Hello friends of the RAVEN project!
Lots of updates since our last newsletter in June, on these CORE RAVEN topics:
- 1) Food security and sovereignty
- 2) Rural governance
- 3) Climate action
but first… Latest news
RAVEN friend Tom Beckley is the lead author on the New Brunswick chapter of the 2021 State of Rural Canada report. More HERE.
Stay tuned for our book launch at the end of October. We were planning a series of in-person launches around the province but that’s been shelved due to COVID restrictions for something interesting… will keep you posted!
1) Food security and sovereignty
Amy Floyd, RAVEN’s senior policy advisor on food security, has been very busy over the summer.
We’ll send you soon a link to a new resource Amy is working on that we’re excited about. RAVEN has been working with a legal firm in New Brunswick to adapt an agricultural lease for small farmers. The template will be available soon on the RAVEN site. The document will help small farmers prepare to lease agricultural land to start their own small farm. Stay tuned for details!
In June, RAVEN hosted a visit to Pleasant Ridge in unceded Mi’kma’ki territory (near the Village of Rogersville) to learn about agricultural cooperatives at la Ferme Terre Partagée Cooperative. Amy’s article about the history of the farm and agricultural cooperatives is a must-read for anyone interested in food sovereignty in New Brunswick. You can read it HERE online published by our partner the NB Media Co-op.
RAVEN’s Amy Floyd published an article in the NB Media Co-op: Build your own rain garden: Using nature’s elegant designs to clean up New Brunswick’s waterways. You can read it HERE.
2) Rural governance
RAVEN’s senior policy advisor Kim Reeder is working on several projects, including supporting a rural group organizing the response of Local Service Districts to the provincial government’s review of local governance. Read Kim’s latest stories on this topic published in September in the NB Media Co-op:
Rural and suburban voices to be heard in the local governance reform debate
A missed opportunity for true collaboration in local governance reform
3) Climate action
RAVEN was one of a broad coalition of groups that organized the Climate Justice rally at the NB Legislature on Sept. 24, part of a global day of climate rallies. See our announcement HERE and article in the NB Media Co-op HERE. We had about 160 people participating in Fredericton. More than 10,000 people participated in the rally the same day in Montreal! Info HERE.
RAVEN’s Kelly Green is leading the Divest STU fossil fuel divestment campaign. Her speech at the Sept. 24 Climate Rally was featured in an article in STU’s Aquinian newspaper. Read it HERE.
Kelly is also the coordinator of RAVEN’s Call for Young Writers. Ben Manette, a student at Mount Allison University in Sackville is the first contributor. Ben’s story, A Letter from Someone who Stayed, was published by the NB Media Co-op. Read it HERE.
RAVEN’s Rose He, coordinator of the fossil fuel divestment campaign at UNB, was on a CBC radio panel in September to talk about youth response to the climate crisis. You can listen to Rose’s interventions here.
RAVEN advocates for genuine climate action. Burning coal at Belledune to generate electricity has to stop by the federal deadline of 2030, but our provincial government is lobbying to extend that deadline. The Conservation Council of New Brunswick (CCNB) wrote to federal Environment Minister Wilkinson with concerns about New Brunswick’s proposed regulation Phasing Out of Coal-fired Electricity Generation – Climate Change Act. RAVEN was among the many groups endorsing the CCNB letter. Our concerns regard the use of equivalency agreements when Canada is promoting its commitment to phasing out coal-fired electricity by 2030 within the Powering Past Coal Alliance. Read the letter HERE.
RAVEN is opposed to public funding of new nuclear reactors, which do not belong in a climate action plan. We’ve been very vocal about this, to counter the government and industry misinformation on this point. Here’s some of what RAVEN has been involved in lately:
• RAVEN and the STU Environment & Society program were co-hosts last month of the Global Launch of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2021. Read about the launch event and access the report HERE.
• An article in the Hill Times and the NB Media Co-op published before the recent federal election: Party election platforms: Should new nuclear reactors be part of Canada’s climate action plan? Info HERE.
• An article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, HERE. The article focuses on a letter written by nine US non-proliferation experts concerned about Canada’s support for the plan by Moltex Energy to extract plutonium from the used nuclear fuel at Point Lepreau on the Bay of Fundy.