The Climate Solutions Research Collective hosted a Kick Off Event at each of the Vancouver (September 27th) and Okanagan (October 4th) campuses. Read below for summaries of these events!
Summary by: Sidonie Wittman and edited by the CSRC team.
The Climate Solutions Research Collective Kickoff Event launched the year with lively discussion of ideas, presentation on novel climate solutions, and a kindling of climate research that the Collective hopes to bring into its work over the coming months. Around 60 individuals came together in Vancouver and around 20 in the Okanagan, with perspectives from student, faculty and alumni backgrounds.
To get a small taste of the climate research being done across campus in Vancouver, professors Amanda Giang, Jonathan Proctor, and Jemima Baada gave short presentations summarizing their recent work. Their presentations showed the range of work being done at UBC, including diversity in methods, approaches, and in regions of the world.
Assistant Professor Amanda Giang (IRES, MECH) focuses her research on “assessing the environmental, health, and equity impacts of technology and policy changes to try to inform the design and planning of decisions particularly around pollution, climate and energy questions”, as she stated in her presentation. An example of this work is the examination of greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions from freight in Canada. Dr. Giang showed how in the Strathcona neighbourhood near the Port of Vancouver, freight infrastructure and traffic contributes to urban air pollution. This pollution is not experienced equally, and in fact there are senior homes, daycares, and supportive housing for those with chronic health conditions located near truck, rail, and marine traffic. Dr. Giang thus explained how decarbonizing freight would not only decrease Canada’s contribution to climate change, but it would also advance environmental justice and improve health outcomes. She also explained how her lab collaborated on this work with the Strathcona Residents Association and used community data co-interpretation in order to elevate local knowledge and agency.
The aim of Assistant Professor Jonathan Proctor’s (LFS) work is to inform climate change adaptation and mitigation by quantifying how and why social systems respond to changes in environmental conditions. With a background in environmental economics, he uses tools from agronomy, climate science, machine learning, and remote sensing in his work. One of his projects examines whether a greater understanding of soil moisture’s influence on air temperatures and yields will help inform projections of agricultural productivity under climate change. Dr. Proctor showed how this data could be useful in predicting yields and separating heat stress from correlated moisture stress. He hopes that with a better understanding of what is driving yield damages, his work can inform climate adaptation.
Assistant Professor Jemima Baada’s (Geography) research lies at the intersections of climate change, migration, development, and health, which she examines with a gendered lens. Most of her work focuses on Sub-Saharan Africa and Ghana specifically. She finds that in Ghana, due to reduced rainfall, rising temperatures, and a decrease in soil productivity in the north, many people migrate south in search of better conditions and opportunities for livelihood. There, however, these migrants face marginalization based on their outsider and socioeconomic status. She hopes to create more tangible solutions through new work looking for more sustainable and adapted farming methods that are feasible in northern Ghana, so people are not forced to leave their homes behind. Dr. Baada’s work is informed by collaboration with grassroots organizations and with the communities she hopes to build solutions with.
In the Okanagan, Associate Professor Aleksandra Dulic (Creative and Critical Studies) discussed how to engage the public when it comes to climate change. She emphasized that climate communication goes both ways, and that the flow of science knowledge is shared and multidirectional. She showed how positive communication strategies focus on the local community perspective, use clear and engaging tactics, and show the issue holistically with an emphasis on solutions.
Assistant Professor Wouter Bam (Engineering) presented on informing the sustainability transition with data, analysis and communication. He explained how the net-zero transition requires data-informed decision-making within a collaborative environment with a robust platform for engagement, but this is difficult as data is scattered and unprocessed and there is limited research capacity in municipalities to leverage data. He identified solutions such as linking disjointed data, providing a multi dimensional view of analysis, and communicating this data so it is more easily interpretable while retaining nuance.
After these presentations, the audience was encouraged to discuss in their groups the following questions: if anything was possible, and funding was not a concern, what climate solutions would you research? What are “big ideas” you want to see examined? What are pressing issues that you think the UBC research community should focus on?
Groups came up with topics and put them on sticky-notes to be placed on posters, along with ideas for what perspectives would need to be included in order to research these topics, and what specific actions the research would require. The audience then came together to share their topics such as urban rewilding, illegal logging, and managed retreat. They shared why their chosen issue is pressing and how it connects to climate solutions. This discussion and share-back allowed the many researchers in the room to perhaps look at their research in a new light, consider how their expertise can connect to climate solutions, and make connections to other researchers equally as passionate about climate research.
The Collective recorded all of these ideas and hopes to use them to inform our upcoming topics for Climate Conversations and our Symposium Event. The Collective’s work seeks to serve UBC’s research community, and we look forward to bringing the energy from this Kickoff into our year.
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Sticky notes collected from participants to gather suggestions for future Climate Solutions Research Collective initiatives (above). |
