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August 10, 2022

This blog post is for assignment 1C in the CALS505 course

I have been reflecting on the relationship between anger and leadership this week. Usually, when I think of anger in leadership contexts, I think of anger used as a tool in political arenas; a candidate riling up their supporters by showcasing real or feigned anger, for example. This week however I was reflecting on my own anger and how it relates to my leadership.   

On Tuesday, the news story broke that a young woman in Alberta won third prize in a government-sponsored essay contest called “Her Vision Inspires”. The contest – hosted by the legislative assembly – asked young women to describe their vision for Alberta (Bellefontaine, 2022). An essay contest is not usually noteworthy. However, what made the headlines is the bronze medal essay asserted “that women are not equal to men and that their ability to bear children takes priority over trying to break into male-dominated careers” (Bellefontaine, 2022, para. 3). Furthermore, the essay also stated that Canadian women should receive financial incentives to have children to “prevent the import of foreigners to replace ourselves” (Silver, 2022, as cited in Bellefontaine, 2022, para. 5).

After hearing this 24 hours ago, I am still reeling. And I am so angry.

I am not naïve enough to believe that this type of sexism and xenophobia doesn’t exist in Alberta. The author (who has only been identified as S. Silver) is within her right to hold these abhorrent views. What makes me angry is the associate minister for the status of women (MLA Jackie Armstrong-Homeniuk) not only gave these views a platform, but rewardedand legitimized these views by awarding the author a cash prize.  

When these types of sexist and racist views are upheld by people in positions of leadership, it does two things. First, I lose hope that we are on the right track to solving our most pressing challenges. Second, strangely, it makes me uncomfortable to strive to be a leader myself. If being a leader means upholding sexist and racist views, then I don’t want to be considered a leader. Of course, not all elected officials – or leaders in any capacity – uphold these views. Many leaders are compassionate people who are building a world that is better for all. But the news story this week reminded me how many poor leaders currently hold power and are making decisions about our collective future. It made me wonder, when there are such poor examples of leadership in my province, do I really want to step forward and become a leader myself?

Yet Jennifer Shepherd’s words from our class discussion remind me that I get to define what leadership is. MLA Armstrong-Homeniuk is an elected official, but in my mind, she is not a leader. Jennifer invited us to reflect on how we show up as leaders, and what types of relationships we build with each other and non-human elements like water (Shepherd, 2022). Today I am showing up as an angry leader, but a leader that is justifiably angry at racism. I want to figure out how I can channel this type of anger into something productive for climate justice.

References

Bellefontaine, M. (2022, August 9). Alberta cabinet minister disavows racist, sexist essay that won prize. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-cabinet-minister-disavows-racist-sexist-essay-that-won-prize-1.6546032

Shepherd, J. (2022, July 28). What is your relationship with water? [Guest lecture for CALS 505 Leading Change in Organizations and Communities]. Unit 6 session, online.

July 27, 2022

This blog post is for assignment 1B in the CALS505 course

Consultation on Canada’s National Adaptation Strategy closed two weeks ago. As a cohort of students in the Climate Action Leadership program at Royal Roads University, eleven of us collaborated on a joint letter to share our priorities for action. There was no formal organizing mechanism behind us, just video calling software, a Google document, a deadline, and our ideas.

I’ve been reflecting on this project a lot over the past few weeks. What I found striking was the process felt joyful. I left our calls feeling energized and restored, and confident in our work. I have written dozens of advocacy letters in my life. I’ve collaborated with people plenty of times. I have had hundreds of video calls. So, what made this experience stand out?

Discovering the description of social capital helped me understand my joy. Social capital is the “trust, mutual understanding, and shared values and behaviours that bind the members of human networks and communities and make cooperative action possible” (Cohen & Prusack, 2001, p. 4). We weren’t just eleven people trying to co-write a piece. I was partnering with ten other people who are values-driven and who walk the talk. We’ve built understanding of one another over difficult assignments, through class discussions, and across multiple time zones. Our submission to the national adaptation strategy provided us a reason to deepen these relationships while we reflected and applied what we have learned throughout the program. So, it wasn’t just the software, a deadline, and our ideas that pulled the letter together. It was really the social capital we have been building over the past thirteen months as a cohort that made the project come together so smoothly.

This realization helped me understand the meaning of relationship building that is so central to decolonization work. Gram-Hanssen et al. (2022) call for “decolonial efforts from non-Indigenous people for society to successfully adapt to climate change in a way that centers equitable relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people” (p. 674). I understand this to mean that relationship building not only prepares us to work together effectively on climate action (as was the case with our cohort), but the relationships themselves are climate adaptations. My understanding of social capital has shifted from seeing it as outcome of working together to a necessary foundation to adaptation.

This idea was reinforced by the explanation of resilience by Ungar (2019), who concluded “the social, political, and natural environments in which we live are far more important to our health, fitness, finances and time management than our individual thoughts, feelings, or behaviours” (para. 29). The way I see it, Ungar (2019) is describing resilience as social capital beyond the organizational scale, but rather at the community scale. Perhaps by building social capital within and between groups, climate resilience can be found for as many people as possible.  

References

Cohen, D., & Prusak, L. (2001). In Good Company. Harvard Business School Press. Boston, MA.  

Gram-Hanssen, I., Schafenacker, N., & Bentz, J. (2022). Decolonizing transformations through ‘right relations’. Sustainability Science 17, 673-685. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-021-00960-9

Unger, M. (2019, May 25). Put down the self-help books. Resilience is not a DIY endeavour. The Globe and Mail. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-put-down-the-self-help-books-resilience-is-not-a-diy-endeavour/ 

July 5, 2022

This blog post is for assignment 1A (excerpt 1) in the CALS505 course

“Ready for an adventure?”

That phrase has become my tagline when picking up my nephews for babysitting. I figure going on an adventure is one of the most exciting things for a child, even if it’s just to a local park. I remember how much I liked going on adventures as a child, and I want to continue cultivating that love for the outdoors with them.

My tagline came to mind as I’ve been reflecting on my values. In Dare to Lead, Brené Brown provides a list of over a hundred values and invites her readers to choose two values they hold most important (2018, p. 188). The two values I ultimately chose were adventure and integrity.

It was cathartic to summarize central aspects of my personality and worldview into two simple words. Yet even though these values feel ‘right’ to me, I began to wonder how they relate to my role as a climate leader. I even began to wonder whether these values were ‘worthy’ for the tough work of climate adaptation. On the one hand, integrity feels easy to justify: I respect integrity in my own leaders (such as politicians) and do my best to work with integrity. In a recent blog, I shared that the leaders I see making the most change in their communities are ones that are trustworthy, reliable, steadfast, and sincere. To me, all these attributes demonstrate integrity-based leadership.

On the other hand, adventure feels a little harder to justify. Do we really have time for adventures when there is so much work to do? In my downtime I enjoy exploring by canoe, by bike, or on foot. These adventures support my mental and physical health and provide a respite from the demands of climate work. Yet, I realized I value not only physical adventures, but working on projects in adventurous ways. I respect leaders that are willing to trust the process – and trust the people they work with – even if they don’t know exactly how the process will end.

With all that said, what are the potential drawbacks of these values? Or rather, what are some things I should be mindful of when embracing these values?

When it comes to integrity, it’s important to remember that standards are not universal. What may be an act of integrity from my perspective may not be an act of integrity to someone else. For instance, Poitras Pratt and Gladue (2022) call for the scope of academic integrity to be redefined and renewed to include Indigenous perspectives such as wholism and interconnectedness. I need to remember that my understanding of integrity is wrapped up in my colonial worldview and personal history.  

Similarly, I need to recognize that my zeal for adventure comes from a place of privilege. I have a safe place to sleep, a steady supply of food, a platform for my voice, and the ability to vote. If I do experience a climate disaster, I will most likely have the means and resources to adapt. I seek out adventures because my daily experiences don’t force me to be adventurous. Although “ready for an adventure?” is something that I ask out of joy, I need to remember that for many, daily life is a scary adventure already.

References

Brown, B. (2018). Dare to lead: Brave work. Tough conversations. Whole hearts. Random House.

Poitras Pratt, Y., & Gladue, K. (2022). Re-defining academic integrity: embracing indigenous truths. Academic Integrity in Canada, 1, 103-123. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83255-1_5

June 12, 2022

This blog post is for assignment 6 in the CALS501 course.

I remember lying in my bed as a child, listening to my parents sing bedtime songs:

“Five little ducks went out one day, over the hills and far away… Momma duck said ‘quack, quack, quack quack’, but only four little ducks came back.”

I was so concerned about what happened to the ducks as they disappeared, one by one. I would imagine the lives and adventures of the ducks: were they hiding, or lost? Were the missing ducks together or alone? At the end of the song when “all of the five little ducks came back”, I could finally relax and drop off to sleep.

During one of the interviews for our design challenge (in which we were tasked to inspire citizens to take climate adaptation actions), Mike Lickers emphasized how powerful songs and storytelling can be as communication tools (M. Lickers, personal communication, December 15, 2021). It reminded me of the duck song of my childhood, along with hundreds of other tunes I have listened to, sung, and relied on for emotional support through the years.

What has become clear to me as I reflect on the MACAL program is that in the climate action sector, stories and numbers have a dialectical relationship. Both stories and climate data can hold inherent truth and have power on their own, yet they function best as a partnership. Even the duck song is based on numbers. Listening to the number of ducks decline and then rebound was what brought the story to life.

The weaving together of emotions and data is the art of crafting a narrative, “which is significantly more effective in engaging a listener than data alone” (Dahlstrom, 2014, as cited in Bayer & Hettinger, 2019, p. 1). We observed this effectiveness of narrative-building when testing our design prototype. In front of a test audience, we shared photoshopped images of familiar landscapes that had been altered to show the projected future based on climate data (see example by the City of Edmonton, 2018, below). The numerical projections were also listed at the bottom of the image. One of the participants remarked: “The numbers don’t mean much to me… but they provide credibility to the image” (N. Schaper, personal communication, March 24, 2022). The image was powerful, but it became more powerful when it became clear that the image (a form of visual storytelling) was based on scientific data.

The mere presence of stories and numbers aren’t enough, however. It appears the worthiness of the information is scrutinized as well. When crafting a business case, Messner (2013) suggests that “anything far-fetched, exotic, complicated, or generally unknown does not make a good story” (p. 334). Both the financial argument and the story built around that argument need to be credible for the narrative that binds them to be effective.

Unfortunately, trust in the credibility of governments and other public leaders is at an all-time low in Canada (Proof Strategies, 2022). How can climate leaders fill this trust gap? In our society we tend to venerate leaders that are strong, smart, and visionary. Yet when I reflect on the types of leaders that I see making the most change in their communities, I see leaders that are trustworthy, reliable, steadfast, and sincere. In a word, leaders that are credible. Part of their credibility comes from their reliance on rigorous data and meaningful – yet not overblown – stories.

In what ways have you seen credibility (or lack thereof) impact a climate leader? How can leaders enhance their credibility?

References

Bayer, S., & Hettinger, A. (2019). Storytelling: A natural tool to weave the threads of science and community together. The Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America 100(2), 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1002/bes2.1542

City of Edmonton. (2018). Climate resilient Edmonton: Adaptation strategy and action plan. https://www.edmonton.ca/sites/default/files/public-files/assets/Climate_Resilient_Edmonton.pdf?cb=1655095823

Dahlstrom, M.F. (2014). Storytelling in science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 111, 13614-13620.

Messner, W. (2013). Making the compelling business case: Decision-making techniques for successful business growth. Palgrave Macmillan.

Proof Strategies. (2022). 2022 results report CanTrust index. https://getproof.com/what-we-do/cantrust/

April 10, 2022

“Why are you here tonight?”

This was my question to a room full of women as we sat together in the back room of the Women’s Centre of Calgary in November 2019. The topic we were gathering around was ecological grief, and although the responses to my question varied, most of them centred on the theme of responsibility. For example, “I’m here because I am concerned about the future for my grandchildren. I want them to experience the same great memories of the outdoors that I had as a child.”

I have run several workshops like this, and time and time again, the concept of responsibility to others (often specifically to their own children and grandchildren) is mentioned. This pattern isn’t isolated to women in Calgary. I’ve heard it from non-profit workers, energy professionals, politicians, and radio announcers. In almost all cases, when people share the motivations for why they do what they do, the answer comes back to accountability to their children, grandchildren, or community. Cynically, perhaps people believe that’s the answer others want to hear, yet many of the stories I’ve been told appear genuine. Additionally, I’m not the only person to observe this pattern: Nelson (2019) points out that even one of the staunchest advocates of framing climate action in terms of self-interest, Christiana Figueres, answers the question about her motivation through a story of responsibility to her children. We tend to rely on economic arguments to inspire or explain collective action, but personal anecdotes to explain one’s own motivation.

It’s this dichotomy which makes me struggle so much with the sentiment that we need to communicate climate action in terms of self-interest. When individuals are asked what motivates them to act on climate change, often the answer is altruistic. Yet the function of a business case assumes that what motivates groups of people (businesses, non-profit organizations, etc.) is self-interest (Herman & Siegelaub, 2009). How can individuals and groups composed of those very same individuals have such widely different motivations?

Reflecting on this, I realized that self-interest isn’t necessarily selfish, although I had initially understood it that way. Self-interest isn’t necessarily good or bad for climate action. What is ultimately important is how that self-interest affects the common good. Humanitarian organizations or environmental non-profit organizations have an interest in self-preservation, to ensure their work can continue. They seek projects and funding that will allow their work to endure, because they continue to see an issue to respond to. In this case, self-interest is still operating within a larger system of altruism. Arguably, the organization needs to continue so that they can continue to protect the environment or provide social aid. So, an argument based in self-interest still has an overall positive outcome for the common good.

On the contrary, if a business’ only focus is to create a profit for a small number of actors, then a self-interest argument is unlikely to convince the business leader to take climate adaptation action for the common good. In this case, self-interest is the final goal rather than just a means to continue their work.

For this blog, we were asked to articulate our position on the role of self-interest as an incentive for undertaking climate action. From my experience, individuals are generally motivated to make change because their community matters to them. Whereas, cynically, I tend to view corporate self-interest as inherently selfish. Yet when I consider self-interest within broader context – such as how an organization’s self-interest impacts the wider community – I begin to see a potential path forward. Relying on self-interest framing for a business case does not necessarily mean the wider good has been abandoned. Rather, it is a narrative tool that can be used for the betterment of the common good.  

References

Herman, B., & Siegelaub, J.M. (2009). Is this really worth the effort? The need for a business case. Project Management Institute.

Nelson, J.A. (2019). Chapter 6: Climate change and economic self-interest. In Kanbur, R., & Shue, H. (Eds). Climate justice: Integrating economics and philosophy. Oxford University Press. (pp. 113-122).

February 15, 2022

This blog post is for assignment 5 in the CALS501 course.

In a post from November 2021, I coined the term ‘emotional downscaling’ to describe what I see as a core task for climate leaders: translating complex global climate projections into relevant information for the lives of their intended audience (O’Sullivan, 2019). Statistical downscaling is the process of translating global climate models into smaller geographic scales (Murdock et al., 2014), while ‘emotional’ downscaling emphasizes the importance of making this data relevant to people. With this in mind, my peers and I decided to incorporate the idea of localizing climate data into our CALS501 design challenge. In theory, this localization seems straightforward: determine the projected local hazards and resulting impacts, engage with the community, conduct a risk assessment, and develop a plan to respond to these risks (CCME, 2021). Upon reflection however, I am realizing that the complexity of risk makes this hyper-locality more challenging. Risks don’t live within well-defined boundaries of a community. Taking a holistic view of risk means looking beyond the local.

A case study from Calgary may help illustrate my point. The Springbank Off-stream Reservoir (also known as a dry dam) is a climate adaptation project west of Calgary designed “to accommodate water volumes equal to the 2013 flood on the Elbow River” (Government of Alberta, 2022, para. 1). Once completed, the dry dam will fill with water during high precipitation events, preventing flooding downstream. Five properties will be directly impacted by the dam, including private landowners and a summer camp for underprivileged youth (Jabbal et al., 2020). The 2016 environmental impact assessment highlighted potential declines in fish and grizzly populations due to habitat loss, disruption of sacred sites for local Indigenous groups, and more (Government of Canada, 2016). There are real-life impacts of this adaptation strategy for individuals, communities, and the ecosystem. However, the project is moving ahead because the risk to infrastructure downstream in Calgary outweighs the risks of the dam construction (Jabbal et al., 2020).   

Herein lies the conundrum of risk. Those that may experience the worst risks from climate change (and adaptation to it) may not be in control of the mechanisms to mediate that risk. Or, they may have mechanisms to reduce their risk (ie: building a dam upstream), but their actions may impact other communities’ or species’ abilities to adapt (ie: access to traditional medicine sites). The current residents of Springbank, the children attending summer camp, wildlife, and the Indigenous communities in the area will all be impacted by the dam to varying degrees. Whereas Calgarians who will benefit from the dam… well, their lives won’t change except they won’t have to deal with a potential future flood. The burden of change falls to those living outside the community at risk. As Smit and Wandel highlight, “the adaptive capacity of individuals or households is shaped and constrained by social, political, and economic processes at higher scales” (2006, p. 284). By overlooking how these processes at higher scales influence local adaptive capacity, we may externalize risk onto other communities.

Our prototype for the design challenge has been based on the idea that localizing climate data is important to start engaging citizens on climate adaptation. We are focusing our prototype on the community of Leduc in central Alberta. Yet, if we ignore the regional complications of risk, we may jeopardize the adaptation strategies of other communities. For instance, by only focusing on Leduc and not the surrounding context, we may develop a robust adaptation plan for the community of Leduc that in turn impacts the ability of the nearby Maskwacis Nation to adapt.

As climate practitioners, we need to find a way to localize, yet not lose sight of the regional complexity of risk and adaptation. This seems to be the essence of systems thinking: to understand the individual components, but not lose sight of how those components interact with one another. One way we are playing with this idea in our prototype is to lead the community of Leduc through a systems-mapping exercise. Perhaps encouraging citizens to think in systems will lead to adaptation strategies that are beneficial to people outside of Leduc in addition to those within it.

References

Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (2021). Guidance on Good Practices in Climate Change Risk Assessment. https://ccme.ca/en/res/riskassessmentguidancesecured.pdf 

Edey, N. (2017, August 4). Springbank dam EIA to be submitted in October. Cochrane Now. https://cochranenow.com/articles/springbank-dam-eia-to-be-submitted-in-october

Government of Alberta (2016). Environmental assessment – Springbank Off-stream Reservoir. Springbank Off-stream Reservoir. https://calgaryjournal.ca/2020/07/14/against-the-current-both-sides-of-the-sringbank-dam-argument/

Government of Alberta. (2022). About Springbank Off-stream Reservoir. Springbank Off-stream Reservoir. https://www.alberta.ca/about-springbank-off-stream-reservoir.aspx#jumplinks-5

Jabbal, S., Atwood, B., & Gonzalez, D. (2020, July 14). Against the current: Both sides of the Springbank dam argument. Calgary Journal. https://calgaryjournal.ca/2020/07/14/against-the-current-both-sides-of-the-sringbank-dam-argument/

Murdock, T., Cannon, A. & Sobie, S. (2014). Statistical downscaling of future climate projections for North America. Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium. https://www.pacificclimate.org/data/statistically-downscaled-climate-scenarios

O’Sullivan, F. (2019). To survive climate change we’ll need a better story. Bloomberg CityLab. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-11/meet-sweden-s-chief-storyteller-for-climate-change 

Smit, B., & Wandel, J. (2006). Adaptation, adaptive capacity, and vulnerability. Global Environmental Change 16, 282-292. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2006.03.008

Nov 19, 2021

The prompt I am examining this week asks me to consider the impacts of fear in climate change communication. If and how does it move me and my local community to action?

The question of fear seems impossible to answer without also talking about hope. In a way, hope and fear are two sides of the same coin. Hope seems necessary only if there is something to fear. If the future were certain, we wouldn’t need to draw on stores of hope – we would just be content with knowing.

Heglar (2019) calls for more emotional nuance when talking about climate. On the side of hope, I see plenty of nuanced discussion. Eco-philosopher Joanna Macy calls for “active hope” (Macy & Johnstone, 2012), while climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe encourages people to lean into “rational hope” (2019). Marlon et al. (2019) talk about “constructive hope” (based on human intervention) in the context of political action, and psychologist Elissa Epel speaks of her “robust hope” in the face of climate change (Chakrabarti, 2021). It seems hope can be active, rational, constructive, robust, and likely manifests in dozens of other ways. 

What about the nuances of fear? How does this manifest? There are the direct fears in the face of climate change: the loss of livelihood or property, loss of life, loss of species, and more. But there are indirect fears as well: fear of the unknown and loss of security. Climate anxiety coach Olive Dempsey highlights that people are grappling with “what we thought our life might be, or grieving the loss of having a safe and reliable future for ourselves, for our children, for our grandchildren” (Razavi, 2021, para. 14).

A lot of traditional climate communication has drawn on fear as a motivator: trying to instill a sense of urgency to motivate action (Ruiter et al., 2014). Yet as the impacts of climate change accelerate and become more obvious, it seems communicators are tasked instead with responding to fear. In a way, communicators no longer need to rely on fear-based messaging, because the climate is doing it for us. Perhaps it is our role to help communities process this fear, by shifting from fear-based messaging to fear-attuned listening.

I decided to practice fear-attuned listening in my sit spot this week. I asked myself: “what do I fear?” while sitting on my now-familiar bench in Poplar Park. I was comforted by the fact that beside my sit spot is a little free mystery library – a great place for fear-based inspiration if I needed it.

But I didn’t need the inspiration. Although climate change is front and centre in my mind, what is occupying most of my emotional energy these days is a personal worry. A person I love is waiting for medical test results – and I fear those results. My fear is distracting. I even catch myself shaking my head when I think about it, as though I am physically trying to dodge it.

So, I decided to consider what this fear can teach me about climate communications.  

I realized the worst part of my current fear is the waiting. The unknown, the uncertainty. I dread hearing the results of that test, yet hearing the results would also bring an end to this period of distraction and anxiety. All I want is certainty. Perhaps that’s the hardest part about climate change too: we have predictions, but no certainty. We can read the reports, stay on top of the research, engage with our communities, and yet we don’t really know what the future will look like. We will have to wait and see what unfolds. And many people in British Columbia are experiencing another excruciating wait: the wait to see what damage has unfolded as the flood waters recede. When dealing with climate change, it seems we have to balance urgency with patience. That makes the waiting especially difficult.

My fear is teaching me to respect the distracting power of anticipation. It’s teaching me that fear is not something we should exploit needlessly. If I am going to use fear as a communications technique, I need to be mindful (perhaps even responsible) for the emotional reactions that occur. With that in mind, how can we support communities who may be grappling with multiple types of fear?

References

Chakrabarti, M. (Host). (2021, October 29). The pessimistic generation: How grown-ups can grow up and give kids some hope Audio podcast episode. In On Point. Wbur. https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2021/10/29/kids-pandemic-pessimism-politics-teens-future-social-media

Hayhoe, K. (2019, January 11). The most important thing you can do to fight climate change: talk about it [Video]. TED. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BvcToPZCLI&t=14s  

Heglar, M.A. (2019, September 12). Home is Always Worth It. Medium Environment. https://medium.com/@maryheglar/home-is-always-worth-it-d2821634dcd9

Macy, J., & Johnstone, C. (2012). Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in without Going Crazy. New World Library.

Marlon, J.R., Bloodhart, B., Ballew, M.T., Rolfe-Redding, J., Roser-Renouf, C., Leiserowitz, A., & Maibach, E. (2019). How hope and doubt affect climate change mobilization. Frontiers in Communication 4. doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2019.00020

Razavi, K. (2021, November 19). Anxious about climate change Here’s what you need to know about ‘ecological grief’. Global News. https://globalnews.ca/news/8380734/climate-change-anxiety/

Ruiter, R.A.C., Kessels, L.T.E., Peters, G.J.Y., & Kok, G. (2014). Sixty years of fear appeal research: current state of the evidence. International Journal of Psychology 49(2), 63-70. doi.org/10.1002/ijop.12042