Emerging Environments

Today we’re speaking with Dr. Peter Stoett. Peter is Dean of the Faculty of Social Science and Humanities at Ontario Tech University. His main research interests include international relations and law, global environmental politics, and human rights, and all of the nuanced intersections between these themes. Prior to joining Ontario Tech University, Peter was Director of the Loyola Sustainability Research Centre, and Chair of the Department of Political Science, at Concordia University in Montreal, Québec. Our primary reason for connecting with Peter was to discuss his recent role as co-chair of the Global assessment of invasive alien species, which was conducted by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

With Peter, we explored several aspects of the new IPBES global assessment. We spoke about how community-engaged environmental action is really the best approach for navigating the ethical debates surrounding invasive species management, including the importance of engaging with Indigenous communities and Indigenous knowledge. We also talked about the necessity of national leadership in developing governance solutions for invasive species, including coordination across  levels of government and efforts to gather widespread public buy-in on the problem. Peter is a strong proponent of science communication and encourages scientists to access the media to get their work into public discourse, where it can have the greatest probability of affecting policy change. It was a pleasure to speak to Peter about his leadership of this truly global-scale science-policy synthesis.

In today's episode we’re speaking with Dr. Jessica Lee. Jessica is a British-Canadian-Taiwanese author and environmental historian, and winner of the 2019 RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Prize. She completed her doctorate at York University in environmental history and aesthetics, focusing on the history of Hampstead Heath, an urban park in London England. During her doctorate, she was a visiting scholar at the Royal College of Art in London. Jessica is the founding editor of The Willowherb Review and teaches creative writing at the University of Cambridge and the University of King’s College.

We connected with Jessica to talk about her new book Dispersals - on plants, borders, and belonging. In Dispersals, Jessica brings together her personal story and her wealth of knowledge on how humans interact with plants around the world. We reflected on several sections of her book, examining how early exploration and global trade have reshaped local plant ecologies, critical perspectives on the conceptualization of nature, conservation and biological invasions, and how our daily interactions with plants, either in the environment or in our diets, provide opportunities for mindful reflection and critical examination. We recommend you pick up Jessica’s book, Dispersals, for an immersive summer read and one that will conjure some of your own memories of how you’ve interacted with plants in your own life, and greater insights on how we are all deeply connected to plants.

Welcome back to another episode of Emerging Environments. Today we are chatting with Jason Clark, the National Director of Climate Change Advocacy at the Insurance Bureau of Canada and the Chair of Climate Proof Canada, a national coalition of insurers, municipalities and not-for-profits that advocates for climate change adaptation measures to protect Canadians and their property from extreme weather, flood and wildfire.

The insurance and reinsurance industries have been at the forefront of climate change risk assessment. What happens within the insurance industry has ripple effects throughout the economy - property values of houses that become uninsurable due to climate change-related risks like flood or wildfire plummet. This translates into economic hardship for individual homeowners and also into regional economic impacts due to reduced municipal property tax revenue - revenue that is used to pay for infrastructure and a variety of municipal services. 

We spoke with Jason about some of the exciting work he has been doing to ensure that Canadians and the insurance industry are resilient to climate change. We hope you enjoy our conversation!

Today on the podcast, we speak to Dr. Gwynne Dyer. Gwynne is a British-Canadian military historian, author, professor, journalist, broadcaster, and retired naval officer. Gwynne received his PhD in 1973 from King’s College London, and went on to create several popular television documentaries, including the miniseries “War”, which received an Academy Award nomination. Gwynne is now a syndicated columnist, writing about Middle Eastern affairs and global politics, including environmental issues. In 2008, he published “Climate Wars: the fight for survival as the world overheats”, and has recently come back to this topic in his writing with the publishing of his new book “Intervention Earth: life-saving ideas from the world’s climate engineers”. We spoke to Gynne about his research into climate geo-engineering for his new book, focusing on emerging technologies and the uncertainty surrounding them. 

Intervention Earth emphasizes the urgency of addressing the climate crisis by discussing potential tipping points in the climate system. In the early part of the interview, Gwynne refers to these as feedbacks and states that we cannot simulate these in climate models. Here, I want to distinguish between feedbacks that we can simulate and feedbacks that are not well represented or missing in models. Climate models include many important feedbacks and would not credibly simulate historical climate change if they did not. However, longer-time scale carbon cycle processes, such as permafrost thaw and the associated methane release, are not well-simulated and processes associated with ice sheets are not included in most global climate models. With respect to these under-represented or missing processes in models, uncertainties are large.

As hosts of this podcast, we are not endorsing or dismissing solar radiation management, but awareness of this topic is extremely important as both research and private sector investment in solar radiation management grow. 

The bottom line is that more needs to be done faster to mitigate climate change. The Earth has just experienced the 12th-consecutive hottest month on record and based on current international greenhouse gas emissions, the global average temperature will likely surpass the Paris Agreement target of 2C within 10-30 years.

In this episode, we connect with Dr. Natalie Ban and PhD student, Jade Steel. Natalie Ban is a professor in the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria. Natalie’s research encompasses the broad field of marine ethnoecology. Specifically, her group focuses on coastal and marine conservation and fisheries and the social-ecological systems that connect them. Her group’s work integrates natural and social sciences, and bridges western and traditional ecological knowledge. Jade Steel is a doctoral candidate in Natalie’s research group. Her research focuses on Indigenous-led salmon monitoring along the Central Coast of BC. 

We had a great conversation with Natalie and Jade, exploring the range of research projects happening in Natalie’s lab. We spoke about their work on fisheries reconciliation in British Columbia, including the centering of Indigenous perspectives in marine protected area network planning, and also supporting fisheries monitoring efforts by First Nations, which is the focus of Jade’s PhD. Jade and Natalie talked about the importance of the local scale expertise held by First Nations, which is highlighting some gaps in climate change modeling for marine environments. We also talked about the interactions between Indigenous rights, justice and fisheries management, where declining fish populations resulting from commercial overharvesting is now being rightly characterized as an infringement on the rights of Indigenous communities. We closed out our conversation with some thoughts on how to find positivity as individuals working within, and thinking deeply about, the environmental crisis.

Today we are chatting with Dr. Hansi Singh, climate scientist and co-founder and CEO of Planette, a climate tech start-up. Hansi was formerly an Assistant Professor at the University of Victoria. During the pandemic she began working on a research project that evolved into Planette and she recently decided to leave academia and dedicate her time to growing her business.

In our conversation with Hansi, we talked about her past research program at the University of Victoria and her transition to the private sector. Planette’s aim is to provide decision-ready probabilistic seasonal to decadal climate forecasts for business, so we also spent some time talking about the evolution and growing academic and societal interest in decadal climate prediction in recent years. Hansi encouraged more climate scientists to consider entrepreneurship to help ensure that the private sector makes use of the best science for adaptation and transitional planning and action. We hope you enjoy our conversation with Hansi Singh.

We are thrilled to have Dr. Faisal Moola as the first guest for our 4th season of the podcast. Faisal is an Associate Professor at the University of Guelph in the Department of Geography, Environment & Geomatics. As a professor, his research focuses on forest conservation and management, Ecology and ethnoecology of plants, environmental policy and Indigenous-led conservation, and he has been publishing extensively in academic journals on these topics. Prior to his arrival at the University of Guelph, he spent 16 years at the David Suzuki Foundation, first as a forest ecologist and eventually in the positions of Director of Science and then Director General. Faisal is also the lead for the Biological Outcomes and Indicators Research Stream of the Conservation Through Reconciliation Partnership, which is a Canada-wide initiative that aims to support and promote Indigenous-led conservation.  

We talked about his path from the non-governmental world to academia, where he now has a vibrant interdisciplinary research program. He shared how his lab has moved towards a rights-based approach to conservation, exploring the connections between the health of Indigenous communities and their access to traditional lands and resources, with recent focus on urban environments. We also spoke about his work as a conservation educator where he is adamant about the importance of policy literacy in emerging conservation scientists, as well as the necessity of building meaningful connections with Indigenous communities. It was a pleasure to speak with Faisal and we’re excited to have this conversation kick off our 4th season of Emerging Environments!

Welcome back to the final episode of Season 3 of Emerging Environments.

In this episode we continue exploring the power of story-telling with award-winning film producer and director, Caitlin Starowicz. Caitlin has over 10 years of experience in television and film, from comedy to drama to documentary. Her extensive documentary work spans broad environmental themes including conservation and climate change. In our conversation, we chat about three of Caitlin’s recent projects. 

Her 2018 film She Walks with Apes follows the work of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas, sometimes known as the “Trimates”, who studied great apes in the wild. The film also introduces the next generation of young women scientists who were inspired by them and discusses the current state of great ape conservation. It premiered on BBC America on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day.

​Recently, Caitlin has worked on two climate change documentaries. Her 2020 documentary about Greta Thunberg and the youth climate justice movement, entitled Rebellion, was the season premiere of the 60th anniversary CBC’s The Nature of Things, and, most recently, her 2023 documentary, entitled Apocalypse Plan B investigates the potential perils of climate geoengineering to mitigate global warming.

Documentary film-making is such an integral vehicle for science communication and it was so inspiring to have Caitlin share her insights with us. We hope you enjoy our conversation with Caitlin Starowicz and we look forward to reconnecting with you for Season 4!