When recently in Beirut and Cairo for Arab preparatory meetings for Rio+20, Diana Bronson had a chance to sit down with Adnan Melky, a long-time civil society activist from Lebanon, who has worked on environmental issues and democratic reform in Lebanon, and throughout the Arab region. Excerpts from their conversation are reproduced here.

Diana Bronson: What is your view of how the Arab Spring started and how do you understand it today?

The events of the past few weeks at Rights & Democracy highlight an increasing and preoccupying trend on the part of the federal government to silence and control arms-length agencies and even civil society organizations whose opinions or actions disagree with government policy.

The scandal at Rights & Democracy is but the most recent in a lengthening list of attacks on arms-length institutions (Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Elections Canada), government officials (the Colvin affair), and independent civil society organizations (Kairos, Alternatives, Court Challenges Programme).

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them" - Albert Einstein.

As global climate negotiations in Barcelona enter into the last week of talks before December’s Copenhagen summit, there continues to be more aggravation than agreement amongst negotiators.

I missed the final plenary when G77 delegates walked out on Canada’s speech at Bangkok climate negotiations last week, but I was not surprised to hear it, as frustration with Canada was deep-seated and articulated all week long.

Canadians probably know that we have not done our share but few know that we are in fact the very worst in the world when it comes to meeting our Kyoto obligations and cutting greenhouse gas emissions.  Harper may have been wooing the crowds at the National Arts Gala but he had few friends, and did not “get by,” last week in Bangkok.

“The West needs to undergo structural adjustment, like a junkie needs to be weaned off drugs.  We need, in fact, to shift back to what our traditional societies were like not so long ago. The right thing to do is to refuse all forms of insanity – vigorously oppose all new fossil fuel development – get away from crack cocaine that is the tar sands.   Recognize that agribusiness is a driver of climate change.  We must fight our own unsustainable practices and also those of the world economy and globalization. Globalization is predicated on access to cheap oil and to money.  And that is no longer the case.” - Winona LaDuke (Anishinaabe), Honour the Earth