Severin Suzuki Speaks at Rio in 1992

Hello, I’m Severin Suzuki, speaking for ECO, the Environmental Children’s Organization. We are a group of four twelve and thirteen year-olds from Canada trying to make a difference…
We raised all the money ourselves to come 6,000 miles to tell you adults
you must change your ways.
Coming here today I have no hidden agenda. I’m fighting for my future. Losing my future is not like losing an election or a few points in the stock market.
I am here to speak for all future generations yet to come. I am here to
speak on behalf of the starving children around the world whose cries go unheard. I am here to speak for the countless animals dying across this planet because they have nowhere left to go.
I am afraid to go out in the sun now because of the holes in the ozone. I
am afraid to breathe the air because I don’t know what chemicals are in
it. I used to go fishing in Vancouver, my hometown, with my dad, until just
a few years ago we found the fish full of cancers. And now we hear about animals and plants going extinct every day—
vanishing forever. In my life, I have dreamt of seeing the great herds of wild animals, jungles, and rain forests full of birds and butterflies, but now I wonder if they will even exist for my children to see.
Did you worry about these things when you were my age? All this is happening before our eyes, and yet we act as if we have all the time we want and all the solutions. I’m only a child and I don’t have all the solutions, but I want you to
realize, neither do you! You don’t know how to fix the holes in our ozone layer. You don’t know how to bring the salmon back up a dead stream. You don’t know how to bring back an animal now extinct. And you can’t bring back the forests that once grew where there is now a
desert.
If you don’t know how to fix it, please stop breaking it! Here you may be delegates of your governments, business people, organizers, reporters, or politicians. But really you are mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles. And all of you are somebody’s child. I’m only a child, yet I know we are all a part of a family, five billion
strong—in fact, 30 million species strong. And borders and governments will never change that. I’m only a child, yet I know we are all in this together and should act as one single world toward one single goal.
In my anger, I am not blind, and in my fear, I am not afraid to tell the world how I feel.
In my country, we make so much waste. We buy and throw away, buy and throw away. And yet northern countries will not share with the needy. Even when we have more than enough, we are afraid to lose some of our wealth, afraid to let go.
In Canada, we live the privileged life with plenty of food, water, and shelter. We have watches, bicycles, computers, and television sets. Two days ago here in Brazil, we were shocked when we spent time with some children living on the streets. And this is what one child told us:
“I wish I was rich. And if I were, I would give all the street children food, clothes, medicine, shelter, love, and affection.”
If this child on the street who has nothing is willing to share, why are we
who have everything still so greedy?
I can’t stop thinking that these children are my own age, that it makes a
tremendous difference where you are born. I could be one of those
children living in the favelas of Rio. I could be a child starving in Somalia, a victim of war in the Middle East, or a beggar in India. I’m only a child, yet I know if all the money spent on war was spent on
ending poverty and finding environmental answers, what a wonderful place this Earth would be.
At school, even in kindergarten, you teach us how to behave in the world. You teach us not to fight with others, to work things out, to respect others, to clean up our mess, not to hurt other creatures, to
share, not be greedy. Then why do you go out and do the things you tell us not to do?
Do not forget why you are attending these conferences, who you are doing this for—we are your children. You are deciding what kind of a world we will grow up in. Parents should be able to comfort their children by saying, "Everything’s going to be all right.” “We’re doing the best we can.”
“It’s not the end of the world.”
But I don’t think you can say that to us anymore. Are we even on your
list of priorities? My dad always says, “You are what you do, not what you say.”
Well, what you do makes me cry at night. You grown-ups say you love us. I challenge you, please, make your actions reflect your words.
Thank you for listening.
--In 1990, David Suzuki took his family to live with the Kaiapo people in
the Amazon rain forest of Brazil. They witnessed the devastation of the Kaiapo
land. Afterwards, Severn talked a group of 5th grade girls into forming a small
group she called the Environmental Children’s Organization. To help spread
the word about environmental issues, the girls made ceramic brooches shaped
like geckos, they called eco-geckos. They received orders from students and
teachers and soon raised $150 for ECO.
Inspired by the plight of the Penan people the club bought a large water
filter which they gave to two Penan representatives.
In the summer of 1991, Severn heard of a big environmental meeting in
Rio and was surprised to find out that her father did not plan to attend. She told
her father, “I want to raise money to send ECO. I think children should be
there to act as a conscience for the grown-ups.”
Her dad scoffed at the idea and forgot about it. Two months later, Severn
announced, “Dad, I just got a check for $1,000 from the Ira-hiti Foundation in
San Francisco.” In the end, the club raised $13,000, which Severn’s dad
matched allowing the five girls and three parents to go to Rio for the Earth
Summit.
Severn worked on her own speech rejecting her dad’s suggestion of help.
She delivered the speech at a plenary session on June 11, 1992, after which Al
Gore told her, “That was the best speech given at Rio.” The official UN video of
the Earth Summit concludes with her speech.
Severn’s speech had an amazing impact and she was deluged by the
media, received many honors, and wrote a best-selling book, Tell the World.
She was elected to a committee to draft the Earth Charter.
In 2000, she bicycled across Canada for clean air. She graduated from
Yale in 2002 after majoring in Ecology and Evolution and formed an
environmental think tank called the Skyfish Project. As a member of Kofi
Annan’s committee of eminent persons, she helped outline the objectives of the
Earth Summit in Johannesburg in 2002.
(The David Suzuki Reader, 345-350)