Advocacy is resistance: Navigating anti-LGBTQI+ violence in post-war Guatemala May 23, 2024 | Read more
Canadian coalition calls for urgent action to uphold civil liberties and Charter rights at protests and encampments across the country May 15, 2024 | Read more
Inter Pares joins call for Burma to end use of violence and respect democracy Feb 4, 2021 | Read more
Planning is resistance: Indigenous people in Burma envision a self-determined future May 23, 2024 | Read more
Inter Pares welcomes Canada’s feminist realignment of international assistance Jun 9, 2017 | Read more
Stopping the unstoppable: Citizen resistance to exterminator technology in Burkina Faso Sep 4, 2019 | Read more
The Immigrant Workers Centre to receive 2018 Peter Gillespie Social Justice Award Apr 18, 2018 | Read more
“Until We Find Them”: Searching for missing loved ones on the road to the North Mar 11, 2019 | Read more
CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS | Inter Pares and SUWRA launch Canadian civil society working group on Sudan Jun 25, 2024 | Read more
Karate and bodily autonomy: Helping girls in Bangladesh thrive through sport Dec 15, 2022 | Read more
Planning is resistance: Indigenous people in Burma envision a self-determined future May 23, 2024 | Read more
Advocacy is resistance: Navigating anti-LGBTQI+ violence in post-war Guatemala May 23, 2024 | Read more
Advocacy is resistance: Navigating anti-LGBTQI+ violence in post-war Guatemala May 23, 2024 | Read more
The root causes of environmental destruction need social justice solutions voices : Share Print David Bruer: Inter Pares Program Manager (left). By David Bruer, Inter Pares Program Manager My passion has always been the environment – preserving old-growth forests in Ontario, raising awareness about habitat loss, and a commitment to reduce waste. So it was natural that my working life began as an environmental activist focusing on local issues. In 1987, when the UN-sponsored Brundtland Commission published its landmark report, Our Common Future, my focus shifted from the local to the global. This report defined “sustainable development”, emphasizing the connection between the environmental degradation in the South and activities in the North. At that time, the Canadian organization I worked for chose to focus on the destruction of tropical rainforest. For many, it was easy to understand the link between slash-and-burn agriculture and consumption in the North; that these rainforests were being destroyed to graze cattle for hamburgers in Canada, and that mahogany from the same rainforest was being sold as cheap plywood for Northern demand. This resulted in a tremendous loss of tropical biodiversity. However, I had great difficulty with some of the solutions being presented. Instead of primarily addressing Northern consumption patterns, many of my colleagues argued that all we had to do was buy the rainforest and protect it, particularly from exploitation by peasant farmers. I disagreed. I could not accept that the fundamental problem was poor farmers trying to survive and that the solution was to block access to their livelihood. In so many places in the world, productive farmland had been stolen by wealthy elites, and the poor were left to migrate to wherever land was still available – and then were blamed for destroying the rainforest. If the aim was to preserve the rainforest, it made more sense to promote agrarian reform. Without resolving the underlying social justice issues, we would never be able to resolve the environmental ones. I wanted to look at the root causes of rainforest destruction and work on systemic solutions: agrarian reform, respect for human rights, and a fundamental change in the power relationship between the rich landowners who control most of the land, and the poor farmers who were being forced to ever more marginal land. This is when I moved to Latin America to work for a local organization that shared this analysis. In the rainforest of northern Guatemala, I worked with Guatemalan families returning to their land after a decade as refugees in Mexico. For eight years, I helped families establish cooperatives to sustainably manage the soil and the forest so that people could live in dignity and escape the poverty of landlessness. When I moved back to Canada, I joined Inter Pares, a place where I could build on this analysis, integrating environmental and social justice issues. As part of the Asia Program, I work with the Deccan Development Society (DDS) based in the dry, heavily populated lands of Andhra Pradesh in India. DDS assists poor dalit women, who are at the very bottom of the caste hierarchy, to self-organize. These women, once forced to beg for seeds each year, originally had little or no land to farm. Through government programs, the women acquired land of their own – but it was degraded soil that the wealthy did not want. DDS provided seeds, tools and training in organic and traditional biodiverse farming techniques. The women have restored the ecology of this degraded land so that their fields now sustainably produce an abundance of biodiverse crops to feed themselves and their families. Inter Pares and the people we work with around the world and here in Canada deal with environmental challenges by addressing the underlying social justice issues. Clearly, as Brundtland pointed out in 1987, we do share a common future. But to share it means that everyone must have a right to participate in the decisions about how that future will be determined. Together we are building a common future that is also a better future. If the aim was to preserve the rainforest, it made more sense to promote agrarian reform. Without resolving the underlying social justice issues, we would never be able to resolve the environmental ones. Learn more UN Report : Our Common Future Bulletin: Our Common Future Today. Volume 33, Number 2. June 2011 Add new comment You must have JavaScript enabled to use this form. Your name Comment * Save Leave this field blank