I recall as a child watching a mosquito land on my uncle’s face, and I quickly alerted him so that he could swat it away, but he instead responded, “it has to eat too, better from me than you.” It blew my mind, as I had never heard of anyone being kind towards a mosquito and I remember reflecting on how it made sense, and as an animal lover how could you respect one species and not another. I wish I would have dug deeper into this premise and explored the interconnectedness of our natural world and how we can fit into it. But alas I was 8 or 9 and had bigger fish to fry. My hope is that in this Climate Action Leadership program( https://macal.royalroads.ca/ ) I can circle back to that epiphany and rethink my relation to our natural world in hopes to be able to guide others on a journey to sustainability.

I now see Indigenous storytelling as a key aspect to guide my journey and explore ways to engage others to rethink how they relate to the world around them. Indigenous scholar, Michael Lickers shared a four-quadrant framework, where the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual relations should all be taken into consideration when making a decision as one action may have a substantial negative ripple effect (Personal dialogue, June 7, 2021). This premise inspired my approach to the CALS 501 design challenge, where we were prompted to use a design thinking approach to find an approach to increase citizen engagement in climate adaptation. Focusing on the emotional, mental and spiritual over a physical or tangible solution allowed our group to take a deep dive into discovering the problem. Seeing first-hand how expansive of a problem (people being disengaged from climate action) is, and how interconnected our society is to consumerism, individual freedom and colonial principles, the agenda went far beyond education and outreach. If only there was a way to analyze all of these interconnected principles…

Transdisciplinary thinking aims to go beyond the scope of a single, or even a set of ideas and evaluate a whole system from a more holistic lens (Corman & Cox, 2020). As I see it, transdisciplinary thinking has the potential to evaluate and understand each ripple of a ripple effect and provide ecological insight to a complex or wicked problem as an entity rather a culmination of systems. It makes me think of animals who are generalists rather than specialists, and that likely the generalists have a higher chance of survival when threatened by habitat loss or change, that even though they are maybe less specifically adapted then are more adaptable to change. So, a mosquito, who requires mammal blood for sustenance, and water to breed and since mammals require water they will likely thrive as long as mammals do. Whereas a koala bear is specifically adapted to eat eucalyptus leaves and if the eucalyptus disappears, the koala likely would as well. Therefore, in the heightened scale of climate change, the best chance of survival for humans would appear to be niche resistant, and rather be able to adapt to a variety of conditions. As transdisciplinary thinkers, it is beneficial to be able to jump between niches and ideologies, in order to gain understanding and success. As opposed to being specialized in one field and trying to solve a problem, this approach may bring specialists from across disciplines together to find a solution. Maybe someone somewhere else understands the value of not swatting a mosquito, and setting off a butterfly effect across our interconnected world

Corman, I. & Cox, R. (2020) Transdisciplinary Thinking in the context of the MACAL program. Paper produced for MACAL.

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