The climate change crisis we face is global. It is a “wicked” problem (Underdal, 2017) that requires a global response.

As an actor in this world, I want to believe that there are solutions. I want to believe in the possibility of a world outside a consumerist view that only values profit and growth. I want to commit myself to challenging climate change, since the outcome of today’s struggles will determine the future for generations to come, starting with mine. I want to be able to believe in an environmentally friendly system and economy, returning to the economy of nature. I want to bring back the values of ecology, humanity and respect at the heart of our political priorities.

But what can I do to confront the climate change, as an individual?

Individual Solutions are Not Enough, But Global Solutions are Not Working

Mitigating climate change demands a reduction in greenhouse gases, but individual actions can only reduce the carbon footprint by 25-30% (Dugast, 2019). Neither my vegetarianism nor my second-hand shopping habits will make a difference. As a 20-year-old eco-anxious citizen I cannot change the fate of the planet.

The international system is not able to resolve the current climate crisis either. The effectiveness of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs) are widely disputed. The numerous Conference of the Parties (COPs) meetings on climate challenge follow one another, year after year, without bringing about the transformative change we need.

We will not get there by being timid, but by being demanding and radical in our expectations.

Our Responsibilities are Not Equal

We must begin with a recognition that while climate change is human in origin, our responsibility is not universal and equal. There are enormous differences in power between human beings and this means that a solution to the climate crisis demands a world that is more inclusive and respectful of all, a just transition.

For-profit companies are driven by the imperatives of short-term profits and the quest for growth (Nyberg and Wright, 2017). Shareholders prefer to focus on profitable “core business” concerns rather than longer term sustainability. Fossil fuel corporations are also major players in climate change, and their hegemony over our societies prevents any move away from a regime of “fossil capitalism”, where profits are the sole objective of the economy, even at the cost of a planetary climate crisis (Carroll, 2020).

Laws are not impartial or neutral but reflect the interests of the old colonial powers. International law favors the financial and trade regimes of the Global North, which are rooted in unsustainable economic growth models. This imperialist vision of international law must be reformed. The decolonization of international law, written by and in the interests of the then-colonial powers, is necessary (Mason-Case, Dehm, 2020).

Solutions Demand New Relationships

If the current system participates in the failure to act in the face of climate change, the crisis affects certain populations more than others, starting with Indigenous peoples and racialized peoples from the Global South.

Indigenous peoples play an important role in sustainable resource management, as �첥��Ƶ professor Angele Alook (Alook, 2023) reminds us, acting as guardians of the environment: they keep 80 percent of the Earth's biodiversity alive. Tackling the climate crisis means respecting Indigenous land rights and involving communities in land management, since many First Nations around the world have unique relationships with their environment, rooted in traditional knowledge.

We need to turn away from economic models that are predicated on the unsustainable idea of economic growth. Gross Domestic Product may decline but quality of life can still improve (Mastini, et al., 2020). In short, challenging climate change demands a radical break with capitalist market-based economic relationships. 

Taking climate stabilization seriously means transformative change.

Artists help us too in grappling with the unprecedented threat that climate change represents. They help us imagine solutions, rooted in a world that is not just greener, but more just for all of us.

The Individual and the Global

Where does that leave me, as an individual and actor in the fight against climate change?

I can fight, but not alone. I need to work with and stand with all those – Indigenous peoples, climate change activists, degrowth scholars and artists imagining new worlds – who are committed to new relationships. A just transition will depend on all of us, working together, in this world that we share and that is now threatened by climate change.

Violette Dagorne is a third-year exchange student from Lille, France, specializing in political science. Her main areas of interest are climate migration, international climate negotiations and East Asian studies. She would like to continue her studies with a master's degree in environmental policy or in humanitarian and development aid.

Bibliography:

Alook, Angele. “No More Broken Promises.” Pp. 15-35 in Alook, Angele et al., (2023). The End of this World: Climate Justice in So-called Canada. Between the Lines.

Carroll, William K. “Fossil capitalism, climate capitalism, energy democracy: The struggle

for hegemony in an era of climate crisis.” Socialist Studies/Études Socialistes 14.1 (2020).

Dugast, César, and Soyeux Alexia. « Faire sa part ? Pouvoir et responsabilité des individus, des entreprises et de l’État face à l’urgence climatique », Carbone 4 (2019).

Mason-Case, Sarah and Julia Dehm. (2020). Redressing Historical Responsibility for the

Unjust Precarities of Climate Change in the Present. [S.l.]: SSRN. .

Mastini, Riccardo, Giorgos Kallis, and Jason Hickel. “A green new deal without growth?.”

Ecological Economics 179 (2021): 106832.

Underdal, Arild. “Climate change and international relations (after Kyoto).” Annual Review of Political Science 20 (2017): 169-188.

Wright, Christopher, and Daniel Nyberg. “An inconvenient truth: How organizations translate climate change into business as usual.” Academy of management journal 60.5 (2017): 1633-1661.

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How did you end up in this field, studying bees and their relationship to the environment and climate change? 

During my undergraduate degree, the University of Toronto had the option to get course credit by volunteering in a lab. I was placed in a lab that studied evolutionary ecology of bees and plants, where I overcame my fear of them. Through working in that lab, I realized that no one was studying the decline of native bumblebees in Ontario despite evidence that some had declined rapidly so I decided to work on that for my PhD at �첥��Ƶ.

Most of us understand the idea of greenwashing, when corporations spend money on campaigns to "look green" while carrying out unsustainable practices. But the idea of "beewashing" is new to me. Can you explain what this means? 

Beewashing refers to branding of actions as sustainable and/or helpful for declining bees when in fact they are not. The biggest example is the promotion of honeybees outside of their native areas as somehow good for the environment or bee populations.  In North America, we have about 2000 native bee species, none of which are the European Honeybee.  Our native bees overwinter by sleeping and thus do not collect honey (aside from species in Mexico) and they are mostly solitary (not living in hives). Most of our native bee species have not been assessed in terms of conservation status but for those that have been, diseases introduced from managed bees seem to be a key threat. There is also growing evidence that honeybees can disrupt pollination of native plants and can outcompete native bees for pollen and nectar. The European Honeybee is not at risk of extinction and is in fact one of the most common livestock animals and invasive bees around the world. The fact that many businesses are adding honeybee hives and calling it a sustainability initiative, while actually increasing pressures to wild bees is the epitome of beewashing.  We would never through a million Asian Carp into the great lakes and say we are saving declining fishes, so why do we accept it with bees? 

What is the relationship between bees and climate change? How does your work championing wild bees compared to "managed bees" -- managed by humans, for instance, for honey production -- relate to climate change?

Honeybees are livestock. They produce honey, which is a food item that we use. But it's not related to climate change. In order to address climate change we need to conserve a diverse and abundant wild bee community. When we have a lot of species doing pollination services, our food systems and natural ecosystems will be more resilient to climate change. If we reduce diversity and put all our eggs in one basket, all it takes is one disease or weather event to come through to knock out that species and we are in big trouble.  We saw how risky this is with how quickly Varroa mites and colony collapse disorder swept through honeybee colonies. It's also important to note that climate change is a threat to wild bees, native plants and other wildlife species, so prioritizing mitigating climate change is critical in order to conserve native pollinators and more.

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On March 29th, the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research held a collective discussion, led by Carol Devine and Yasmin Al-Sahili. Devine is a Community Scholar at the Dahdaleh Institute working on a framework for Planetary Health Advocacy. Al-Sahili worked on the Planetary Health Advocacy Framework, as a research assistant, with Devine.

The question that animated the group is: how do we build strategies to frame and communicate knowledge about planetary health? The aim is to develop principles that further advocacy in the areas of humanitarianism, global health, planetary health, and climate change.

What began as a framework has evolved, Devine and Al-Sahili emphasize, more into a "tool for advocacy" that explores the impacts of climate change on health. The tool is meant to inform operational programs to mitigate climate change and advocacy for new ways of living that are sustainable for humans and for other life on earth.

As a living tool, it is constantly and sometimes rapidly changing in response to dialogue from a wide range of actors. This dialogue is vital. As Devine paraphrases Indigenous Planetary Health leader Dr. Nicole Redvers, climate change will not be resolved by technical fixes. Instead, “what will solve the climate crisis is language and dialogue”.

While developing the tool, a major question is figuring out how to effectively communicate knowledge to diverse audiences. A circular design with multiple rings, for instance, seeks to show the interconnectivity of different elements. This recalls the relationships between human health and the wellbeing of the natural world, as well as known solutions among and across different actors.

Indigenous peoples and local communities are especially important, Devine emphasized, to biodiversity stewardship and knowing climate change solutions.

Al-Sahili echoes this view. She emphasizes the importance of understanding colonialism and colonial practices in exacerbating climate change-associated health consequences. Those who have been subject to colonialism suffer the most immediate effects of climate change," Al-Sahili observes," but they have contributed the least to global warming. The voices of those with non-western worldviews, and specifically Indigenous knowledges, perspectives, and ways of doing, are critical to decolonizing planetary health tools."

This means recognizing that we live in a pluralistic world, where many different ways of knowing co-exist.

Many Western-trained scientists understand the world in terms of systems and variables. This may be very different from how other communities and cultures make sense of themselves and their environments. Despite the diversity across and within their communities, many Indigenous peoples, for instance, understand the world as embedded in strong, even sacred responsibilities to the lands that have been theirs from time immemorial. Indigenous scientists may bring their Indigenous knowledges to problem-solving as they seek to understand and mitigate climate change.[1]

The framework must respond to competing paradigms. As a living tool, it always has room for change, updates and improvements.

Participants at the seminar had many ideas they contributed to the conversation.

Some suggested that it would be useful to add stories to the tool to illustrate and communicate knowledge to broad audiences. Stories represent us and are central to who we are as human beings. As Professor Orbinski observed, “While we have a lot of science about climate change, we don't have many stories”.

Compelling narratives, as much as or in combination with science, are necessary to help us to understand the challenges that climate change represents.

Others proposed developing a certificate program within the Institute for Global Health Research to share knowledge within academia about the critical importance of planetary health.

In addition, the tool for planetary health needs to be relevant beyond academia. To be meaningful, participants emphasized, the tool has to be understandable for many people. Some participants suggested building a website to make the tool interactive, dynamic and accessible to a wide range of users.

Out of the lively discussion, the relationship between global health and well-being and planetary health was emphasized again and again. We will only become healthy, as communities, when we live in healthy ecologies. That demands that we do what we can to mitigate climate change and prevent more negative impacts, suffering and loss, while simultaneously advocating to secure more ecologically sustainable and equitable futures.

[1] See, for instance, Anishinaabe scientist Dr. Myrle Ballard:

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"Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred. Human-caused climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. This has led to widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people. Vulnerable communities who have historically contributed the least to current climate change are disproportionately affected.”

This is one of the sober assessments in the 2023 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change synthesis report. How can we grapple with these changes in climate, and the consequences for nature and for people, especially the most vulnerable among us?

As an ecologist who is interested in the effects of climate change on migratory birds, Dr. ’s research aims to document how the warming of the Arctic and sub-Artic regions are affecting arctic birds. Effects of climate change are not always easy to detect. Though global warming may result in changes in availability of food sources for birds, Dr. McKinnon explained, the warmer weather could also reduce energy requirements. Not only are birds facing potential changes in resources, they are also facing potential changes in predation pressure as some predators, such as the red fox, expand their range further north. Researchers can collect data to provide insight into how bird species may cope with these changes, but “If we want to challenge climate change and protect migrant bird populations,” Dr. McKinnon emphasized, “it will take more than scientists studying what is happening to them. We need collective conservation efforts that tackle the social, political and environmental aspects of climate change.” 

For Dr. Byomkesh Talukder, climate change has effects that can be measured in changes to nature and to human communities, where his own research in Bangladesh, shows the wide-ranging consequences of rising oceans and the salination of fresh water rivers. Fresh water fish, once important to local diets, do not survive in the salinated water. High blood pressure in adult men and women, as well as miscarriages in women, are some of the more immediate health consequences. But communities are affected in other ways. “In particular, women are suffering from miscarriages” Dr. Talukder notes, “and their mental health is also suffering, since they now must travel and wait long hours for access to fresh water, which we all need to survive.” Grappling with climate change means taking up these complexities, which affect both local ecological systems and the human communities that depend on them for survival.

In her work on the , sociologist Dr. emphasizes that taking up the challenges of climate change is necessary for life to continue: the stakes cannot be overstated for human beings and for many other forms of life. There are solutions, however, especially as the consensus shifts to recognize the urgency of climate change. “We can support a shift to a greener economy, not just through new technologies” Dr. Robinson argues, “but by expanding those parts of the economy that have always been green, like the caring and service professions.” Best practices from around the world can be taken up anywhere, for instance, through policies that centre measures of well-being as central to political decision-making, as in Aotearoa/New Zealand, rather than a narrow focus on economic growth. At its best, climate change movements can bring about transformations that will enable a livable planet, but also a more equitable one. “In places like Canada, Indigenous knowledges are a critical to challenging climate change” Dr. Robinson emphasized, “and to creating more just relationships.”

Filmmaker Shabnam Sukhdev presented a short clip from her film, , which invites us to listen to the late Didi Contractor. A German American urban designer who lived most of her life in India, Contractor lived her ecological commitments in the buildings that she created and in her own home. Contractor is blunt in her assessment of the challenges of living ecologically, “It’s very difficult to walk your talk, because it’s set up against you.” Nonetheless, sustainable ways of living are worth striving for, she emphasized, in work and in life. Contractor created beautiful, functional and ecological buildings and lived her own life without waste, to be respectful to the planet and to future generations. “A place in heaven, for me, is the here and now” Contractor added, “And it is in doing small things carefully that we learn to do large things”. For Sukhdev, Contractor is a vital reminder that we have choices and that we can choose to live, not just for immediate needs and wants, but in ways that are responsible to life now and in the years to come. As Contractor observed about Mahatma Gandhi: “He made his decision keeping in mind the weakest members of society, and to me, the weakest members are those who are yet unborn.”

As the latest IPCC report reminds us, climate change is already with us and creating serious harms to nature and to people. Given the crisis we face, all four of the speakers emphasized the importance of acting where you are and with what you know. We can do this through the sciences, the social sciences and the arts, and by listening to and working across disciplines and knowledge traditions. Given the complexities of climate change, all the different ways we understand the world must be mobilized, not for knowledges sake but to galvanize meaningful action now.

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During Climate Change Research Month, at the March 16 lecture hosted by the �첥��Ƶ’s Emergency Mitigation, Engagement, Response and Governance Institute (Y-EMERGE), listeners were invited to draw our attention inwards to proactively consider the “fire and floods” in our own backyard.

Dr. began her talk by sharing a selection of photographs of devastating wildfires, from Australia to Greece to California to Lytton, British Columbia. With their vivid oranges and reds and their smoke-filled skylines, the scorching images reminded us, in Dr. Su’s words, that “climate change fuels the fires, and the fires fuel climate change.”

Climate change is predicted to increase the frequency and intensity of natural disasters worldwide, Dr. Su explained. Several threats to Canada were recently outlined in a climate change report by the to Canadians, including water and food security, Arctic sovereignty, and coastal security.

A proactive turn inwards, Dr. Su observed, is essential for generating community-based plans and solutions, in the face of climate disaster locally as well as globally.

But this requires us to challenge common myths, Dr. Su underlined, especially the alarmist narrative dominating news today – the idea that the Global North needs to prepare for mass numbers of climate refugees and migrants coming from the Global South. Informed by a colonial mindset, such fear-mongering feeds into unfounded ideas that displaced peoples will move across continents as they flee climate change.

The research tells a different story, Dr. Su explained, one that is closer to home. Most displaced peoples seek to return to their homes and rebuild, so migration due to climate change is local and regional, not international. Further, we can learn from community-based solutions enacted worldwide when developing our own preparedness plans.

In a context where climate change is happening in our own country, Dr. Su observed, we must focus on proactive, practical solutions. These solutions will centre:

·        community-based, planned relocation;

·        multi-year and multi-hazard prevention plans;

·        cooperative, multi-level governance and resources;

·        and preparation and support for host communities.

We need to ask ourselves hard questions, Dr. Su suggests, and consider internal migration “so we can be sensitive to the tensions that might rise up, and be proactive for what may come, so we can be prepared.” Questions like, “If a disaster was to strike Toronto, for instance, where would we go?”

“How many of us are having these conversations?” Dr. Su urged. We need to “start with ourselves and then expand beyond our own household with empathy towards those who may be displaced now or in the future.”

All of this demands a politics of preparedness, engagement, and listening to communities. It means, too, that we must take politics seriously. Dr. Su explains:

“There is a need for us to push our politicians to think proactively, to show them that we care and that climate change is a priority for us. We need to make it clear that Canadians care about living in a good environment and that we care about living in a nation that is free of significant natural hazards due to climate change.”

When election time comes around, we must advocate for policies that address the serious challenge climate change represents, for all who live in Canada and beyond, beginning in our own backyards.

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Organized by the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies on March 7, 2023.

Is caring about climate change enough to make political change?

My research takes up this question by looking at Guelph, Ontario where, in 2018, the riding elected Green Party candidate Mike Schreiner. The Green Party’s success was significant, since this election marked the first time a Green Party candidate was ever elected in Ontario.

Was this a turning point for Canada?

Thinking back to 2018, it felt like a watershed moment for the environment. There were Climate marches worldwide. Fridays for Future saw students walking out of classrooms on a weekly basis to protect inaction about climate change. Trudeau banned plastic straws, as a small step to curbing plastics pollution.

Was the election of Ontario first-ever Green Party MPP in Guelph the beginning of a political movement that was going to spread across the country? And if so, why there, and why then?

To answer this question, I traced the history of Green parties in parliamentary systems, in Europe and Australasia, that are similar to Canada. Since Green parties have existed and been successful since the early 1970s, there was much to be learned from experiences elsewhere.  

I found a range of factors mattered for Green parties’ election success, including a strong economy, guaranteed government funding for registered political parties, and competition among political parties for Green Party votes.

But what about the Green Party in Ontario?

Ontario has a unique history, rooted in an economy built on extraction and manufacturing but now more dependent on finance and services. It is a very wealthy province, and a politically powerful one.  Ontario has high levels of education, compared to other provinces. From 1985 to today, Ontario has had a  competitive three-party system, where the Conservative, Liberal, and New Democratic parties have each formed majority governments.

Together, these factors are hopeful for those who support Green parties, since the province does not depend on the fossil fuel industry, it has a strong economy, a highly educated population and a competitive party system.

Gains are possible, especially in cities like Guelph, which boasts a relatively wealthy, highly educated citizenry, motivated to address climate change. Since Ontario is a powerful province, the election of a Green official in Ontario could signal a shift in broader political norms across the country.

But many questions remain.

How do Green parties strategize in Ontario’s first part the post voting system? What happens if current economic uncertainties worsen and deepen? How do voting districts that favour the suburban and rural vote play into Green party success across Ontario?

One thing is certain.

Caring about climate change and Green politics is not enough to ensure a Green Party win. But making climate change a major electoral issue is necessary, if there is to be any chance at all.

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In the struggle for a livable world, for each of us and for all of us, there are many from whom we draw strength. Some are close to us and some we know only through their words. Hermann Levin Goldschmidt, a German Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, is one who speaks directly across a half-century.

In the long shadow of the Shoah, Goldschmidt wrote Contradiction Set Free, first published in German in the 1970s and only recently translated into English. He wrote about his times, but they are familiar to us: he describes false prophets, genocidal violence, totalitarian dreams of domination and fascist hopes for supremacy, nihilistic despair and state surveillance and militarization. He warns of atomic and ecological destruction that threatens the end of human life and the end of much of the natural world. In surveying so much death and so many dangers, Goldschmidt wrote plainly about the “far greater pervasiveness of evil in relation to good”.

And yet Goldschmidt did not counsel despair. Instead, he issued a passionate and anguished call for each of us to respect the singularness of every Other. He reminds us of our profound responsibilities to each human being and to the natural world, in their distinctive differences from ourselves:

Every human being counts, and that means every human being without exception, of every age and of both (sic) sexes, weak and strong, sick and healthy; just as every human being of every skin colour counts and every human being of every faith and every knowledge! And just as every human being has [their] own dignity and value, so does the environment of the human being, from nature to culture, have its own dignity and –especially as nature – its own literally irreplaceable value. 

Hermann Levin Goldschmidt

In a world whose diversity is known to us, Goldschmidt enjoins us to “hold our ground!” by living up to our responsibilities. This means that our own freedoms must serve the freedoms of others, allowing the contradictions among us to be free. This is not inevitable. It is a political and ethical choice we make to put our own freedoms in the service of others, to allow other human beings and the natural world to express their own particular, irreplaceable qualities. This gives life meaning, “as something more than its own existence”. For Goldschmidt, this act is an expression of love and it is upon this love that our survival depends.

In an era of climate change, we might follow Goldschmidt in seeking “a fundamentally new way” of being together with each other and with nature. This will require us to embrace all the distinctive ways that we know, together and as singular individuals, while holding ourselves accountable to each other. This demands scientific studies that root observation of climate change in systematically gathered evidence, spiritual and existential appeals that remind us of our duties to protect all life, immediate actions to mitigate and adapt to local effects of climate change, and artistic expressions that stir our imaginations and help us realize the urgency of transformation. As Goldschmidt reminds us, commitment to the Other, both human others and the others of the natural world, means embracing the irreducible and irreplaceable plurality of ways of being, knowing and doing.

Yet even in the act of writing, Goldschmidt worried that his arguments might not persuade anyone to action. “[W]ords” he observed, may “lead only to more words whose protest fails to eradicate the oppression against which they are aimed”. The possibility of failing to act against the oppression and destruction of other human beings, and of the earth, is always there. There are powerful actors who prefer profitable self-interest to the survival of many forms of life, including human life and the earth which sustains all of us. Many others suffer in circumstances of conflict and hunger that leave them with little beyond the immediacy of struggles for survival. The urgencies and exigencies of everyday life, even for the relatively more privileged, often loom larger than the most pressing existential questions.

Goldschmidt knew all of this from the agony of his own experience. He knew both the costs of inaction and the costs of standing against the destruction of human others and the other of nature. And yet he insisted, in an unashamedly moral and theological vocabulary, upon the possibility that each of us might act to turn away from evil towards the good. As the most profound and serious commitment, he asked us to respect the distinctive forms of life in other humans and in nature.  He called upon us to be accountable, to each other and to the earth that sustains us, not only in our sameness but in our distinctive differences. When freely chosen, taking up this responsibility for new, more livable ways of being all together is an act of love -- and so our most serious duty and our most joyful possibility. 

*The reflections in this contribution draw from a paper, for a special issue of Philosophy Now, on the recent English translation of Hermann Levin Goldschmidt’s Contradiction Set Free (Bloomsbury 2020).

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Written by Elaine Coburn, Director of the Centre for Feminist Research

The United Nations’ conference on climate change, the COP 27, held in Egypt in November 2022, was a massive failure. The Climate Finance Delivery Plan, established in 2009, for instance, promised 100 billion American dollars per year to support climate change mitigation and adaptation in the developing countries. This promise remains largely unfulfilled. This failure to come to a global agreement will have consequences for our planetary biosphere, and so for human health, argues the Director of the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research, Professor James Orbinski.

There is already massive human suffering directly linked to ongoing failures to take up the climate change, which is the existential crisis of our times. Food security is a major crisis worldwide, Orbinski said, so that about 800 million people today are not able to meet their basic food needs. He noted that famine-like conditions exist in 43 countries today, directly caused or accelerated and exacerbated by global warming. For other forms of life, climate change is causing the sixth great extinction and this time, unlike the extinction that killed off the dinosaurs, the cause is not a meteorite hitting the earth, but global warming and ecological degradation, caused by human beings. 

Given the crisis, action is required. Locally, this demands responses that are community based and that take up the complexities of the ecosystem upon which all life, including human life, depends.

In the Chilwa Basin in Malawi, Orbinski’s team is taking an approach that seeks to engage the community and policy makers together. The aim is to produce research that can inform practices that will help local actors mitigate and adapt to the human health impacts climate change. This demands a careful understanding of the realities of a particular community, for instance, including gender dynamics and differences in health status across different age groups. Housing, fishing, animal husbandry, access to the water and the quality of water, and an appreciation of what is held sacred, Orbinski emphasized, all matter to creating meaningful models of complex local ecosystems.

Combining community knowledge with other sources of data from across different ministries, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), United Nations Agencies, and  satellite-based data, and across different disciplines, is another challenge. This is necessary for better understandings of local ecosystems, Orbinski argues, but there are political, logistical and technical solutions that have to be found to make that knowledge compatible, analyzable and then usable.

In the Chilwa Basin, one concern is that fuel needs are met through charcoal burning, which contributes to global warming and local deforestation. The deforestation then leads to soil erosion, which in turn, with its high nitrogen content, causes eutrophication of lake water, leading to the proliferation of disease-causing pathogens, making people sick. If alternative, nature-based, sustainable solutions to meeting fuel needs can be found, Orbinski observed, then local community health can be improved and climate change can to some extent, be mitigated. Creating effective and equitable solutions to these kinds of practical problems are at the heart of the institute's pragmatic approach to climate change and planetary health.

Another example of modelling climate change events in the Chilwa Basin is the successful development of models around flooding, Orbinski noted. For that project, the team used satellite data, and data from governments, community organizations, NGOs and others, to map and quantify relationships across a wide range of variables. Graphic representations of those relationships were then mapped onto the relationships of other sub-systems, enabling a new understanding of complex correlations across sub-systems. The aim is then to develop applications that can be used by local people and policy makers in health adaptations, early warning and disaster management.

In all cases, Orbinski emphasized, it is critical to recognize that how a given variable is valued depends on who is looking at it. A community actor may understand a piece of land as especially significant, while the same land may be seen as relatively unimportant by an engineer from outside the community seeking to modify a flood plain. When modelling outcomes or simulations, attentiveness to the community partner and to the range of values is important, if solutions are to be effective, equitable and politically acceptable.

There is a global governance process that includes the COP conferences, that aims to mitigate climate change. Those processes are failing, but must succeed if we are to take up climate change as the existential crisis of our times. But there are immediate, local needs that must be addressed, Orbinski remarked, since climate change is already here. These demand community-based local solutions that recognize the complexity of local, life sustaining ecosystems.

Ultimately, the solutions to climate change are not technical. For those of us who grew up with the Enlightenment narrative about human beings’ dominion over nature, Orbinski emphasized, we need a new story:

 “We need a new way of relating to each other and to our biosphere on which we depend, which is not extractive, which it is not about power over nature and power over others. Finding and creating that story is not declarative. Instead, it is a dialogical process that emerges across cultures, across communities, and across time, and it begins with looking to our responsibilities now and to future generations.”  

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Organized by the CERLAC student caucus and hosted by �첥��Ƶ doctoral students Natasha Sofia Martinez and Alex Moldovan. 

is a Jamaican human rights lawyer and founder of Freedom Imaginaries, an organization that uses human rights law to tackle legacies of slavery and colonialism. She holds a Master of Laws degree from Harvard Law School and a Master of Advanced Studies degree from the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva. She is qualified to practice law in Guyana and Jamaica. 

, PhD is a Jamaican independent film maker, writer, educator and linguist with over thirty-five years of media productions including television programming, documentaries, educational videos, multimedia and feature film. Her activist film making gives voice to those outside of mainstream media and focuses on the perpetuation of local and indigenous knowledge and cultures, the environment, social injustice, and community empowerment. Figueroa’s films include Jamaica for Sale(2009), Fly Me To The Moon (2019). In 2013, Figueroa was Distinguished Writer in Residence at University of Hawai’i English Department. Her environmental novel Limbo (2014) was a finalist in the 2015 National Indie Excellence Awards for Multi-cultural Fiction.

“When you think of the Caribbean, it is likely that you think of the region as a victim of climate injustice” Dr. Figueroa observes. “Certainly, in their calls for reparations, Caribbean governments stress the innocence of the region. But Caribbean governments promote extractivist models of development, whereby tourism, plantation agriculture and forestry, industrial fisheries, the extraction of hydrocarbons, metals and minerals, car-centric development and urbanized built environments are the engines of their growth economies.” This is in keeping with the role of Caribbean peoples as the early industrial modernizers in and through sugar plantations, leaders within a world system of colonialism and capitalism. In their scale and complexity, the sugar plantations anticipated later industrial developments in Britain and Europe, Dr. Figueroa argues, creating enormous profits for British colonial owners and funding the expansion of British empire, which at one time included a quarter of humanity. In short, through the plantation system, the Caribbean was central to world processes of industrial modernity, empire and global capitalism. 

This matters for the contemporary climate crisis here and now, Dr. Figueroa insists, because the age of European imperialist expansion accelerated what some call the Anthropocene, an era in which human presence has irrevocably transformed the natural world. European imperialisms were marked by the genocide of tens millions of Indigenous peoples, the theft of their lands and waters, and the repurposing of them as natural resources. “A more accurate conceptualization of the Anthropocene is therefore the Plantationocene”, Dr. Figueroa observes, “a patriarchal, colonial, racist capitalist world political economy that began in the late 15^th in the Americas and in the Caribbean, rooted in the genocide of Indigenous peoples, the enslavement of Africans and the profitable destruction of the natural world.” The Caribbean’s history of extractivism continues today in Guyana, as Dr. Figueroa describes:

“Guyana is now positioned to become the largest oil producer in the world transforming from a carbon sink, whereby its immense intact forests hold carbon and supply oxygen, to a carbon bomb, with 10 billion barrels of oil slated to be extracted. It is estimated that burning that oil could release over 4 billion tons of greenhouse gases…And in keeping with the Caribbean’s extractivist tradition, the agreement between the government of Guyana, Exxon and other multinational oil corporations, saddles Guyana with debt and liability while enriching the oil companies. Yet the Guyana government portrays their new role as the largest oil producer as one that will catapult Guyanese society into great wealth and prosperity…”.

Caribbean leaders beholden to billion-dollar corporations and wealthy oligarchs adjust to a violent, racist capitalist world by selling off the last of the Caribbean’s so-called natural resources. “The Caribbean is not innocent,” Dr. Figueroa concludes, “despite its calls for reparations given climate injustice.” What is required is a fundamental transformation beyond the global plantation economy that carries so much violence against human beings, especially Indigenous peoples and the natural world.

“The climate crisis is the logical consequence of a racial capitalist system, which normalizes resource plundering, Indigenous dispossession, and the relegation of former colonies to sacrificial zones of extraction,” Malene Alleyne observes. Communities are becoming uninhabitable due to extreme weather events linked with climate change. In Bahamas, people are still recovering from Hurricane Dorian, which in 2019 caused loss of life and massive displacement, with many living today in what were originally conceived as temporary, emergency housing. In Trinidad and Tobago, wildlife and fishing are threatened by oil spills, while in Jamaica, bauxite mining is contaminating water sources and destroying agricultural lands in Cockpit Country. “What I am describing is a system of global racial inequality,” Alleyne continues, “in which Caribbean nations remain trapped in a cycle of dependency on extraction and climate vulnerability.” Migrants, Indigenous people, and Afro-descendent rural people are marginalized within the Caribbean and, when faced with natural disasters created and exacerbated by climate change, they are most likely to suffer from death and displacement. 

A rights-based decolonial approach to justice demands a transformative approach that shifts power to these communities, Alleyne emphasizes, so that they can defend their way of life and environment against unsustainable development. This human rights-based approach to climate justice includes the following three pillars:

• environmental rights, including the right to clean air and water, as well as procedural environmental rights, such as the right to access climate information, participate in climate decision-making processes, and access remedies in cases of harm; 
• a racial equality framework based on international treaties that prohibit racial discrimination, including with respect to climate change;
• climate reparations, including just economic and social systems enabling a postcolonial future; 

This is much more than a matter of financial reparations. Since a racist world capitalist system engenders climate change, Alleyne argues, challenging climate change requires that we dismantle that system and join together to build a more socially, economically and racially just world.

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In the exhibition , Czegledy explains, science, technology and art are brought together by artists who share a deep, contemporary sensitivity to nature. 

The exhibition, featured in Kitchener, Ontario, included Aotearoa/New Zealand artists Caro McCaw and Vicki Smith’s collaborative work “Sounding”, which is concerned with the noise pollution that is increasingly disrupting the sonic environment of marine mammals. McCaw and Smith seek to draw attention to spaces of communication for whales and dolphins that we cannot see, in a blue, underwatery light where viewers listen to echolocation by whales and dolphins recorded in the Tasmanian Sea.

In her work “Spontaneous Generation”, Toronto-based artist Elaine Miller makes links between the melting of the polar ice caps and the emergence of viruses, including Ebola, but with obvious resonance for the current covid-19 pandemic. For her part, Kristine Diekman, creating from California, presents “Behold the Tilapia”, in a stop-motion image of the fish, which is known for its resiliency but that is now facing extinction in polluted waters, exacerbated by the stresses of increasing temperatures due to climate change. Both use mixed media, as Tingley describes, while Maayke Schurer, an artist from Victoria, British Columbia, plays with the idea of the sublime in “Spirits of Wasteland” which creates beautiful yet horrific imagery with plastic and other waste that pollutes our environment. 

Along with other featured women artists from across Canada and around the world, Agents for Change: Facing the Anthropocene, seeks to “critically and poetically investigate our present, unpack the social and cultural impacts of environmental change, speculate about future realities, and suggest solutions for how we might approach life in the Anthropocene.” This demands that we acknowledge the ways that environmental change, including rising oceans and heat waves, affects all of us, both human and other animals and insects. 

In her work, Liz Miller’s project begins with the Lake Ontario shoreline, its histories and ecologies. Half of the world’s population lives by the coasts, which are densely populated and continue to develop, as Miller explains. Climate change means rising seas and storms that are increasingly affecting coastal areas. Miller’s work brings together engineers, educators, biologists, artists, and youth activists working across disciplines and across species. Through shared data sets, soundscapes, and more than forty short portraits of coastal communities from nine countries, this collaborative project considers the challenge of our collective survival. 

In their different ways, each of these women artists invites us to consider the realities of living in the Anthropocene, an era in which human beings have irrevocably shaped the natural world, with devastating consequences for many species including our own. But these artists ask us to do more than witness. They invite us to engage with urgent ecological questions and to develop new relationships  -- and deep love -- for the ecoystems that sustain all of us. 

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