''Green rights are among humanity's most powerful tools for protecting and repairing the natural world.''
Silver Donald Cameron and his wife, the Canadian writer Marjorie Simmins
Canadian environmental activist and journalist Silver Donald Cameron is soon set to embark on a nationwide tour across Canada to promote ''Green Rights.'' Born in Canada in 1937, Cameron is a well-known figure in Canadian environmental circles and has been at it for a while -- his whole life, in fact. Wikipedia tells you even more with a photo, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Donald_Cameron
[For readers of this blog who are not from Canada and might wonder how Cameron got his unusual name, well, it's a great story, and you can read about it here: (http://silverdonaldcameron.
The cross-country tour starts in Nova Scotia in late September and then moves on to Ottowa and points West until early November. Along the way, there will be press conferences and TV interviews, film screenings and lectures.
The tour starts in Nova Scotia in late September, and then Ottawa and west from Oct 1 - Nov 4 or thereabouts, Cameron told us.
Green Rights? In a recent email inteview with Cameron, he told us a few things we didn't know:
''Of the 193 nations in the U.N., 180 recognize their citizens' legal right to a healthy environment. Some recognize the rights of Nature herself -- Ecuador included those rights in its constitution. Canada and the USA are among the 13 nations that don't recognize them at all. There's a significant movement to do so in both countries, and my upcoming national tour is designed to increase the momentum in Canada," he told us.
When asked when Canada might adopt the Green Rights into law there, he said: ''I would like to see environmental rights adopted in Canada within the life of the current government, during the administration of Justin Trudeau, i.e. by 2020. I think that's possible. "
The tour will cross Canada from east to west, Cameron noted, adding: "We'll do screenings and other events on the [Canadian] West Coast over the winter, with details to be announced later. I'd love to do a similar tour in the USA next year in 2017, but we'd need a USA organizing partner and we don't currently have one."
Some films to watch: A shorter parallel film (''Defenders of the Dawn,'' 45 minutes) has been shown by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, in Cameron's region of Canada only so far. That film can be streamed at www.TheGreenInterview.com; just take a one-month free trial subscription and off you go.
''The full 90-minute GreenRights film will also stream at TheGreenInterview.com starting in September 2016. We'd love to broadcast it nationwide, worldwide even, but haven't had time to explore that yet. The companion book, ''Warrior Lawyers,'' will be available at www.SilverDonaldCameron.ca and on Amazon, starting after Labour Day in Canada," he said.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
GREEN RIGHTS
The right to breathe. The right to clean water. The right to wholesome food.
Air, water, food – these are the sources of life. Without them, we die. And in most nations – more than 180 nations, in fact – citizens are legally entitled to these essential elements of life.
But not in Canada or the United States. And that's what the GreenRights multi-media project is all about: extending our understanding of environmental rights – green rights – and also showing the dramatic impact of those rights in other countries. Because green rights are among our most powerful tools for protecting and repairing the natural world.
Exercising those rights, dedicated citizens and brilliant lawyers are cleaning the beaches of Manila Bay and the air of Amsterdam. They're restoring the Riachuelo River in Buenos Aires, the Ganges in India. They're holding oil companies to account in Brazil and Ecuador. And in the US and Canada, they're fighting to secure these rights for all of us.
These are great human stories – stories of passion and courage, David and Goliath stories, stories of parents and grandparents battling on behalf generations not yet born.
Here's how the GreenRights project will tell their stories.
Green Rights: Your Right to a Healthy World is a feature-length documentary film currently in production. We've finished principal photography and intend to complete the film by summer. For more details, click here. You can view the trailer here.
Defenders of the Dawn: Green Rights in the Maritimes is a one-hour television special broadcast on September 5, 2015 on the Atlantic network of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It can be live-streamed here. Defenders of the Dawn has its own trailer, which can be viewed here.
The Blue Dot Version is a 10-minute micro-documentary we created for the David Suzuki Foundation's Blue Dot movement. Stream the Blue Dot version here.
TheGreenInterview.com now includes about 20 extended individual interviews with key figures – lawyers, activists, scholars and engaged citizens – involved with green rights. These passionate change-makers come from every continent except Antarctica. Each interview includes a brief biography, and the interviews appear in video, audio and text versions. For a list of these Green Interviews, with onward links to the complete interviews, click here.
GreenRights is a project of The Green Interview, a subscription web site presenting feature-length interviews with the world's greatest environmental thinkers and activists. Click here to read how GreenRights evolved from The Green Interview, and click here to visit the Green Interview site.
We are proud that the Sierra Club Canada Foundation has entered into a partnership with us. In 2013, it established the "GreenRights Program" as a project of the Foundation to assist in the development of the feature-length GreenRights documentary.
Silver Donald CameronHost and Executive Producer103-287 Lacewood Drive, Halifax NS B3M 3Y7Cameron is the author of Warrior Lawyers and writer/narrator of the documentary film Green Rights: The Human Right to a Healthy World, both being released in September 2016.Details at www.GreenRights.com
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THE GREEN RIGHTS TRANSCONTINENTAL READING AND SCREENING TOUR
A Film, A Book, A Journey
The Green Rights Multi-Media Project
The right to breathe. The right to clean water. The right to wholesome food. Air, water, food – these are the sources of life. Without them, we die. And in most nations – more than 180 nations, in fact – citizens are legally entitled to these essential elements of life.
But not in Canada or the United States.
And that's what the Green Rights multi-media project is all about: the human right to a healthy environment, and Mother Nature's right to be respected and protected.
The citizenship of North Americans is hobbled because we don't have these green rights.
Canadians and Americans literally don't know what they're missing. So we're telling the dramatic stories of how citizens use those rights in other countries – and are fighting for them here.
Green rights are among humanity's most powerful tools for protecting and repairing the natural world. The overall Green Rights project (www.GreenRights.com) includes films at three lengths – 10 minutes, 45 minutes, 90 minutes – plus extended online interviews between Silver Donald Cameron and 15-20 major figures in the international environmental rights movement.
It also includes Cameron's new book, Warrior Lawyers: From Manila to Manhattan, Attorneys for the Earth, now in the press. The Films The Green Rights films vividly portray remarkable legal battles in nations around the world: dramas in the courts and on the land.
In Argentina, the Netherlands, Ecuador, the Philippines and elsewhere, devoted citizens and courageous lawyers take on national governments and international corporations – and win. The films, narrated by Silver Donald Cameron, also tell stories of Canadian and American citizens, activists and Natives who are fighting vigorously for the recognition of those rights.
The 45-minute film, set mainly in the Maritime provinces, was broadcast by the CBC in September, 2015 under the title Defenders of the Dawn. It can be streamed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xdkoCFdeHE
The 10-minute film created for the David Suzuki Foundation's Blue Dot tour can be streamed here: https://youtu.be/BtdO3xX9jlc
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