Full text of Severn Suzuki’s speech to UN Earth summit.
1:14 pm Conservation, Ecology, SustainabilityHere is the full text of Severn Cullis-Suzuki’s speech before the UN Earth Summit in Rio, Brazil in 1992, made when she was 12 years old. Too bad the world listened, applauded, and shed an emotional tear, but did not do anything substantial for her, as the likes of George W. Bush decided it would be too restrictive on their accustomed way of life, and would cost their industrial cronies too much.
Hello, I’m Severn Suzuki speaking for E.C.O. – The Environmental Children’s Organisation.
We are a group of twelve and thirteen-year-olds from Canada trying to make a difference:
Vanessa Suttie, Morgan Geisler, Michelle Quigg and me. We raised all the money ourselves to come six thousand miles to tell you adults you must change your ways. Coming here today, I have no hidden agenda. I am fighting for my future.
Losing my 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. We cannot afford to be not heard.
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 with my dad until just a few years ago 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 dreamt of seeing the great herds of wild animals, jungles and rainforests 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 little 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 realise, neither do you!
• You don’t know how to fix the holes in our ozone layer.
• You don’t know how to bring salmon back up a dead stream.
• You don’t know how to bring back an animal now extinct.
• And you can’t bring back forests that once grew where there is now desert.
If you don’t know how to fix it, please stop breaking it!
Here, you may be delegates of your governments, business people, organisers, reporters or politicians – but really you are mothers and fathers, brothers and sister, aunts and uncles – and all of you are somebody’s child.
I’m only a child yet I know we are all part of a family, five billion strong, in fact, 30 million species strong and we all share the same air, water and soil — 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 towards one single goal.
In my anger, I am not blind, and in my fear, I am 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 share.
In Canada, we live the privileged life, with plenty of food, water and shelter — we have watches, bicycles, computers and television sets.
Two days ago here in Brazil, we were shocked when we spent some time with some children living on the streets. And this is what one child told us: “I wish I was rich and if I were, I would give all the street children food, clothes, medicine, shelter and love and affection.”
If a child on the street who has nothing, is willing to share, why are we who have everything still so greedy?
I can’t stop thinking that these children are my age, that it makes a tremendous difference where you are born, that I could be one of those children living in the Favellas of Rio; I could be a child starving in Somalia; a victim of war in the Middle East or a beggar in India.
I’m only a child yet I know if all the money spent on war was spent on ending poverty and finding environmental answers, what a wonderful place this earth would be!
At school, even in kindergarten, you teach us to behave in the world. You teach us:
• not to fight with others,
• to work things out,
• to respect others,
• to clean up our mess,
• not to hurt other creatures
• to share – not be greedy.
Then why do you go out and do the things you tell us not to do?
Do not forget why you’re attending these conferences, who you’re doing this for — we are your own children. You are deciding what kind of world we will grow up in. Parents should be able to comfort their children by saying “everything’s going to be alright” , “we’re doing the best we can” and “it’s not the end of the world”.
But I don’t think you can say that to us anymore. Are we even on your list of priorities? My father always says “You are what you do, not what you say.”
Well, what you do makes me cry at night. You grown ups say you love us. I challenge you, please make your actions reflect your words. Thank you for listening
Severn Cullis-Suzuki has been active in environmental and social justice work ever since kindergarten. She was twelve years old when she gave this speech, and she received a standing ovation. Since then, she’s been actively involved in a variety of environmental projects, and speaking to schools and corporations, and at many conferences and international meetings. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Download text here: Full text of Severn Suzuki’s speech to UN Earth summit
she’s awesome
before she takes her place to speak all audience were looking at her like . just kid but 7 minutes later they were shocked
Hi, I’m not sure what you mean by soft evidence. Could you try and explain it a bit better please? Thanks.
You can search youtube.com for the “soft evidence”
Any further references please?
just search in youtube for “the girl who silenced the world for 5minutes”
Hi Denise, thanks much.
i hope more children will think and do the same way… because the future is theirs to claim.. ty
If everyone of us starts to think like Severn Suzuki, It will be a sparkling beginning for a beautiful world !
Agreed, but how is that ever going to happen? How does one tackle that problem, and get people to see what is actually quite obvious? http://ssjothiratnam.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif
Hi, i’ve been part of a MUN conference and yes listening to this made me aware that we people let tiny things go unnoticed when it can make a big difference and cause the loss of billions of creatures whoever may be it.
I appreciate Serven Suzuki’s bravour and try to eradicate problems in this world of Today. What if the UN is still workin on these issues.. but in vain… but we citizens of this planet Earth can work together and i’d say that together we can pave the way for a better tomorrow.
Thank you
Yeana.J
Hi Yeana, thanks for the input. I wish there was some way of doing this too. Oh well, to quote Gandhi: what we can do, we must try to do.
Thank you for the transcription. It is of great help to English learners. Thanks a bunch!
Most welcome. Do come back.
[...] The following is the transcript of the speech offered by http://ssjothiratnam.com/?p=747. [...]
u can’t tell kids to make a difference. If adults make the mess, should they leave it for their own children to clean up?????
hi i love Severn suzuki speech it is really meaning foll and makes a lot of sence too bad the eco counld not do anything about it!!!!!
or did thay do something 
*Meaningful*
*sense*
*E.C.O*
*could*
she is excellent!
Hi, yes, she really is. Too bad we’re failing to take her ideas to heart. The single biggest problem confronting us, as far as I can see is the exploding human population, but most folks apparently don’t dare say much about it; too many political (and geopolitical), cultural, and religious issues tied up in there, and too much profit to be made by those with the power to so do, to induce the global media, and bodies like the UN, the Catholic Church, Islamic theology etc to act, think and say otherwise.
In addition, I think that putting a damper on population growth is totally inconsistent with the capitalist economic scheme, which demands ever expanding markets, and now that the entire world is effectively one market, the only way to assure continued market growth is via population growth. This is too bad, because as I see it, if we don’t come to grips with this issue soon, I suspect that the ecosystem will force its own solution upon us, and that will not be something pleasant for us, or for that matter controllable by us.
Maybe there is something in evolution which one might call mis-evolution (when a species evolves an ability, initially enabling, which eventually becomes disabling)? It certainly seems to me that our intelligence, our superior propensity / ability to fashion and use tools, and our facility with sophisticated symbolic reasoning, all grafted atop our innate aggression (which is I think an inevitable product of the process of evolution), has produced a now unpalatable cocktail as far as our continued survival goes, one which has allowed us to set everything out of kilter.
Sorry to sound so grim, but I can’t see much of a silver lining in this cloud as far as our species is concerned. The only things that make me sad are: 1. we will drag a whole host of other ‘innocent’ species to extinction with us as the we tumble over the edge when the ecosystem corrects for our presence; 2. no one will be around to continue to create the extraordinary things of beauty which some members of our species have managed to produce (the poetry of Omar Khayyam, etc; the symphonies of Beethoven, Rodrigo, etc; the grand scientific theories like those of Darwin, Einstein, Newton, Maxwell, Wagner, etc; the sculptures of Rodin, Bernini, etc; the literature of Tolstoi, Hardy, etc; the paintings of Caravaggio, Wayan Tutut, etc, …). To me, beauty (though perhaps not necessarily the pursuit of it) has brought so much meaning to us as a species, and in a way to the universe itself, and the loss of all this I find sad.
She is really Brave.
But if she was 12 in 1992 how is she 23 now.????????
Hi, sorry, my mistake. Have fixed that now. Thanks much for pointing it out.
I admire your group for being able to follow through to get to the 1992 conference & now you are 20 years older. One of the main areas I see is in ordinary water supplies & sewerage works. On visiting them the basic rules of keeping animal & human waste separate is not being followed & psychologically the people who manipulate everything else are using this to dehumanise & defile us physically & psychologically. It is deliberate & people are possessed & controlled & they do all kinds of things like blocking up sewerage & waste water in suburbs to manipulate the city plumbing(maybe to allow people access to blood & faeces & urine is one of the things we are screamed at about to make clones of people who refuse to go to doctors & hospitals)It is reported to the clinic here in George, South Africa & the man in the house say is parents are in control of the whole area via drug mafia. People in Israel confirmed it. I sent a proposal to some people involved in amnesty international to rehabilitate people to retrain their senses & so learn their own will by Montessori prepared environment classic dance & rational behaviour therapy.
[...] 20年前，12歲的Severn Suzuki在聯合國RIO會議上的一席話，令世界沉默了六分鐘。「失去我的未來，跟在選舉落敗或者股價下跌不一樣。我謹此代表所有的未來各代的兒童發言。我謹此代表世界各地熬受飢餓、哭聲卻叫地不聞的兒童發言。我謹此代表在地球上千千萬萬因為無處棲息而死去的動物發言。我們承受不了聲音被忽視的下場。我怕走到太陽底下，因為臭氧層穿了洞。我怕呼吸空氣，因為我不知道當中含有甚麼化學品…在我的生命當中，我夢見過飛禽走獸，滿林雀鳥和蝴蝶，可是我在想牠們還會否生存下去，我的孩子會否看得見。像我這樣的年紀時，你需要擔心這些事嗎？這一切都正在我們眼前發生，而我們卻裝作尚有很多時間、尚有很多解決方法。我只是一個小孩，我沒有解決的方法。但我想你們知道，你們都一樣沒有…」（全文） [...]
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amazing !!! I wish every one in this world start thinking like her.She’s truly inspirational!!!
Hi Harshini,
Yes indeed, unfortunately though, that’s not the case. To me, more than anything the 2 biggest obstacles facing us are: 1. the exploding human population; & 2. our refusal to control our consumption. I’m not sure where you live, but the effects of global warming are being felt everywhere, albeit in different ways.
Anyway, come back again anytime, and let me know if you have any specific questions.
Jothi
what an awsome speech!! I wasnt even born wen she made this speech but i feel great after reading this, en i so wish “we” children of today can come together en do change our lives for the better,en to all adults round de world we need ur surport!
Hi, thanks much for reading. Yes, amazingly good right? Do get in touch if you want to work out what to read to learn more about the important stuff that matters. All the best.
hi, this spech was so gordous i think after she speek
there country have a lot of changes..,,
can you imagine a 12 year old girl wrote this??….
awsome…!!!!
Her’s speech stund me , she’s words just as true it make me think on it, and she is right we have to must change our ways.
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