to the UN Security Council 1540 Committee [7] , has argued that such laws and measures should apply to both State and non-State actors, and that such laws and measures aim to both prevent proliferation and achieve nuclear disarmament. New Zealand has adopted legislation along these lines which prohibits nuclear weapons and makes it criminal for citizens and government agents to engage in any activities relating to the acquisition, possession, threat or use of such weapons. All member States of NWFZs, in implementing UN Resolution 1540, are encouraged to take a similar approach.
Actions by national governments and legislatures to prohibit and criminalize nuclear weapons would strengthen the global norm of illegality of these weapons. This would be true particularly if States included extra-territoriality (i.e. where it would be a crime for citizens of the country, including public officials, to engage in nuclear weapons activities regardless of where in the world they undertake such activities) and universality (i.e. where the State exercises jurisdiction over such activities regardless of where in the world the crime was committed and regardless of the citizenship of the perpetrator). [8]
Secretary-general, your excellencies, ladies and gentlemen. This year is the 60 th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the 60 th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations. Let us use this occasion to heed the cry of the Hibakusha – the nuclear survivors, and to honour the very first resolution of the United Nations General Assembly to use our collective vision and energies to abolish and eliminate these devices of terror and mass extermination from the planet. OPANAL and its member States can lead the way and the rest of the world will join with you in this endeavour.
[1] Report from the Civil Society Forum of the Conference of States Parties and Signatories to the Treaties that Establish Nuclear-Weapon-Free-Zones, NPT/CONF.2005/WP.46. www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/RevCon05/wp/wp46.pdf
[2] Joint statement of mayors and parliamentarians cooperating for a nuclear weapons free world. www.pnnd.org (in English, Spanish and Portuguese)
[3] Draft elements of an UNGA60 First Committee Resolution: Initiating work on priority disarmament and non-proliferation issues. www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/1com/1com05/docs/draftelementsinitiating.pdf
[4] UN Document A/C.1/52/7. www.inesap.org/publ_nwc.htm (in English and Spanish)
[5] Time to Return to the World Court? IALANA News, January 2005. www.lcnp.org/pubs/IALANA2005/IALANAnews-06.htm
[6] UN Security Council Resolution 1540. Adopted April 28, 2004. http://disarmament2.un.org/Committee1540/Res1540(E).pdf (English)
[7] New Zealand Report to the UN Security Council 1540 Committee, October 2004. www.gsinstitute.org/pnnd/NZUNSC1540.htm For all national reports see http://disarmament2.un.org/Committee1540/report.html
[8] See International Ju-Jitsu: Using United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540 to Advance Nuclear Disarmament www.lcnp.org/disarmament/Ju-Jitsu_UNSC1540.htm
In 1995 Alyn co-founded Abolition 2000, an international network now numbering over 2000 endorsing organisations that calls for negotiations to achieve a Nuclear Weapons Convention - a treaty to prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons under effective international control. Following the 1996 International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, Alyn drafted a UN resolution on implementation of the ICJ opinion through negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention. Since then, this resolution has attracted every year the votes of some 125 countries in the UN General Assembly - including from the New Agenda Countries (Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden), the Non-Aligned Movement, and some of the nuclear-weapons possessing countries: China, India, Pakistan and North Korea.
Alyn then brought together a group of experts to draft a Model Nuclear Weapons Convention, a 70-page document outlining the legal, technical and political measures required to achieve and sustain a nuclear-weapons-free world. This Model Nuclear Weapon Convention has been circulated and promoted by the UN Secretary-General.
Ware is also one of two principal authors of the book Securing our Survival: the Case for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, published by IPPNW and distributed to diplomats, academics, scientists, parliamentarians, mayors, non-governmental organisations and media around the world.
