Breakout Session 1 – 10:45-12:00PM
Transition Policy & Governance
Room: 1004
Pursuing a global oil phase-out: Are electric vehicles accelerating the end of the oil age?
Sarah Greene, Doctoral Candidate in Global Governance, Balsillie School of International Affairs
Presentation Description: This presentation, grounded in political economy lenses on decarbonization, explores how global vehicle electrification, one of the most significant disruptions to automotive production in a century, stands to disrupt the status quo of oil demand – therefore production – and what this could mean for individual countries. Answering the growing call to respond to the climate crisis with a combination of demand and supply-side policies to enact deep emissions cuts, it provides a comparative analysis of two major oil-producing states, Canada and Norway. While being major fossil fuel producers, both have a national policy to phase out light-duty passenger internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) while mandating the adoption of zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) to meet domestic net-zero emissions commitments. These cases provide insights into how demand-side climate policies already influence oil supply dynamics and, therefore, contribute to the advancement of supply-side climate policy.
Accounting Without Action: The Implications of Big Four Firms’ ESG Discourse for Global Climate Governance
Madelyn Rawlyk, Master of Arts in Global Governance, Balsillie School of International Affairs, Faculty of Environment
Description: Environmental Social Governance (ESG) is a form of corporate social responsibility designed to encourage corporations to consider their social and environmental impacts and ideally, reduce them. While ESG is often promoted as a tool for addressing climate change, its effectiveness for achieving greenhouse gas emissions reductions is variable, which potentially obscures the need for structural change. Major accounting firms have a uniquely critical role in promoting ESG to the broader business community and framing global sustainability solutions. Drawing on a case study of one firm’s sustainability insights, this presentation discusses the global climate governance implications of ESG discourse and how it preserves the status quo.
When All Else Fails: Governing Solar Geoengineering
Burgess Langshaw Power, PhD Candidate in Global Governance, Balsillie School of International Affairs
Description: As we continue failing to meet our climate targets, we increase changes of extreme responses. One such possible response is the deployment of ‘solar geoengineering’ – a technology to artificially cool the planet. While this might seem tempting, it will unquestionably bring a wide array of social, economic, and environmental impacts – without actually addressing climate change. This talk will explore how it might be possible to govern this new technology which could reshape the planet.
Beyond turning off the lights - Challenges and Solutions for Climate Change from Buildings
Serena Kam, Masters of Applied Science, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering
Description: One-third of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are from buildings and 80% of the buildings that will exist in 2050 already exist today. With the international target of Net Zero by 2050 fast approaching we need to raise awareness and discuss how to make buildings green. I will present a short presentation about the impacts of building on the environment through excessive use of virgin materials and wasteful energy use. Covering policy tools, national scale changes, corporate changes and ways individual homeowners can make a difference.
Brewing Innovation; How Coffee Shops Fuel Remote Work in Waterloo
Joseph Scarfone, Master of Environmental Studies in Sustainability Management, Faculty of Environment
Description: Explore how the pandemic has reshaped the concept of workspaces, with coffee shops at the forefront of this change in Waterloo Region. Brewing Innovation presents an in-depth look at the evolving role of coffee shops, supported by an analysis of five years worth of Google Maps reviews. The presentation discusses the broader implications for urban planning, technology innovation ecosystems, and environmental sustainability. Participants also have an opportunity to win a gift card from the region’s coffee shop best reviewed for remote work!
Affective Learning for a Sustainable World: Understanding the Emotional Experience of Post-Secondary Environmental Education
Beth Grant, Master’s in Social and Ecological Sustainability, Faculty of Environment
Description: As climate change and its devastating effects become more severe, the optimization of our educational institutions to inform and empower the next generation of environmental stewards, activists, scientists, policymakers, and citizens to take meaningful action on the environmental ills we face is a top priority. Despite a great potential for emotional reactions, and subsequent effects on student well-being, learning, and pro-environmental behaviour, emotions remain largely overlooked in environmental education. This research investigates students’ emotional experiences of environmental education and shares student recommendations for the emotional aspects of their degrees.
Making the Next Great Transformation: Systemic Coordination Challenges for Green Transition Policymaking in Advanced Economy States
Dustin Fergusson-Vaux, PhD in Political Science, Faculty of Political Science
Description: Transitioning to substantively greener economies requires coordinated action amongst public and private actors across multiple scales of society. With increasing probability that leading global emitters will fall short of reduction deadlines the imperative for systemic or whole-of-government policy coordination is increasingly self-evident. This presentation surveys the standing body of political science and policy research on systemic coordination challenges for green transition policymaking in advanced economy states.
Communities of Negotiation at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Jie Jian, PhD in Statistics, Faculty of Mathematics
Description: How do countries organize themselves within international climate change negotiations? While the importance of bargaining blocs in this context is well established, significant disagreement exists as to the nature and structure of these bargaining communities. Focusing on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its annual Conferences of the Parties (COPs), this presentation will extract and compare the latent communities associated with two relevant negotiation networks. This is joint work with Daria Blinova and Dr. Benjamin E. Bagozzi.
Obstructions in restricting fossil fuel supply: Insights from Bangladesh’s experiences in the United Nations climate negotiations
Choyon Kumar Saha, Global Governance PhD Program, Balsillie School of International Affairs
Description: Restricting fossil fuel supply is very important to reduce fossil CO2 emissions and keep the rise of global mean temperature increase below 1.50C in the 21st century, thereby accomplishing the Paris Agreement on preventing the dangerous climate crisis. Recently, the UN climate negotiations at the Conference of Parties’ summits have emerged as important sites for advancing international policies to constrain the supply of fossil fuels, and Bangladesh as a powerful negotiating member of the Least Developed Countries Group has been playing a key role in negotiations to accelerate the development of such vital policies. However, Bangladesh has been experiencing challenges that obstruct the country from playing stronger roles in climate negotiations to press fossil fuel-producing negotiating parties to limit their fuel supply. Based on 24 interviews with negotiators and observers, this study explores political-economic, institutional, and nonmaterial challenges preventing Bangladesh from playing robust roles in climate negotiations to develop “supply-side” policies to combat the climate crisis.
Utilizing Nature-Based Solutions to Create Cities Resilient to Heat and Floods
Charlotte Hamilton, BASc. Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering
Description: Extreme weather events caused by climate change have been on the rise and are continuing to increase in frequency and severity. This has led to an increase in the interconnected occurrences of urban heat islands and urban flooding. By understanding and utilizing their shared risk factors, adaptations that address them simultaneously can be analyzed. This presentation will focus on the study area of London, Ontario, characterizing the urban heat island effect and urban flooding to identify susceptible areas through the use of machine learning techniques and analyze the implementation of nature-based solutions for resilience.
Climate Change Adaptation of Drinking Water Treatment Plants by Evaluating and Improving Robustness
Kirti Srimani Nemani, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering
Description: My PhD research focuses on developing a robust framework for Drinking Water Treatment Plants (DWTPs) to handle short-term surface water quality upsets, particularly in the context of more frequent extreme weather events due to climate change. The framework evaluates, assesses, and improves the robustness of treatment systems, with a focus on turbidity as a critical parameter for DWTP operations and regulatory compliance. It quantitatively evaluates the robustness of treatment steps like coagulation-flocculation-sedimentation and filtration under normal and extreme turbidity conditions, identifying adaptation options for steps with low robustness. I'll discuss the framework's application to real data from a DWTP in Southern Ontario.
Integrating biodiversity protection and climate mitigation in nature-based climate solutions: An indicator analysis
Tatyana Feiner, Masters of Environmental Studies in Geography Student, Wilfrid Laurier University
The increasing interdependence between climate change and biodiversity loss has emphasized the inherent need for the development of Canadian policy that prioritizes the creation and advancement of environmental co-benefits. With the federal government’s commitment to abating further biodiversity loss by 2030 and achieving Net Zero by 2050, Nature-based Climate Solutions (NbCS) have been identified as a crucial tool to integrate climate and biodiversity policy agendas and foster synergies between the two crises. Despite increasing popularity within the policy sphere, significant knowledge gaps concerning the “best practices” of NbCS remain unaddressed. This presentation will identify the contemporary challenges associated with environmental policy integration and introduce an evidence-based evaluative framework (consisting of attributes, indicators, and measures) that can be used to assess the degree to which biodiversity protection and climate mitigation have been mainstreamed into federal, provincial, and/or territorial policies and programs.
In the Cross Hairs: Military Emissions in Climate Governance
Tamara Lorincz, PhD Candidate, Global Governance, Balsillie School of International Affairs
Description: The military is the state’s most powerful institution tasked with protecting national security, but it is also the most carbon-intensive. Military vehicles, domestic training, overseas deployments and war require vast supplies of fossil fuel. Yet, military emissions are often excluded from national greenhouse gas reporting and reduction plans and have not been included on the international climate summit agenda. This presentation will critically examine the problem of military emissions, exemptions and offsets in global climate governance.
How Do Climatic Associations Between Canadian Cities Change Over Time?
Jie Jian, PhD in Statistics, Faculty of Mathematics
Description: Estimating the time-varying temperature network between Canadian cities is the cornerstone for understanding the dynamic patterns and drivers of climate variability and change at a national scale. This presentation will model time-varying Canadian temperature data as realizations from multivariate Gaussian distributions with precision matrices that change over time. This is joint work with Dr. Peijun Sang and Dr. Mu Zhu, recently published on the Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13253-023-00591-w).
Performing arts and climate change: Addressing climate anxiety using forum theatre
Eloise Fan, Bachelor in Environmental Studies, Faculty of Environment
Description: Climate change significantly impacts youth and adolescents' mental health and general well-being, most prominently in the form of climate anxiety. There are many interventions that work to reduce and mitigate climate anxiety – including those that involve disciplines outside the environmental sphere like the performing arts. A unique form of theatre, 'forum theatre', grants audiences the agency to actively change the outcome of a scene depicted on stage. This research investigates whether forum theatre can be applied as a successful intervention in addressing climate anxiety in university students.
Climb for Climate (Spoken Word)
Huda Nasir, Undergraduate Student, Faculty of Health – Honours Kinesiology, Faculty of Arts – Honours English
Description:A spoken word poem written to inspire climate action and change and to motivate those who may not understand the importance of each individual taking action and spreading awareness. Based on personal experiences, group involvement and inspired by the Student Climate Council.