BMF_TT__July2010_en.pdf - Bruno Manser Fonds

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Openair shower at Heuberg 25, the former headquarters of the Bruno Manser Fund in the centre of Basel’s old city.
«Bruno Manser exemplified respect, understanding – and the action that can evolve from it» Address by Professor Thomas Stocker, Physics Institute, University of Bern, Co-Chair Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change It was a memorable experience. I was working as a young scientist at Columbia University in New York in 1992, and was focusing on global warming and the role of the ocean in rapid climatic shifts. It was the time when Al Gore was publishing his first book «Earth in the Balance», of the legendary Rio Conference that elaborated the Framework Convention on Climate Change, and everyone present was weaing a battery-less light green Swatch on his wrist. When I heard that Bruno Manser, a Swiss living in Sarawak, and his Penan friends were organising an event in Manhattan’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine for these endangered people of the Malaysian rain forest, it was clear for me that I had to go. I had heard and read a lot about Bruno Manser, the man who had learned the language of the Penan, who had totally submerged himself in their culture, and who had transformed himself into some sort of improbable messenger by sitting on a tree trunk – thoughtful, deliberate and constantly filling his notebook with impressions. Images that are certainly close to all of us. I can well remember the music and the sound of Penan flutes, a short address by Bruno Manser, his enigmatic gaze was a mixture of scepticism, reserve and determination. It all had an enormous radiance for me in this large cathderal. In just a few words, he gave us a simple message: here are people who have lived in the forests of Sarawk for centuries, as a natural part of the rain forest’s ecosystem, in a balance that has been adapted over generations. And here are the interests of corporations which, for the sake of short-sighted profit-thinking – is that indeed «thinking»? – are destroying this community through deforestation, land acquisition and «development». Bruno Manser has shown us that three basic things are required for individuals to contribute to the solution of a problem: respect, understanding, and action. He set an example of these principles in a simple and obvious way. 1. Respect: Respect is the beginning of the will to understand. Without respect, we do not examine, we do not scrutinise, but rather
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BMF_TT__July2010_en.pdf - Bruno Manser Fonds

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