Mar 31, 2025
“What’s important is that children have an opportunity to bond with the natural world, to learn to love it, before being asked to heal its wounds.”—David Sobel, Beyond Ecophobia Nurturing young people to internalize a deep sense of wonder and connection with Nature is paramount if future generations are to thrive. Jessica Adams takes up this joyful quest with great enthusiasm. I asked her about her educational work and her commitment to make a difference for many Nature-deprived children. Jessica, can you tell our readers how your childhood influenced your present work? I was fortunate to grow up with family members who shared their curiosity and appreciation for the natural world. My parents kept close watch on the visitors to our bird feeder, monitored and recorded when migrant species returned, and would marvel at the chorus of frogs that erupted each spring and the curious winnowing of the Wilson’s Snipe as it performed its aerial display over the field in front of our house. Appreciating Nature for its beauty and brilliance was a part of life. I also had an incredible natural setting to my childhood. We moved to the Eastern Townships from Brossard when I was five. I had almost 20 acres of forest to explore behind the house, and neighbours who didn’t mind if I wandered onto their property to investigate different ecosystems or scout out some good climbing trees. When my parents shared about Nature, I wasn’t always listening with rapt attention and I wasn’t always keen to head outside when my parents told me to. Sometimes I just wanted to do the easy thing—watch TV, for example. But most of the time they’d insist, so out I’d go (little brother usually in tow). Sometimes we would complain that there was “nothing to do” or that we were bored, but eventually we’d find something to do and get completely engrossed in it. As an adult, I’m incredibly grateful for these moments. Learning how to be in and curious about Nature happens very organically when given the opportunity. All of this meant that, when I was presented with the option to pursue university studies in either veterinary medicine or wildlife biology, the choice was obvious. You write about Nature Nerding. What does it mean to be a Nature Nerd? Completing my bachelor’s in Wildlife Biology brought me to the next level of nerdiness. I’d learnt so much and also gained a humbling appreciation for how much there was that I didn’t (and might never) know. I found this incredibly exciting. It meant that the opportunities for discovery were endless, and it also got me thinking that the wonder, awe and joy I experienced when learning about Nature were something I just had to share. Working with Parc d’environnement naturel de Sutton enabled me to hone my identification and animation skills, but most importantly I found my voice as an educator and communicator. In developing and leading programs for various audiences, I found that I favoured an enquiry-based approach that involved using
Mar 10, 2025
“This is really why I made my daughters learn to garden—so they would always have a mother to love them, long after I am gone.” ―Robin Wall Kimmerer It might still be winter, but the seed catalogue has arrived, just as it has for the last 50 years, and the tradition to hunker down in a comfortable chair to see what’s being offered that I haven’t tried growing before is an exploration and a celebration. I’ve already sown some vegetable seeds in containers in my indoor mini-greenhouses to transfer at the appropriate times to the garden. Of course, the garlic and the tulips were planted in early November, and when the green tips push through the leaf mulch I’ll know that spring has arrived. Soon after I’ll test how some early spinach does before committing to a larger patch in the garden. When my hand feels some warmth resting on the soil, many cold-weather vegetables will be ready to be seeded or transplanted into the garden. Last year’s garden did remarkably well: pea vines grew five feet tall in a fifty-foot row and a second sowing in late August yielded an autumn harvest. We were eating kale through to the end of December. The harvest of fifteen other vegetables was plentiful, and the yield of two bushels of squash enabled me to share them with others. The rains came at the right time,and summer’s heat was sufficient to get aubergine, enough hot peppers to make a year’s worth of hot sauce, and four generations of basil and beans. The tomatoes were happy too. The beautiful broad dark green squash leaves, some bursting out of the compost, were a joy to see. Can we expect this year’s local gardens to measure up to last year’s? Perhaps the heat experienced in the summer of 2024 was a mirage. Around the world, many places experienced the tragedy of floods or severe drought. Are we playing a game of dumb luck now when we store seeds for the next year and expect a positive outcome? Stable weather has become a roll of the dice. More than likely scientists aren’t speaking about weather in 2025 but about climate breakdown. And yet, and yet, corrupted politicians and grotesquely indulged westerners keep up the pretence that a cruise or a flight doesn’t contribute to more CO2 in the air, and in any case everyone is doing the same thing. This is an example of green criminality. In 2023 the garden produced hardly anytomatoes, and only the lettuce varieties did really well. It rained too much and too hard, making for a cold summer. The problem was the reverse in other parts of the world. Parched soil and sudden floods caused havoc, leading to the poorest people wondering if they were to survive. In Canada and elsewhere, market gardeners wouldn’t dream of not having large greenhouses, which are their insurance against unpredictable weather, and many backyard gardens have them as well. When all those joyous seeds arrive in a box by post, or
Dec 24, 2024
“Consider your origin: you were not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.” —Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno (ca 1321) “Our food system is undermining our ability to feed humanity now and into the future… It is no exaggeration to say that what happens in the next five years will determine the future of life on Earth.” —WWF, Living Planet Report 2024: A System in Peril “The low retail cost of industrialized food can obscure its very high environmental price tag.” —United Nations Environment Programme “We depend on land for our survival. Yet we treat it like dirt.” —UN Secretary-General António Guterres The UN biodiversity summit, the UN climate summit, the UN desertification summit and the Global Plastics Treaty negotiations this autumn all ended in disappointing and far fewer positive negotiations than life on Earth can tolerate. But are individuals doing any better than governments to protect Nature? The over-50s have failed to live up to their potential to facilitate meaningful positive change for life on Earth. Younger generations, if they are to survive, urgently need to forge on past those global north entitled generations and get on with making Earth an equitable place. The following scenario is a microcosm of how we are failing as older adults: a festive group of enthusiasts go out into the “great outdoors” around Christmas with the aim of socializing and communing with wildlife—observing and recording the migratory birds passing over, and others that overwinter in the area. A good feeling of solidarity permeates the tribe, proud that they can be thought of as participating citizen scientists. In this time of increasing ecological uncertainty this group of acquaintances will probably be passing on their data from this outing to help scientists who study birds. Good work from dedicated conservationists! A celebration is called for. How about a delicious organic vegan meal that honours the group and the rest of Nature, and recognizes the connection and continuum of all life on the planet? But no, the opposite happens. Favouring cheap food packaged to be easy to hand out, the group choose instead the flesh of tortured birds who have spent their short lives crammed into the factory farms that contaminate the rivers, air and soil with their effluent and accelerate wildlife extinction. (Besides the harm they perpetrate on the planet, these establishments pay terrible wages. No rural community wants them nearby because of the odours and air pollution and the negative effect on house prices.) It would be fair to ask whether these Christmas revellers are oblivious to the impact their choice has on wildlife, human health and even Indigenous justice issues related to deforestation and climate when buying this celebratory supper. But, as in so many instances, this is far from being the case. Despite knowing full well about the misery and devastation caused by the demand for factory farms, they go ahead and decide to eat antibiotic-laden birds—and even declare that after the meal they will be “doing their bit” by taking the
Nov 19, 2024
“Governments have retreated from even their legally binding promises to decarbonize, trusting markets to deliver comparatively meager emissions reductions instead, and activists have been unable to generate meaningful public outrage at the walkback.” —David Wallace-Wells, New York Times Oil and gas are a “gift of god,” declares UN COP29 climate summit host Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev, as thousands attend the conference in Baku, the capital, which was built on oil revenues. It appears that Canada believes the same. It has just been revealed by Canada’s environmental law charity Ecojustice and environmental advocacy organization Environmental Defence that the emissions from the oil, gas and coal Canada exports are increasing at such a rate that they now vastly exceed its own domestic energy emissions. This makes a mockery of Canada’s proclamation at COP28 that it is a climate leader. More than 1,700 fossil fuel lobbyists, including those pushing for controversial carbon capture and storage technology, swarmed COP29 as the Azerbaijan government welcomed the most powerful oil and gas CEOs. Joseph Sikulu, a member of the Pacific Climate Warriors and Pacific Director for climate campaign group 350.org, exclaimed, “How can we achieve the ambition that is needed to save our homes when these negotiations are continually flooded with fossil fuel lobbyists? There is a ban on tobacco lobbyists from attending the World Health Organization’s summit. Why is that not the case for the fossil fuel industry at COP? We demand that the upcoming COP presidencies set clear rules against the presence of fossil fuel interests at the negotiating table. Our lives depend on it.” https://tinyurl.com/cop-reform An open letter on COP climate reforms, written by climate policy experts and climate scientists to the UN Secretary General and COP Executive Secretary, asks for a move away from endless negotiations to delivery of agreed-upon negotiations. Money allocated to compensate countries of the global south and aid them so that they can adapt and create a resilient response to ongoing climate catastrophes (loss and damage) must be honoured. Key reforms urged also include locking out fossil fuel lobbyists and countries that push for more fossil fuel expansion. https://www.clubofrome.org/cop-reform/ This is music to many people’s ears, as the present COP structure, which has never produced any transition away from fossil energies, has lost the confidence of so many people. No wonder the last three climate conferences have taken place in autocratic petrostates. The letter went on to say, “It is now clear that the COP is no longer fit for purpose… We need a shift from negotiation to implementation. We need strict eligibility criteria to exclude countries who do not support the phase-out/transition away from fossil energy. Host countries must demonstrate their high level of ambition to uphold the goals of the Paris agreement.” Since the level of atmospheric CO2 has increased 26% in the last 10 years, it would be reasonable to question whether the 29th UN climate talks—with more than 65,000 people registered— will make any difference. The presence of 1,700 fossil-fuel lobbyists doesn’t help! The World Meteorological Organization declared
Oct 23, 2024
“It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna . . . things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.” – William Shatner, reflecting on his trip aboard the Blue Origin space shuttle in 2021 “Peace with Nature” is the theme of the UN COP16 biodiversity summit, which began in Colombia this week. https://www.cop16colombia.com/es/en/ To understand better what is taking place at the summit, and what is at stake, read about the history of the UN biodiversity conferences and take a look at what is at its heart: the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), which includes the summit’s goals and 23 targets. https://tinyurl.com/COP16-biodiversity And here is Canada’s plan to achieve its biodiversity goals: https://tinyurl.com/Canada-commitment WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) has reviewed the world’s National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans and has revealed that the majority of countries are not fully honouring their commitments to halt and reverse Nature loss by 2030. In fact, only 10% of countries have submitted their updated plans for Nature. WWF has put out a tracker to show the current tangible action plans of individual nations to protect Nature. Which countries are doing best? Find out at https://tinyurl.com/WWF-Nature-tracker Unlike the annual UN climate change conference, the biodiversity summit only takes place every two years. Few heads of government attend it, and many thousand fewer people come than to the extravaganzas that are the climate change COPs, with all their slick negotiating groups and lobbyists (who often outnumber individual nation states’ delegates). It is utterly disgraceful that the United States hasn’t even ratified the GBF and essentially remains silent throughout the two weeks. There have never been binding resolutions to lower carbon emissions, and nor have the biodiversity conferences conjured up real wins for Nature, although the December 2022 Montreal summit broke through some of the entrenched anti-Nature propaganda to move forward on giving Indigenous and global south voices a more powerful presence and voice. However, the lion’s share of financial benefits, including the possession and monetizing of digital sequence information (DSI) on genetic resources, still goes to the global north, when it is all too obvious that the southern hemisphere’s intact biosphere is what props up and feeds the massive extractive and consumeristic way of life of Canadians and Americans. The goals of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity include DSI justice, halting human-induced extinction of threatened species and reducing the rate of extinction of all species tenfold by 2050, the sustainable use and management of biodiversity to ensure that Nature’s contributions to humans are valued, maintained and
Oct 7, 2024
“We need acts of restoration, not only for polluted waters and degraded lands, but also for our relationship to the world.” -Robin Wall Kimmerer Confession: I’ve always had a huge problem with the word “sustainability.” Last week I attended the inspirational Resurgence online Festival of Wellbeing, featuring, among other fine speakers, Robin Wall Kimmerer, scientist, professor, founder of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment and author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Robin spoke about that problematic word, and she quoted what an Indigenous elder had to say about it: “That sounds to me like they’re trying to find a way to just keep on taking. It’s not our right to keep taking. When your feet hit the ground in the morning, we should be thinking, what can we give?” https://www.resurgence.org/ The 27 September climate protest march starting from the Université de Sherbrooke (see photo) was supported by barely 200 people, with a smattering of elders and primary school students. The Université de Sherbrooke has a student population of tens of thousands, but where were they? Bishop’s University students were in short supply too. Despite the daily alarms sounded by climate scientists, who declare that with the ever-increasing rise in carbon emissions will come more and more catastrophes, what is going on with such a disengaged group? Why won’t Canadian students do anything to help their own future? Well, of course some students are rising up to challenge and change the narrative away from submission to a broken political agenda that only cares about more accumulation as opposed to one of inclusivity with Nature. All young adults need to embrace a new economic model and have a policy centred on degrowth. Survival depends on it. If you are still not convinced, this talk is of critical importance for you: https://tinyurl.com/Earth-health-summary In an article titled “La marche pour le climat a-t-elle encore un sens?” (“Does marching for the climate still make sense?”, Le Devoir, 1 October 2024) Juliette Husson confirms what so many of us feel: that in the midst of unprecedented Earth disasters, ecological matters are no longer being taken seriously by the governments, corporations or citizens of the global north. Husson concludes that it is vital to continue to protest, even though many people do not believe that protest is relevant or the priority while they are concerned about solving their perceived economic woes. Climate protests renew our commitment to Nature, Husson asserts. https://tinyurl.com/march-for-climate Even the success of the Canadian carbon tax, which has helped reduce Canada’s carbon emissions and has put more money back in the pockets of lower-income families, is now being threatened by both the Conservatives and, bizarrely, the New Democratic Party. https://tinyurl.com/carbon-tax-faces-axe Misinformation has contributed to a dangerous retreat from confronting climate risks, even though most people have seen how climate breakdown is showing up in their own vicinity; take last year’s Québec wildfires as our local example. Truly wanting less, and even ultimately knowing that we have enough, is not an easy
