Jenny Prosser is CPJ’s former policy intern.
Climate change and poverty go hand-in-hand for Canada’s Inuit, demonstrated in global warming’s impact on already challenging issues like housing and food security. Addressing these impacts requires strategies that take into account both climate change and poverty under the direction of the Inuit.
This is the second part in a series exploring climate change, poverty, how the two are related, and their impacts on Canadian Inuit. The first part explored the major impacts of climate change in Canada’s North, both on the environment and on the Inuit living there. This installment examines how poverty affects the Inuit.
This is the first feature in a series exploring the link between climate change and poverty. Canada’s North is an obvious example of the effects of climate change on not only the environment and natural resources, but also on the quality of life of those who live in the region. Stay tuned for Part II exploring the effects of poverty on Inuit in Canada.
In November 2010, the Canadian government finally gave its formal endorsement of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And while Aboriginal groups and civil society greeted this move with enthusiasm, all were careful to say that the endorsement was not an end in and of itself, but rather a starting point. For the endorsement to have any meaning at all it must be implemented.
So what would this look like?
Bob Goudzwaard, spoke at CPJ’s 2011 Annual General Meeting in Toronto.
The numbers are out: in 2010 Canada let in the highest number of immigrants in over 50 years. But while Minister of Immigration, Citizenship, and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney may use this as evidence of a clean bill of health for Canadian immigration policy, these numbers do not tell the whole story.
Every day we are faced by choices, both trivial and important. However, in our present times it seems increasingly true that we must be aware that nearly every choice we make is an important one. The world is encountering multiple crises every day and there is a growing awareness that if we as a society wish to avoid the destruction these crises seem to be leading us towards we need to choose a new path. David Korten’s book The Great Turning is an examination of this choice.
