One decade down,б порнография по беларуски one more to go. The 2019 Social Good Summit marked the tenth anniversary of the annual event, as well as start of the ten-year countdown to 2030 — the deadline for the world to implement theSustainable Development Goals.
To honor the occasion, this year's Social Good Summit focused on the most crucial issue of our time, one that impacts not only each of the 17 SDGs, but every individual life on Earth: climate change. It made for a day full of inspiring speakers, fascinating conversations, and a palpable sense of camaraderie in the face of the enormous battle we have ahead of us.
Two days before the Summit, millions of people across the world marched in the historic Global Climate Strike. That energy fed into SGS, as global citizens, activists, scientists, diplomats, business leaders, and artists gathered at New York City’s 92nd Street Y.
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The Global South and indigenous voices to the front
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Early in the day, Yurok tribal member Amy Cordalis spoke of the disappearance of once-bountiful salmon from tribal lands in Northern California. Her eye-opening story highlighted the fact that the world’s indigenous peoples are often the most attuned to climate change’s effects, due to their centuries-long connection to their ancestral ecosystems. Cordalis finished by performing a traditional Yurok song, one “to set the intention of healing, of resetting, of renewing the world,” a poignant sentiment to set the day’s tone.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Fresh off the massive success of the Global Climate Strike, youth activist Alexandria Villaseñor joined UPROSE Executive Director and longtime climate justice advocate Elizabeth Yeampierre in conversation, moderated by Mashable’s Social Good Editor, Nandita Raghuram. Together onstage, Villaseñor and Yeampierre represented less a handing of the torch from one generation of activists to the next than, as Villaseñor put it, a “continuum,” with Gen Z sprinting to fight for climate justice alongside their elders.
Yeampierre and Villaseñor both stressed the importance of elevating the voices of the Global South in the climate crisis — with Yeampierre pointing out that “the Global South exists here in the United States,” pointing out that the front-line communities already shouldering the brunt of climate change’s impact aren’t defined by national boundaries so much as racial, ethnic, and economic ones. She stressed the importance of media attention “lifting front-line communities,” to make sure “their solutions, which are justsolutions, are implemented.”
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable The next panel, “Mother Earth’s Original Stewards,” featured indigenous voices speaking out on climate injustice. Geographer and environmentalist Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim — of Chad’s indigenous Mbororo community — spoke to the intersectional impact of climate change in the north-central region of Africa, where the evaporation of much of Lake Chad has particularly impacted the area’s women.
As she put it, “Climate change for us is not only an issue of trees and water, it is the issue of the human being and world security,” speaking to the ways the terrorist group Boko Haram has exploited climate-fueled economic devastation around Lake Chad to recruit impoverished Africans. Pita Taufatofua, Olympian and UNICEF Pacific Ambassador, echoed Ibrahim’s point, illuminating the ways his native Tonga has been experiencing the destruction of climate change even as its own carbon output remains negligible, another example of the injustices faced by communities on the front lines of climate catastrophe.
He, Ibrahim, and Amy Cordalis all agreed on a further point: Because of their intimacy with their natural environments, indigenous people may already know solutions for climate adaptation that go ignored by the world around them. As Ibrahim said, “Indigenous peoples need to be at the table — we cannot talk about us without us. Our indigenous women and youth have particular knowledge, and maybe they are not in New York City or London, but they are back home standing up with the solutions.” The crowd roared its agreement.
Women’s justice is climate justice
Another key theme for SGS 2019 proved to be the role women’s rights play in climate justice. During the panel “A Healthier Earth for Women’s Health,” Dr. Alaa Murabit said it plainly: “It’s very difficult, if you don’t have control of your own body, to say, ‘I’m going to march for climate change,’ or, ‘I’m going to fight for sustainable cities.’ You do not have agency.”
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Her fellow panelist Dr. Natalia Kanem pointed out that in most developing nations, women are the ones tasked with gathering water and food, labor that becomes more taxing when climate change makes those resources scarce.
Former Irish president Mary Robinson put it succinctly, on a panel with fellow activists: “Climate change is a man-made problem that requires a feminist solution.” Over rapturous applause, she clarified than “man-made” does include people of all genders — just as feminism does, underscoring feminism’s inclusive ethos as a key element of any successful movement for climate justice.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Kehkashan Basu, Founder and President of Social Innovation Enterprise, described the climate crisis as nesting dolls. “Developing nations are impacted the most, and the poor there in them, and then [poor] women and girls there.” Robinson put it more bluntly: “Climate injustice is racist injustice, gender injustice.”
A global youth movement with a tone for today
The day’s keynote, a conversation with iconic journalist Katie Couric and Christiana Figueres, Former Executive Secretary of the UN Climate Convention and a key player in the ratification of the 2016 Paris Agreement, punctuated the entire summit. Figueres, asked by Couric to reflect on what differentiates the current youth-led climate movement from climate protests of the past, identified a tonal shift. “Outrage!” she said. “The tone now is outrage. We’ve had some action on climate [since the Paris Agreement], but it hasn’t come to the scale and speed we need. So, it’s a different tone, but it’s the one we need at this moment, as scientists have told us we’re running out of time.”
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable With youth leaders like Alexandria Villaseñor and Kehkashan Basu sharing the Summit stage, Figueres can feel assured the youth are joining her in the fight — and that they share her sense of responsibility to future generations, even as teenagers themselves. In an earlier panel, Rania Batrice reported, “They’re no longer going to be called Gen Z, because they are not going to be the last generation! Now, they’ll be called Gen GND,” for Green New Deal. At the same discussion, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson occasioned one of the day’s most enthusiastic audience reactions with a simple remark: “Youthful moral clarity is notnaïveté!”
Let’s talk solutions
“Developing nations have no historical responsibility for climate change. It is on the shoulders of industrialized countries,” said Figueres. Still, she stressed that the entire planet, all of humankind, must be involved in finding solutions for the climate crisis. The Social Good Summit has always been focused on solutions, and inspiring ideas were in no short supply onstage.
Figueres herself offered a few on the individual level. Giving up some red meat — and, preferably, all meat in your diet — will help drastically cut emissions, she said. She further emphasized driving and flying less, making sure your home is energy efficient, divesting from carbon assets, and voting “for people who have a head on their shoulders.”
Author Jonathan Safran Foer made similar arguments in his remarks. Too often, he said, we become stuck in two modes of thinking about climate change: “either we’re doomed, or we’ll be fine.” It’s neither, of course. We will see dramatic effects from climate change in our lifetimes. But, as Foer said, we don’t have to be doomed.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable His advice? “Emphasizing individual responsibility does not need to detract from corporate or federal responsibility,” he said. “The smallness of individual actions is a reason for everyone to try. Make a plan for what you’ll do, write it down, give it numbers and times of the week, let your friends and families hold you accountable.” Daily actions, from eating less meat to flying less, add up.
The business community, too, offered solutions onstage — in addition to sponsoring the Summit itself. Cotton On Foundation’s Sarah Spiker reasserted, “We can’t solve these problems without women and girls from the Global South,” rallying for women’s education worldwide. Pfizer’s Caroline Roan encouraged “innovation at the individual level,” as “people are the drivers of change,” whether in healthcare or in addressing every one of the SDGs.
Maisie Devine, Global Director of Anheuser-Busch InBev’s 100+ Accelerator program, spoke to the ways corporations can help innovative startups make serious impacts by helping them scale quickly. Intuit’s Mark Notarainni, discussing Intuit’s Together We Prosper initiative and Prosperity Hub project — in which the company brings jobs to communities in need — showed real proof that corporations have a serious role to play in bringing climate justice to fruition.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable So, too, did Verizon CEO and Chairman Hans Vestberg, in his discussion of how corporations like Verizon can lead the charge in ensuring equitable digital access across the world. And UBS’s photo booth at the Summit gave attendees the chance to snap a photo in solidarity with their SDG of choice, as part of their #TOGETHERBAND initiative, in partnership with sustainable fashion brand Bottletop.
Ultimately, as Christiana Figueres reminded us onstage at SGS 2019, we know what we need to do to solve the climate crisis. All it takes now is the will to do so. By acting individually and in concert with our communities, both large and small, we can save the only planet we have. Leaving SGS 2019, hope was in the air.
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