The little girl who silenced the world for 6 minutes

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (1992)

Voluntary address to the United Nations by Ms Severn Suzuki, a 13-year old child from Canada

Hello, I'm Severn Suzuki and I'm speaking ECO, the Environmental Children's Organisation. We're a group of 12 and 13 year olds trying to make a difference – Vanessa Suttie, Morgan Geisler, Michelle Quigg and me. We raised all the money to come here ourselves, to come five thousand miles to tell you adults you must change your ways.

Coming up 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'm here to speak for the countless animals dying across this planet because they have nowhere left to go.

I am afraid to go out in the sun now because of the holes in our 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, my home, with my dad until just a few years ago we found a fish full of cancers. And now we hear of animals and plants going extinct every day, vanishing forever.

In my life, I have dreamt of seeing 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 of these things when you were my age? All these are 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 the salmon back up a dead stream. You don't know how to bring back an animal now extinct. And you can't bring back the forests that once grew where it's now a desert. If you don't know how to fix it, please stop breaking it.

Here you may be delegates of your governments, businesspeople, organisers, reporters or politicians but really, you're mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, and all of you are someone'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 borders and governments will never change that.

I'm only a child and yet I know we're all in this together and should act as one single world towards one single goal. In my anger, I am not mine and in my fear, I am not afraid of telling the world how I feel. In my country, we make so much waste. We buy and throw away, 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're afraid to share. We're afraid to let go some of our wealth.

In Canada, we live the privileged life with plenty of food, water and shelter. We have watches, bicycles, computers and television sets. The list could go on for two days. Two days ago here in Brazil, we were shocked when we spent time with some children living on the streets.

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, medicines, 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 are children my own age that it makes a tremendous difference where you are born, that I could be one of those children living in the 'favelas' of Rio. I could be a child starving in Somalia. Or 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 finding environmental answers and in poverty and finding treaties, what a wonderful place this earth would be. At school, even in kindergarten, you teach us how to behave in the world. You teach us to not 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 are attending these conferences, who you are doing this for. We are your own children. You are deciding what kind of a world we're growing up in. Parents should be able to comfort their children by saying, "Everything's going to be alright. It's not the end of the world" and "we're doing the best we can" but I don't think you can say that to us anymore.

Are we even on your list of priorities? My dad 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 but I challenge you, make your actions reflect your words.

Thank you.



Sometimes we need to view the world from the eyes of a child


And from the eyes of Forrest Gump:
So, I never went back to work for Lieutenant Dan. Though he did take care of my Bubba-Gump money. He got me invested in some kind of fruit company. And so then I got a call from him saying we don't have to worry about money no more and I said, "That's good. One less thing". Now, Momma said there's only so much fortune a man really needs and the rest is just for showing off. So, I gave a whole bunch of it to the Four Square Gospel Church and I gave a whole bunch to the Bayou La Batre Fishing Hospital. And even though Bubba was dead, and Lieutenant Dan said I was nuts, I gave Bubba's momma Bubba's share. And you know what? She didn't have to work in nobody's kitchen no more.