Brian Finley handles PR and communications for the Rotary Club of Squamish.
Conflict and violence displace millions of people each year. Ninety percent of those killed in conflict are civilians and half of those are children. Often conflict starts and continues over long periods in competition for dwindling resources and as environmental changes force people to migrate.
Drought in rural Syria, for instance, pushed over a million people to the country’s urban centers which could not cope because there were simply not enough resources, escalating the conflict. In turn, over one million people sought refuge and a better life in Europe throughout 2015, the greatest migration crisis in Europe since the Second World War.
The 1.2 million business and professional leaders as members of Rotary International, in our Rotary Club of Squamish and 35,000 other clubs around the world, refuse to accept conflict as a way of life. That is the same attitude Rotary took over 30 years when it started the global campaign to rid the world of the 350,000 cases a year of child-crippling polio in 120 countries, now down to 21 during 2017 in three remaining endemic countries.
Rotary, which was instrumental in founding of the United Nations, is building on one of its six priorities, peace and conflict resolution, with a series of peace building conferences throughout the world in 2018. Hundreds of people will be gathering in Vancouver on Feb. 10 to hold the first of these peace building conferences, in this case on the specific theme of environmental sustainability as it relates to peace building.
This conference will examine sustainable global and local environmental practices, and their contributions to peace building and peacemaking, the impact of environmental issues on health, fresh air, clean water, vegetation, and food production - and how improved environmental conditions are a fundamental condition of building peace within communities.
Through Rotary, our community can be proud of our local contributions and to this and other causes where people are in need throughout the world.
