Kimia Ghomeshi

Kimia Ghomeshi’s passion and commitment to environmental and social justice was sparked in high school and inspired her to volunteer in Costa Rica and Panama, where she discovered the devastating effects of large scale agricultural production on local communities. An Iranian-Canadian based in Toronto, Ghomeshi has spent the last years mobilizing youth and the general public around climate change, unsustainable tar sands mining practices, indigenous rights and democracy.

Kimia studied International Development at McGill University. She was part of the organizing team for Power Shift Canada’s climate change youth gathering. She coordinated direct actions for the adoption of a “fair, ambitious and legally binding agreement” as a member of the Canadian Youth Delegation at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in 2009. She coordinated the G20 campaign and youth mobilization actions as a Canadian Youth Climate Coalition council member and campaigner. Ghomeshi also worked as National Project Coordinator for TakingITGlobal, an international organization encouraging youth leadership, intercultural exchange and creative global thinking.

Profoundly ignited by the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and by the People’s Agreement it created, Kimia came away with the conviction that “democracy is about having a voice. It’s about valuing the experience of people as much as we value science. Democracy requires everybody at the table, not just experts.” Inspired by the participatory, community-led process that made the people’s summit such an invigorating success, Kimia helped to organize Toronto’s first People’s Assembly on Climate Justice.

Kimia is part of the Canadian Commission for Unesco’s Youth Advisory Group, of Rainforest Action Network’s Toronto chapter, and a member of the Community Solidarity Response Toronto advocating for environment justice in the global extractive industry.

She believes that environmental justice will only come from building a real participatory democracy, commited to social equality for all, as well as through a “complete transformation of our relationship to the Earth.”

Read the People”s Agreement — World People’s Conference on Climate Change, Cochabamba 2010
http://pwccc.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/peoples-agreement/

Kimia on Cochabamba, democracy and improving our climate change policy (2010 Climate Change Conference, 25 min)