Focused Discussions (Asynchronous Session)
All Climate Change Indicators are Tracking the Worst-case Scenario: How Can Scientists Fashion a Best-case Immediate Global Emergency Survival Response? View Digital Media
Focused Discussion Peter Carter
All atmospheric greenhouse gas pollution data trends are tracking the worst-case scenario (RCP8.5), with most accelerating and trending to biosphere collapse. Note, the issue is global pollution. The recommendation from the IPCC science is that global emissions must decline rapidly from 2020, and reach near zero emissions, with net zero CO2 emissions — by online zero fossil fuel energy use — before 2050. UNEP estimates that global emissions need to drop 7% per year from 2020. This requires rapid, total conversion from today's greenhouse gas-polluting goods and services to the (readily available) non-polluting, zero-combustion goods and services. The market is being badly distorted by continued large subsidies to pollution-emitting industries, which ethically is the crime of all time. How can scientists speed up these conversions?
Organizations Must Be Responsible for Making Inclusive Decisions Regarding Pressing Issues: Adopt a Multi-stakeholder Team to Anticipate, Analyse, Act, and Advance
Focused Discussion Guilherme (Gui) Athia
I believe that organizations must be responsible for making inclusive decisions regarding pressing issues such as climate, racism, and inequality. This study considers how, at the same time that everyone is making their point, organizations are not ready to understand and decide on multi-stakeholder issues—a situation that will only worsen post-COVID-19. I present the 5A approach: Adopt a multi-stakeholder team to Anticipate, Analyse, Act, and Advance. I firmly believe that behind prosperity lie stakeholder companies—a vision I have developed over decades of hyperdiverse experience as an executive, a professor, and a pioneer in four continents.
The Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers’ Position on Climate Migrants View Digital Media
Focused Discussion Warda Shazadi Meighen
This three-part report sets out the response of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers (CARL) to the plight of those displaced by the global environmental crisis, a crisis for which Canada bears a heavy responsibility. The introduction provides an overview of current research on the nature and scope of the problem of climate-related displacement. It summarizes the recent decision of the UN Human Rights Committee, Ioane Teitiota v. New Zealand, that forms the backdrop to the report’s legal analysis, and argues that Canada should be motivated both by its moral obligations and by self-interest in responding to the coming displacement crisis. There is much disagreement in the literature about how to refer to and define those who are uprooted by environmental disasters and disruption. The second section of this report addresses these questions and provides CARL’s proposed definition of our preferred term: ‘climate refugees.’ The third section gives a brief overview of several positive developments in the domestic law of four other countries, and then discusses potential pathways to protection for climate refugees within Canadian law that CARL can work to establish and expand.
Climate Change Narratives – the Ones that Matter and Mean the Most View Digital Media
Focused Discussion Therese Asplund, Ann Sofie Kall
Based on a synthesis of ten years of research literature on climate change and narratives, we will engage in discussions on the role of climate change communication in current climate transitions. Based on the results, we plan to discuss 1) the field of climate change narratives as scattered yet complementary, and 2) in what ways climate change narratives have the potential to nuance the revitalized, and often criticised, emergency rhetoric in climate change communication.
From Risk to Resilience: Empowering Youth’s Mental Wellbeing in Climate Change Responses
Focused Discussion Maya Gislason, Angel Kennedy
Due to both the direct impacts of climate change and as a result of growing up in a discursive space infused with climate anxiety, youth around the world show increasing levels of mental health distress, including generalized feelings of sadness, guilt, changes in sleep and appetite, difficulty concentrating, solastalgia, and disconnection from land. To learn more about youth’s perceptions of climate change, and the mental health benefits of involving youth in climate actions, policies, and community planning, we conducted an environmental scan and an interpretive content analysis in NVivo12. The literature shows that youth are aware of the impact climate change has on their lives and the planet, and that they use a variety of mechanisms (adaptive and maladaptive) to cope with these realities. Additionally, research points to the importance of involving youth in meaningful ways in climate change mitigation community-planned activities to promote feelings of hope, self-efficacy, agency, and resilience and mitigate feelings of anxiety. Gaps remain in the literature around determining which local actions and aspects of youth involvement in British Columbia’s communities are attributable to improvements in youth’s mental health. This presentation will provide examples of the impact of climate change on youth’s mental wellbeing through an equity-centered lens - the areas for climate advocacy our team will be exploring with various communities over the next 5 years through a Youth-based Participatory Action Research (YPAR) approach. We will also invite the audience to reflect on opportunities for including youth as change-makers in climate policy and community initiatives.
