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Crossing to Safety: Discovering our Common Home in Atlantic Canada
August 11, 2021 @ 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Building living buildings and living communities is rooted in a deep understanding of what it means to be inclusive. Adopting an ethic of place is a good point of beginning: An ethic of place respects equally the people of a region and the land, animals, vegetation, water, and air. It recognizes that people revere their physical surroundings and they need and deserve a stable, productive economy that is accessible to those with modest incomes. An ethic of place ought to be a shared community value and ought to manifest itself in a determination to treat the environment and its people as equals, to recognize both as sacred,and to insure that all members of the community not just search for but insist upon solutions that fulfill the ethic.
Join us for the final Webinar in a 5-part series: Living Communities and Inclusion in Atlantic Canada, Wednesday, August 11, from 7:00 to 9:00pm Atlantic time. Richard Roach, Scott Leckie, Robin Bronen and Cecilia Jimenez-Damary will join Centre for Local Prosperity Host Gregory Heming for a one hour discussion followed by a 1 hour Q&A session with the public.
A modest fee is being charged for these events. If the fee is a hinderance to your attendance please contact info@centreforlocalprosperity.ca
E.O. Wilson once remarked “the real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology.”
If Wilson’s summary is close to correct (and there is a vast body of evidence to suggest he is); as climate breakdown continues to intensify (as science is able to demonstrate); as the number of climate refugees seeking safe haven increases (as an array of world bodies, including the United Nations, have now shown); what emotional, institutional and technological makeover is Atlantic Canada prepared to undergo if we make the conscious decision to be that safe haven for climate displaced persons? If any of us are going to find shelter from what Secretary General of the United Nations General António Guterres calls the ‘winds of madness’, then some place, some collective citizenry, must show the world the way. This dialogue hopes to plant seeds that may one day ripen into a common home for humanity, a sustainable place for all of life. This begins, as it must, with a collective emotional, institutional and technological expression of neighbourliness among Atlantic Canadians.
Richard Roach, Scott Leckie, Robin Bronen and Cecilia Jimenez-Damary will join Centre for Local Prosperity Host Gregory Heming for a discussion followed by a Q&A session with the public. All Webinars are from 7:00 to 9:00pm Atlantic time.
Richard Roach has devoted his working life to peace, human rights and the environment. He was the global media chief of Amnesty International, a trustee of the Rainforest Foundation, and active in diverse peace initiatives. Raised in a Buddhist family in Canada, he served for 12 years as the President of the worldwide Shambhala community. As part of a high-level interfaith delegation to to the Rohingya refugee camps on the Bangladesh/Myanmar border in 2018 he helped launch the Buddhist Humanitarian Project, featured by Lion’s Roar in “Meditating on the Buddha in the midst of Buddhist Terror.”
Scott Leakie is the founder and director of Displacement Solutions, a non-profit initiative designed to assist refugees and displaced persons to return and recover their original homes. An international human rights lawyer and global housing advocate, he is recognised internationally as an expert in the field of economic and social rights. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
Robin Bronen works as a human rights attorney and has been researching and working with communities forced to relocate because of climate change since 2007. She is a senior research scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and co-founded and works as the executive director of the Alaska Institute for Justice, a non-governmental organization that is the only immigration legal service provider in Alaska. The Alaska Institute for Justice houses a language interpreter center, training bilingual Alaskans to be interpreters, and also serves as a research and policy institute focused on climate and social justice issues.
Cecilia Jimenez-Damary is a lawyer in human rights and international humanitarian law specialised in forced displacement and migration. She has over three decades of experience in NGO human rights advocacy for the Asia-Pacific region and teaching experience in human rights and humanitarian law. Ms. Jimenez-Damary previously acted as Senior Legal Adviser and Trainer with the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in Geneva; as the National Director of the IDP Project of the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines; and as the government representative to the Philippine Transitional Justice and Reconciliation Commission for the Bangsamoro.
Gregory Heming is a Co-founder of the Centre for Local Prosperity. He is a philosophical ecologist, writer, climate activist and former elected official. He holds a PhD in Literary Ecology and Northern Studies with special interest in steady-state economics, public policy and ecocide.