David Suzuki - David Suzuki

The girls had brought three issues of their newspaper and among them spoke English, French, and Spanish. ECO had registered as one of the thousands of NGOs and applied for a booth where they could display their papers, posters, and pictures and meet people. Tara and I had been asked to speak at a number of NGO events, and before the end of our presentations at each session we would say, “I think you should hear from the ones with most at stake in all that's going on here” and bring the girls onstage to make short submissions.

The media began to hear about them by word of mouth and went to their booth for interviews. It was a good story to have these cute girls speaking so seriously and passionately. David Halton from CBC took the girls to a favela, where street people lived, and interviewed them for a long story. Jean Charest, Canada's newest federal environment minister, visited the booth to talk to the girls, but they were frustrated because they felt he was more interested in telling them things than in listening to them. The girls were articulate, passionate, and telegenic, and their plea to be remembered while delegates made big decisions affecting their world was so simple and undeniable that it cut through all the rhetorical flourishes and political posturing.

At one of the events at the Earth Parliament, I gave a short talk and then yielded the stage so that Severn could also make a speech. I didn't know it, but in the audience was James Grant, the American head of UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, and he was so moved by Sev's remarks that he asked her for a copy of them. He told her he was meeting Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney that evening and wanted to give him that speech in person. I never heard whether he did or not, but we learned later that Grant had run into Maurice Strong and told Maurice he should give Severn an opportunity to speak.

The next day, Tara and the girls were scheduled to leave Rio to take their trip to the wilderness camp in the Amazon. But in the morning, we received a call from Strong's office inviting Severn to speak at Rio Centro in a session for children. Three other girls, representing various youth groups, had been selected ahead of time to speak, and now Strong added Sev to this group. One girl was from Germany, another from Guatemala, and two, including Sev, were from Canada. Each was to speak for no more than three or four minutes.

The call from Strong's office was exhilarating. The trip to a camp in the Amazon would have to be postponed, a huge undertaking in Brazil, but Tara went ahead and began to make new arrangements. Severn had had the inspiration more than a year before to go to Rio and make a plea. The girls had worked like demons to raise money, publish papers, and attend the meetings. And now they were to speak to the delegates.

What could she say? I was overwhelmed with the immensity of the opportunity and the challenge of compressing the important issues into a short talk. I began firing off ideas about points I thought she should make in her speech on pollution, wildlife, future generations. Sev said to me, “Dad, I know what I want to say. Mommy will help me write it all down. I want you to tell me how to say it.”

We didn't have much time. Sev wrote out her speech on a piece of paper, adding words and phrases in the margins as all of us offered our critique. I had no idea how she would be able to read the scribbling. We rushed out to grab cabs, and as we careened through the streets of Rio, I made Sev go over her speech several times, trying to help her smooth her delivery and remember which words should be emphasized, just as my father had done for me when I was a boy.

The conference center was air-conditioned, with only a murmur of background noise — a stark contrast to the vibrant colors, smells, and sounds of the Global Forum. We entered the conference room, an immense hall that could have held thousands but contained only a few hundred people; it looked almost empty. Sev was last on the list. The other girls made their presentations well, pleading for better care of resources, wildlife, water, and the poor — the kind of statements adults could feel good about listening to and in response could promise they were doing their best.

Finally, it was Sev's turn. She was twelve years old and had not had time to prepare thoroughly, and I was scared stiff — but I hadn't given her enough credit. She has a mother who is a superb thinker and writer, and Sev herself had been listening to us, absorbing our concerns and solutions, thinking about her life and her surroundings, and she spoke simply, straight from the heart. Here is what she said:

Hello. I'm Severn Suzuki, speaking for eco, the Environmental Children's Organization.

We are a group of twelve- and thirteen-year-olds trying to make a difference — Vanessa Suttie, Morgan Geisler, Michelle Quigg, and me.

We raised all the money to come five thousand miles to tell you adults you must change your ways.

Coming up here today I have no hidden agenda, I am fighting for my future.

Losing a future is not like losing an election or a few points on the stock market.

I am here to speak for all generations 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 home-town, with my dad, until just a few years ago when 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 dreamed 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 have to 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 in 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 part of a family, 5 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'm 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.