If you asked me a week ago you would have gotten a straightforward answer, climate action leadership is to lead change in both climate adaption and mitigation, a small addition to the definition of climate action that can be found in the Climate Adaptation Competency Framework (2021) and is easy to understand. Deeper thinking has revealed this to be a more complex problem than originally perceived, requiring a transdisciplinary approach. This revelation changed my view of climate action leadership to include issues such as the vulnerability of socio-economic classes and approaching climate change from an Indigenous perspective through the pursuit of right relations and decolonization. These issues were always present, just buried deeper in the complex problem that I was only viewing topically due to my intradisciplinary background in energy conversation and emission mitigation.
Socio-economic classes in society have led to groups of people with varying degrees of privilege both socially and materially. Whyte (2017) states that colonialism created a foundation for capitalism to increase asset owners’ wealth generated from a wage-for-labor ideology which lead to industrialization and anthropogenic climate change. This ability to accumulate wealth created by the trade of wage-for-labor has led to the development of socio-economic classes. This disparity of privilege created by capitalism and supported by colonialism has resulted in increased vulnerability of marginalized peoples to the biophysical threats of climate change. Climate-related events such as 2021’s heat dome in British Columbia affected marginalized peoples, socially and materially deprived, at a higher magnitude than those with social or economic privilege according to Henderson et al. (2022), death rates were 10.8 -11.5% higher with one deprivation, 18.4% higher when deprived of both. With these statistics, it can be seen that the socio-economic class systems, which are a bi-product of colonial practices supporting capitalism, have increased the risk and vulnerability to biophysical threats from climate change. This disparity should not exist and highlights the need to address the current socio-economic class structure, which is a bi-product of colonialism when leading climate action.
Acknowledging the damages inflicted upon the Indigenous peoples by colonialism is an important step to seeking interdisciplinary climate action leadership with Indigenous ways of knowing. Wildcat (Wildcat (2009), Gram-Hanssen et al. 2022) speak of climate change being one of the most recent environmental changes experienced by Indigenous communities throughout colonialism, others being displacement to reservations and the removal of children from families to be placed in residential schools. Acknowledging past traumas is not enough to begin addressing decolonization and its effects, it also requires pursuing right relations with Indigenous people. Gram-Hanssen et al. (2022) state that the pursuit of right relations thru “deep listening, self-reflexivity, creating space and being in action” (para.7) will bring research closer to decolonization and prevent appropriation and misinterpretation of Indigenous ways of knowing. The pursuit of right relations is an important step in undoing the colonized perspective of Indigenous knowledge as it removes the biased perspective of scientific superiority. Understanding and respecting Indigenous ways of knowing to create ecological balance paired with scientific approaches to climate change adaptation and mitigation lead to an interdisciplinary approach to climate action leadership.
My intradisciplinary view has changed, climate action leadership is not a simple problem restricted to science-based approaches to mitigation of emissions and adapting to live in the environment humankind has already created. Climate change is a complex problem that involves addressing areas such as capitalism and colonialism which increases disparity in societal and material privilege. To approach this complex problem, transdisciplinary knowledge spanning science, economics, historic relationships, and many more fields is required. Climate action leadership is answering the call to reduce disparity in socio-economic classes, in turn, reducing biophysical and human behaviour related risks and vulnerability to climate events. It is correcting ecological relationships through the mending of Indigenous relationships using right relations and decolonization resulting in the development of greater ways of knowing. Climate action leadership is the call to reduce the vulnerability of marginalized people through a transdisciplinary approach to complex problems of sociological and ecological concern.
References
Adaptation Learning Network (2021), Climate Adaptation Competency Framework. https://adaptationlearningnetwork.com/climate-adaptation-competency-framework
Gram-Hanssen, I., Schafenacker, N. & Bentz, J. Decolonizing transformations through ‘right relations’. Sustain Sci 17, 673–685 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-021-00960-9
Henderson, S. B., McLean, K. E., Lee, M. J., & Kosatsky, T. (2022). Analysis of community deaths during the catastrophic 2021 heat dome: Early evidence to inform the public health response during subsequent events in greater Vancouver, Canada. Environmental epidemiology (Philadelphia, Pa.), 6(1), e189. https://doi.org/10.1097/EE9.0000000000000189
Whyte, K. (2017). Indigenous climate change studies: Indigenizing futures, decolonizing the Anthropocene. English Language Notes, 55(1), 153-162.