CAP Launch Event Student Speakers

Anna Larson '23

"My generation has grown up learning about the threat of climate change and will undoubtedly be forced to navigate a fast-changing and uncertain world. We have repeatedly been told that it will be our job to fix past generations’ mistakes. We feel the pressure, and we feel the uncertainty. But if there is anything that defines today’s youth, it is resilience. Young people are increasingly at the forefront of climate advocacy, and student mobilization all around the world sends a very clear message: there is no time to waste.

It is increasingly important that an institution like Concordia is not only working to educate students about climate change but is also preparing a detailed framework for reducing its environmental impact. A major part of Concordia’s mission is to foster engagement and involvement in our community, both locally and globally. In order for students to be responsibly and environmentally engaged in these communities, Concordia needs to set that example. With the climate action plan, Concordia is taking action, just as it encourages its students to do. Concordia’s impacts are far-reaching - whether students stay in the Fargo-Moorhead area or travel around the world, the skills we gain during these four years will influence us as teachers, lawyers, doctors, or just as people. It is more crucial than ever that Concordia equips students with the skills to navigate, mitigate, and innovate in response to an unprecedented obstacle like climate change.

Sustainability involves complex and analytical thinking. Sustainability is also interdisciplinary, meaning that it requires students of all majors and areas of study to collaborate and develop solutions for the inevitable issues that climate change will pose. The climate action plan that has been laid out for Concordia supports students in such a way that it will not only enhance their classroom understanding of climate change but will give them the opportunity for hands-on experience through research, internships, and even be involved with the goals and objectives of the plan.

With projections showing that climate change and its adverse effects will continue, it's urgent that our campus takes full responsibility for its role in preventing the most extreme outcomes. Swift action is the most promising way to ensure future generations a habitable, thriving planet. Concordia’s climate action plan is critical for education and preparing our students, working towards equity and justice, and ensuring that future generations are able to live safely on this planet. Students want climate action. Our futures depend on it."

Fanan Nizam '25

"Growing up in the Maldives, I was never unfamiliar with the effects of climate change. Our terrain is only 2 metres above sea level, which meant that the shoreline would travel closer to the coast every time I visited my grandparents on their home-island. My future children will never get to see most of the sandy white beaches I played on as a child, since they have been replaced by ugly grey concrete seawalls. Nor will I verbally be able to capture for them how it feels to swim over some of the coral reefs that are most sentimental to me, as they are now bleached to dust. 

Growing up in the Maldives, I have always felt the existential threat that climate change brings. The birth of my little brother was the day after the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004 which struck our islands severely, and my first childhood memory therefore is driving over flooded streets enroute to the hospital to see my recovering mum and newborn brother. Climate change is an empirical hazard not just to my homeland, but also to my culture and unique language – all shared between only 400,000 other people. However, we are merely one group who are suffering the effects. For too long, people all across the globe have felt hopeless and lost.  

As a student that calls Concordia her home away from home, the Climate Action Plan liberates me from these feelings and is a guiding path to a vital avenue. You might have seen slogans from climate protests that say: “There is no planet B.” We know all too well that we only have one home: the Earth. But we also must remember that we only have each other to lean on amidst this catastrophe. In the section on why we are compelled to act as an institution, it is highlighted that we want to work towards equity and justice. Maldives does not emit even 1% of global carbon emissions. Therefore, if we gave up today it would be an injustice to not just my people but to indigenous communities who breathe life into the Earth as they live, the youth who are out protesting for our right to a future even as we speak, and the scientists who are studying the crisis to find a solution, to name a few. 

While we are all privileged to be here today, I cannot help but feel that we students are the most privileged of all. With the existential threat climate change presents, it is easy to perceive the knowledge we students acquire everyday as a burden. However, to a Maldivian like myself, this knowledge is power. And responsibility. But most of all, it is hope – for all our futures. That one day I can show my children where I call home. I believe that hope materialises in different ways, but the most consequential is when it births action, what we at Concordia do best. Let this morning be just one of the first hours of action in our journey towards a sustainable future. Thank you for being on the right side of history."