Custodian of us all

Maurice Strong, the planet’s “first official custodian,” didn’t live to see the result of the global climate conference in Paris which he did so much to inspire. But its outcome will form part of his legacy as will the example he set in showing how much can be accomplished through insight and dogged determination.

The 86-year-old visionary’s death was announced late last week, generating condolences from around the world. In a remarkable life that began in poverty during the Depression in Oak Lake, Man., Strong came to be a legendary figure in the worlds of business, environmental protection, international aid and United Nations activism.

Today, as national leaders and others meet in Paris for UN-sponsored talks on climate change, Strong is being credited with putting the environment on the international agenda. And rightly so. He was instrumental in arranging the UN’s first huge conference on the global environment, in Stockholm back in 1972.

And he didn’t stop there. He was named head of the new UN Environment Program, pioneering its work as an authority on sustainable development. When he later accepted an offer from then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau to head Petro-Canada, a New York Times editorial dubbed him the planet’s prime custodian.

That description became even more appropriate in 1992 — long after Stockholm — when Strong presided over the massive Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. That watershed produced the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, laying groundwork for the Kyoto Protocol and the meeting in Paris now underway.

Strong’s approach was characterized by extraordinary far-sightedness, raising an early alarm on climate and environmental issues, and by a tenacious commitment to pressing for change.

This blend of vision and persistence is precisely what’s needed from world leaders, now and in years to come. Whatever its result, Paris won’t mark the end of a journey toward a sustainable planet but, rather, another stage on that odyssey.

A great deal of work remains, especially for Canada. Bold, sustained action is needed to overcome decades of negligence — half-measures or none at all — at the federal level.

Armed with well-crafted policies and the persistence to carry them out, Canada’s political leaders can strike a determined blow in the fight against climate change. There could be no better tribute to the life and work of Maurice Strong.

Environmental visionary left a remarkable legacy that is bearing fruit with UN conference on climate change