U of G Blue Dot campaign
The Blue Dot campaign is a national initiative, founded and run by the David Suzuki Foundation, supporting the movement to include the right to live in a healthy environment under judicial regulation in Canada.
“Around the world, more than 110 nations recognize the right to live in a healthy environment,” reads the Blue Dot site’s main page, “but not Canada.”
The campaign looks to highlight the importance of a healthy environment to the daily lives of Canadians – because, David Suzuki asks, “what’s more important than the right to breath fresh air, drink clean water, and eat healthy food?”
The Guelph Students for Environmental Change (GSEC) campus organization have thrown their weight behind the campaign. Kicking off the local Guelph campaign on Monday, March 9, GSEC volunteers caught the eye of students passing by with a bright, cheerful rainbow parachute – a perfect complement to fresh air and sunny day.
Running until Friday, March 13 is a competition between universities across Canada, looking to see who can add the most signatures to the Blue Dot petition, in support of change at the local and national level. To date, almost 70,000 Canadians have signed the Blue Dot petition.
“The goal is to alter the power of citizens so that they can defend their environment in court [and] improve environmental regulations,” said Kathryn Stasiuk Riddell, an executive member for GSEC. The campaign also looks “to make it possible to move backward on environmental regulation.”
The University of Guelph campus Blue Dot challenge has already garnered 106 signatures of their 200-signature goal. GSEC is looking for the City of Guelph to pass a “municipal declaration in support of environmental rights.”
Across Canada, local communities are taking action to “encourage leadership at the provincial and federal level,” which Blue Dot and GSEC hope will lead to “recognition for the right to a healthy environment.”
Above all, GSEC – and the Blue Dot movement as a whole – hope that small movements can help to lift the “rising tide” of environmental health, as “ordinary people come together to take extraordinary action.”
– Compiled by Alyssa Ottema