photo
SHARE | PRINT | TEXT SIZE: ＋ － | RSS
SGI News: Global activities for peace, education and culture

SGI Hosts Discussion on Climate Change

photo The "Voices from the Frontlines" panel discussion [Danny Sze]

SGI representatives took part in the 17th UN Commission for Sustainable Development (CSD) session held at the UN Headquarters in New York from May 4 to 8. On May 6, the SGI and the CSD Education Caucus co-organized a related panel discussion on adaptation to climate change entitled "Voices from the Frontlines." Focusing on the need to combine traditional knowledge and scientific knowledge in order to empower people to prepare for life in a changing environment, the event brought together perspectives from the Arctic and Africa and a report from the Indigenous Peoples' Global Summit on Climate Change, held in Anchorage, Alaska, from April 20 to 24.

Nick Illauq, cochair of the Ittaq Heritage and Research Centre and Deputy Mayor of Clyde River, in Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada, introduced innovative ways his community is using GPS technology and traditional wisdom to map hunting grounds and warn of dangers such as thinning ice. Arame Tall of Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies described work she undertook with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in West and Central Africa to bring results of climate change science through Red Cross networks to the local level. A short film made by villagers in Mphunga Village in Malawi to share climate change adaptation techniques with other nearby communities was also shown. The film was facilitated by SGI member Fernanda Baumhardt with the Malawian Red Cross.

The event was also cosponsored by the Indigenous Information Network, the CSD Indigenous Peoples' Caucus and the CSD Youth Caucus.

On May 4, SGI representative Joan Anderson also introduced the SGI's philosophy of grassroots empowerment in tackling environmental education as a panelist in a symposium entitled "Common Ground: Science and Religion in Dialogue for a Sustainable Future" organized by the Center for the Study of Science and Religion, part of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

TOP