Ontario Sustainable Campuses Conference

The 3rd Annual Ontario Sustainable Campuses Conference will be held from January 25-27, 2008 at the University of Ottawa.

This gathering enables college and university representatives to come together to unite the Ontario Sustainable Campuses movement provincially and on each campus. Through workshops, roundtable discussions, planning sessions and strategic direction setting, the Ontario Sustainable Campuses Conference creates a forum to

1. empower campus community members to build new and more effective sustainability initiatives in Ontario
2. share organizing experiences: successes, challenges and new directions
3. learn about specific Ontario sustainability initiatives
4. plan for future collaboration between campuses

• Last minute information
• Speakers
• Panel: Carbon Trading: Climate Solution or Climate Injustice?
• Workshops & Trainings
• Collaborative Learning Spaces
• Final Agenda!
• Registration

Last minute information

Registration will start Friday January 25th at 10:00 in the Rotonde in the Tabaret Building. Starting at 17:00 and for the rest of the weekend at Cafe Alt in Simard-

University of Ottawa Campus Map

Public Transit Information from Central Bus Station, Train Station, Airpot

Speakers

Clayton Thomas-Muller, of the Mathais Colomb Cree Nation (Pukatawagan) in Northern Manitoba, Canada, is an activist for Indigenous Rights and Environmental Justice. For ten years as an organizer Clayton has gained vast experience in grassroots movement building, organizational development (fund raising), and strategic campaign planning and policy development.

He is the Indigenous Tar Sands Campaigner for the Indigenous Environmental Network. Clayton has been on the front lines of stopping industrial society's assault on Indigenous Peoples lands to extract resources and to dump toxic wastes. He has worked across Canada, Alaska and the lower 48 states with grassroots indigenous communities to defend their Inherit, Treaty and environmental rights against unsustainable energy policies and transnational energy corporations.

Based out of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Clayton is involved in many initiatives to support the building of an inclusive movement for Climate Justice. He serves as Chairman on the board of the Collective Heritage Institute, which brings the annual Bioneers Conference to life every year. In Canada he is one of the founders of the National Environmental Justice Organizing Institute, an initiative designed to build the political base of communities in Canada that have been systematically excluded from the climate change and energy debates. This exciting initiative aims to link climate and energy front line impacts to policy development in Canada.

Clayton is also a gifted poet and spoken-word performer. He is happily married and has recently become a father. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Clayton is that he’s just getting going. He’s been recognized by Utne magazine as one of the Top 30 under-30 young activists in the United States.



Maude Barlow is the National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, Canada’s largest public advocacy organization, and the founder of the Blue Planet Project working internationally for the right to water. She serves on the boards of the International Forum on Globalization and Food and Water Watch and is a Councillor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council.

Maude is the recipient of six honorary doctorates as well as the 2005 Right Livelihood Award (known as the “Alternative Nobel”) and the best selling author or co-author of 16 books. Her latest are Too Close for Comfort: Canada’s Future within Fortress North America and Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis.

Panel: Carbon Trading: Climate Solution or Climate Injustice?

Saturday night will feature a debate style panel on the ethics, implications and opportunities of carbon trading and carbon offsetting which will be sure to leave you thinking.

Confirmed so far....

Donna Dillman, Community Coalition Against Uranium Mining
Helena Olivas, Delphi Group
Stephen Hazell, Executive Director, Sierra Club of Canada
Jutta Kill, Forests and European Union Resource Network, Durban Group for Climate Justice.
Larry Lohmann, Durban Group for Climate Justice, Author of Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatization and Power (2006)


In 2004, the Durban Group for Climate Justice convened in Durban, South Africa to question the central role of carbon trading in official responses to the climate crisis. Members of the Durban Group are traveling in various cities throughout the US and Canada in January and February 2008 to share experiences of the failures of carbon trading in Europe, India, Brazil, Uganda and elsewhere, and to learn more about U.S. carbon trading plans and climate politics.

For more information on the Durban Group's North American Tour

Larry Lohmann will cover the major themes from his latest book Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatization and Power (2006). This book, published by Sweden’s Dag Hammarskjold Foundation together with the Durban Group for Climate Justice and The Corner House, argues that carbon trading slows the social and technological change needed to cope with global warming by unnecessarily prolonging the world’s dependence on oil, coal and gas. Specifically, Lohmann will focus on the contradictions of emissions trading and offset trading, why failed approaches are so popular among the world’s elites, and what the U.S. can now learn from the rest of the world. Additionally, he will explore the connections between climate trading and neoliberalism, the similarities between Bush’s approach and that of Kyoto, and how we can organize for more constructive approaches and new alliances.

Jutta Kill works with FERN, the Forests and European Union Resource Network. Its main campaign areas are climate change, forests and biodiversity, trade and investment, development aid, and forest peoples' rights. Created in 1995, FERN works to achieve greater environmental and social justice, focusing on forests and forest peoples’ rights in the policies and practices of the European Union.

Stephen Hazell, Executive Director, Sierra Club of Canada
For twenty years, Stephen Hazell has led teams, developed consensus and built institutional capacity to foster sustainable development and protect ecosystems. Each day he leads Sierra Club to be one of Canada's foremost environmental organizations

Workshops & Trainings

You can look forward to trainings and workshops in conducting a campus sustainability assessment, using the greenhouse gas inventory calculator as part of the Campus Climate Challenge, anti-oppression and the environmental movement, environmental justice 101, working with the media, consensus building and facilitation, the Inside the Bottle Campaign, Student Unions for Sustainability, and more!

Collaborative Learning Spaces

New this year are collaborative learning spaces, where conference participants will have a chance to sign up for impromptu workshops, skills sharing or talking circles- This will be a great way to open up space for conference participants to share their vast range of experience in the sustainability movement and meet the needs that arise as the conference progresses.

Final Agenda!

As of Thursday January 24th! Final Ontario Agenda 08.doc

Registration

30$ for SYC members*
50$ for non-SYC members
80$ for those who are institutionally funded to attend (ie. administration, departments, student unions, etc...)

• You are an SYC member if you attended the National Conference in London in September 2007, or have made a minimum 20$ donation to SYC in the past year.

Registration Form
Formulaire dEnregistrement

Please find a sample fundraising letter attached and SYC's fundraising guide in the Resource Center