We are thankful to be welcome on these lands in friendship. The lands we are situated on are covered by the Williams Treaties and are the traditional territory of the Mississaugas, a branch of the greater Anishinaabeg Nation, including Algonquin, Ojibway, Odawa and Pottawatomi. These lands remain home to many Indigenous nations and peoples.

We acknowledge this land out of respect for the Indigenous nations who have cared for Turtle Island, also called North America, from before the arrival of settler peoples until this day. Most importantly, we acknowledge that the history of these lands has been tainted by poor treatment and a lack of friendship with the First Nations who call them home.

This history is something we are all affected by because we are all treaty people in Canada. We all have a shared history to reflect on, and each of us is affected by this history in different ways. Our past defines our present, but if we move forward as friends and allies, then it does not have to define our future.

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Biodiversity and Us: The Emerging Extinction Event of the 2020s

We know we are in the midst of a public health crisis. But we are also in the painful grip of another crisis: global biodiversity loss is one of the signature phenomena of the Anthropocene, an era when humankind’s impact on natural systems has become determinative. How do we know that biodiversity is in crisis, and how could this be related to COVID-19 and future pandemics? As a co-chair of a ground-breaking assessment conducted for an intergovernmental organization involving more than 70 authors from upwards of 30 countries, Dr. Peter Stoett will discuss recent assessment and workshop conclusions and some potential solutions to this severe threat to humanity and the natural environment.

This event was held on January 18, 2021

Speaker bio

Dr. Peter Stoett has been Dean of Social Science and Humanities at Ontario Tech University since 2017. Previously, he was the Director of the Loyola Sustainability Research Centre at Concordia University. He works with the United Nations on several fronts and is presently co-chairing a global assessment conducted by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.