February 20-24, 2017: Reading Week
No IRES Seminar

IRES Seminar Series

Time: 12:30pm to 1:30pm (every Thursday)

Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall

(Note: Sophia Murphy will not be presenting because she is sick.)

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Indigenous Erasure in BC’s Environmental Assessment Process

Abstract:

Due to changes in Canadian case law, there is a growing focus on making space for Indigenous rights and interests in BC’s environmental assessment process. However, despite this increased attention, First Nations are continuing to report that their interests are poorly represented in evaluations of project effects. This disconnect is the focus of my thesis research, and in this talk, I discuss findings from a review of fifteen EA certificate applications approved by the provincial government between 2011 and 2016. I found that evaluations of the extent and significance of potential impacts on Indigenous rights and interests are now central (and required) components of every EA. However, the methods most commonly used to carry out such analyses tend to rely on settler-colonial assumptions about culture and value that often invalidate or obscure issues of critical concern to First Nations. Moreover, this negation is so commonplace that my evaluation revealed a consistent set of precise mechanisms through which project proponents systematically exclude Indigenous interests in such applications. In my research, I refer to these patterns as “strategies of exclusion”, and for the purposes of this presentation, I will identify five of the most common and describe two.

Bio:

Holly Andrews

RES MA student

Holly Andrews is currently pursuing a master’s degree at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability under the supervision of Dr. Terre Satterfield and Dr. Michael Meitner. At present, her research interests include land use and resource management, issues concerning Indigenous land and governance rights, intersections between cultural and environmental values, and environmental justice. Her thesis work explores the representation of Indigenous interests in environmental assessment processes, and the systematic erasure of such interests in proponent certificate applications specifically.

In addition to pursuing graduate studies, Holly also has four years’ experience as a planning associate at EcoPlan International (EPI), a Vancouver-based consulting firm that specializes in community planning and values-based decision making. Holly’s research is supported by SSHRC, Mitacs, and EPI. She holds a BA in political science, also from the University of British Columbia.

Photo credit: Julian S. Yates

IRES Seminar Series

Time: 12:30pm to 1:30pm (every Thursday)

Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall

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Future urban expansion and implications for building energy demand and global croplands

Abstract:

This talk will draw on recent research that examines the implications of future urban expansion on global croplands and energy demand by buildings. Using both top-down and bottom-up approaches and scenarios, we examine operational building energy use, specifically, for heating and cooling. Globally, the energy use for heating and cooling by mid-century will reach anywhere from about 45 EJ/yr to 59 EJ/yr (respectively, increases of 5% to 40% over the 2010 estimate). Most of this variability is due to the uncertainty in future urban densities of rapidly growing cities in Asia and, particularly, in China. A surprising finding is that waiting to retrofit of the existing built environment until markets are ready to widely deploy the most advanced renovation technologies, leads to more savings in building energy use and avoids lock-in.

Our results also show that urban expansion will result in a 1.8-2.4% loss of global croplands by 2030, with substantial regional disparities. About 80% of global cropland loss from urban expansion will take place in Asia and Africa. In both Asia and Africa, much of the cropland that will be lost is more than twice as productive as national averages. Asia will experience the highest absolute loss in cropland while African countries will experience the highest percentage loss of cropland. Globally, the croplands that are likely to be lost were responsible for 3-4% of worldwide crop production in 2000. Urban expansion is expected to take place on cropland that is 1.77 times more productive than the global average. The loss of cropland is likely to be accompanied by other sustainability risks, and threatens livelihoods, with diverging characteristics for different mega-urban regions. Governance of urban area expansion thus emerges as a key area for securing livelihoods in the agrarian economies of the Global South.

This seminar will not be filmed.

Bio:

Karen Seto is Associate Dean for Research and Professor at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.  She is an expert in characterizing and forecasting urbanization, urban mitigation of climate change, and satellite remote sensing. She has pioneered methods to reconstruct land-use dynamics with satellite data and to forecast the expansion of urban areas. She was a Coordinating Lead Author for the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, and has served on many U.S. National Research Council Committees, including the NRC Committee on Pathways to Urban Sustainability. She was a founding co-chair of the Urbanization and Global Environmental Change Project of the International Human Dimensions Programme, and Executive Producer of the documentary film, “10,000 Shovels: Rapid Urban Growth in China.” From 2000 to 2008, she was on the faculty at Stanford University, in the Woods Institute for the Environment and the School of Earth Sciences. She was named an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow in 2009. She joined the Yale faculty in 2008.

Photo credit: faeryhedgehog from flickr/Creative Commons