Blue dots for a green planet

Queen’s leads Canada-wide university challenge for the Blue Dot movement

Leah Kelley holding a Blue Dot poster in the JDUC.
Image by: Natasa Bansagi
Leah Kelley holding a Blue Dot poster in the JDUC.

The AMS Commission of the Environment and Sustainability (CES) has led a nation-wide campus challenge to recognize Canadians’ right to a “healthy environment”.

Supported by the David Suzuki Foundation, the Blue Dot movement was launched in September and aims for governmental recognition of a right to a healthy environment — breathing fresh air, drinking clean water and eating healthy food, in particular.

AMS Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainability Leah Kelley said her commission contacted the David Suzuki Foundation because they felt that the campaign was missing “an important demographic” — students.

With their support, she reached out to universities across the country to start the Blue Dot Campus Challenge, which ran from March 7-14.

“We kind of had that challenge out to all of these campuses to see, within a week, how well can you spread the word?” said Kelley, ArtSci ’16.

“The way we measured that was by the number of petition signatures that you could collect within that week and the petition was just to your local municipality to ask them to consider making a declaration of support for the campaign and getting the right to a healthy environment recognized in Canada.”

Kelley added that what made the Blue Dot campaign appealing was that it was both an environmental and a social initiative.

“It’s a human rights issue, it’s something that really does affect every single person in a very personal way — your access to clean water, which many Canadians don’t have,” she said.

Of the 16 post-secondary institutions that participated in the challenge, Kelley said Queen’s and the University of Winnipeg won — with 800 signatures collected in the former and 444 in the latter, according to the Blue Dot website.

Since the purpose of the challenge was mainly to raise awareness, Kelley said, approaching the municipality for a declaration would be left to the movement’s local chapter — Blue Dot Kingston Frontenac.

According to Blue Dot Kingston Frontenac coordinator Kim Sutherland Mills, the chapter is aiming for a municipal declaration on June 2 — when City Council is scheduled to meet — in part because World Environment Day will occur on June 5.

“We’re asking mayor and council to recognize our right to clean air, clear water, safe food, access to nature, our right to participate in government decisions related to the environment, a right to know about pollutants that are released into our environment,” she said.

29 municipalities have already signed declarations, including Hamilton — the first in Ontario.

Sutherland Mills said the chapter aims to reach 2,000 signatures before a potential declaration, but as a “relatively new chapter”, they’ve collected approximately 100 so far. With an additional 800 from the Campus Challenge, she added, “we’re almost halfway there”.

As a city aiming to become the most sustainable in the country, signing a declaration “fits well” with the steps Kingston has taken so far, Sutherland Mills said.

Andrea Schneider, who previously worked with the CES’s Greenovations team, signed the Blue Dot petition online.

Schneider, ArtSci ’16, said the petition’s goal made it obvious to her that she should sign it.

“You hear about it and it’s basically the idea that Canada is a country that for some reason does not have the right to clean water and good food and a healthy environment as one of their rights,” she said.

“I think it’s really important that we bring that to the foreground and just start small and work our way up and hopefully in the future we see change.”

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Environment

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