May 2022

What is climate action leadership and why does it matter?

As I reflect on this thought-provoking question, I realize that my understanding of climate action leadership has evolved after the two-week Learning Intensive for MACAL CALS 501 Leading Climate Action in Society. I came into the program thinking climate action leaders must strategically and persistently develop ways to inspire climate action, learn and evolve from setbacks and bring as many people along with them as possible.  I also thought that the reason why it matters is heard regularly in the news and nicely summed up by Emanuel (2020) in Climate Science, Risk & Solutions as follows, “By the time the consequences of climate change become unequivocally clear, it will almost certainly be too late to do much about it. We must decide very soon” (p. 41).  I decided a long time ago action was necessary, but now realize that climate action leadership needs to be more than convincing people to reduce emissions and increase resiliency. Why it matters is more nuanced and requires looking for the root cause of climate change. Therefore, to reflect on climate action leadership, I will be looking at colonization, decolonization, the role of white settlers and transdisciplinary thinking.

For many decades, scientists have been tracking Earth’s warming. The video Climate Emergency: Feedback Loops (Gray, 2022) describes the warming as human-caused, primarily from burning fossil fuels. Their solutions are straightforward: Humans need to “cut their emissions, stop deforestation and regreen the earth” (Gray, 2022, 10:30). Yet, achieving climate action has been incredibly difficult. The United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group III Climate Change 2022 Mitigation of Climate Change report “a file of shame” and accused “government and business leaders [of] saying one thing – but doing another” while their “investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness” (UN Press Release, 2022).

If anyone should be demonstrating climate action leadership, it should be our government and business leaders. They must know better than any the consequences of their actions. 

In Thinking in Systems: A Primer, Meadows (2008) points out that governments might say they are interested in protecting the environment, but if they do not invest money and effort into environmental protection, environmental protection is not the government’s priority (p. 14).  She also notes in Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System (1999) that world leaders look to economic growth to solve global problems, but that growth also has costs, including “environmental destruction” (p. 1). That economic growth, based on capitalism and colonialism, has created the climate crisis, is noted in the conclusion of the Assembly of First Nations’ National Climate Gathering Report (2020). The report points to the failure of current attempts to address climate change and links it to the “interrelationships between the three ’Cs’ – colonialism, capitalism, and carbon” (p. 20).

If our capitalistic system is stuck in a permanent-growth mode based on colonialism and this impedes our climate solutions, then is decolonization the basis of climate action? 

Module 1 from Indigenous Knowledges and Perspectives on Climate Adaptation (Brooks et al., 2022) highlights that when we disregard Indigenous worldviews in climate mitigation or adaptation actions, we risk perpetuating the damaging effects of colonialism. David Isaac’s interview, recorded in the transcripts of Module 1, takes this notion further and observes that Indigenous worldviews can guide the Canadian public when tackling the climate crisis (Isaac, 2020, 00:00:10). So how can this insight be applied to climate action leadership?  In their paper Decolonizing transformations through ‘right relations’, Gram-Hanssen et al. (2021) scrutinize their role as white settler researchers and provide insight on how they and others in similar situations can use “right relations” to decolonize their work. ”Right relations,” as described by the authors, is “an obligation to live up to the responsibilities involved when taking part in a relationship—be it to other humans, other species, the land or the climate” (p. 673). The paper frames climate change as a problem with modern humans’ relationship to the environment. Unlike Indigenous worldviews, the environment is treated as an externality and is damaged rather than sustained or regenerated. To counteract damage, the authors propose being in “right relations,” which is an ongoing process demonstrated by “respect, reciprocity and just actions” (p. 677).

Therefore, in my view, climate action leadership requires us to respect and emulate Indigenous worldviews by being in” right relations” through appropriate practices and processes.

In considering how we think, relate, and engage in climate action leadership, we can look to transdisciplinary leadership, as described in Transdisciplinarity: A Primer (Corman & Cox, 2020), for guidance. The primer describes transdisciplinarity as a way of being and working that requires an open mindset and a willingness to weave different understandings not constrained by typical boundaries into new knowledge to achieve better outcomes for everyone (pp. 6-7). This approach provides the opportunity or the framework to incorporate “right relations” and other world views. An example of how this might work is shown in the video The Transdisciplinary Approach, where the Michigan Technological University (2017) used transdisciplinary research to tackle complex problems such as climate change. The transdisciplinary team does everything together, from framing the question or problem to communicating the results (MTU, 2017, 1:14). For me, framing the question or problem with those impacted or having a stake in the process and outcome is an intriguing and respectful approach that may provide better results. Here is a future inquiry opportunity for me and a chance to further reflect on recent learnings and readings.

Climate action leadership needs to be based on ”right relations” to ensure that climate solutions are not perpetuating unintended harm or colonialism. A way to do this is to use transdisciplinarity processes, thinking and leadership and encourage others in this space to do the same. As a result, climate action leadership is necessarily an ongoing development process for the practitioner. Climate action leaders need to seek and work with methods, and ways of being that produce better outcomes for everyone. While the video Climate Emergency: Feedback Loops calls for a regreening of Earth as a climate solution (Gray, 2022, 10:30), humans also need to rethink their relationship with our planet, the plants, the animals and most importantly, with each other. Perhaps through ”right relations”, we can find the right balance for all beings now and in the future to thrive in a new green world.

References

Assembly of First Nations (2020, July 10). National Climate Gathering Report: Driving Change, Leading Solutions. https://www.afn.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Climate_Gathering_Report_ENG.pdf

Brooks, J., Gilpin, E., Cougler Blom, B., Cox, R., Lambert, K., & Forssman, B. (2022). Module 1: Historical Context of Indigenous Environmental Management. Indigenous Knowledges and Perspectives on Climate Adaptation. Resilience By Design Lab. https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/indigadapt/

Corman, I., & Cox, R., (2020). Transdisciplinarity: A Primer. Written for the Masters’ in Climate Action Leadership, Royal Roads University. https://commons.royalroads.ca/macal/wp-content/uploads/sites/88/2021/04/MACAL_Transdisciplinary_Thinking03-31-21-3.pdf

Emanuel, K. (2020). How long can we wait to act? Chapter 9. In K. Emanuel Climate Science, Risk & Solutions. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. https://climateprimer.mit.edu/climate-science-risk-solutions.pdf

Gram-Hanssen, I., Schafenacker, N., & Bentz, J. (2021). Decolonizing transformations through ‘right relations’. Sustainability Science, 17, 673-685. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-021-00960-9

Gray, S. (Director). (2022). Climate Emergency: Feedback Loops, Moving Still Productions, Inc. [Online Film]. https://feedbackloopsclimate.com/introduction/

Isaac, D. (2022). Indigenous Worldview as guiding light in tackling climate crises. In Module 1, J. Brooks et al., Indigenous Knowledges and Perspectives on Climate Adaptation. Resilience By Design Lab. https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/indigadapt/

Meadows, D. (1999). Leverage Points Places to Intervene in a System. Sustainability Institute. https://donellameadows.org/wp-content/userfiles/Leverage_Points.pdf

Meadows, D. (2008). Chapter 1 – The Basics. In D. Wright, (Ed.), Thinking in Systems: A Primer. (pp. 11-34) Chelsea Green Publishing Company. https://books.google.ca/books?id=CpbLAgAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA11#v=onepage&q&f=false

Michigan Technological University. (2017, July 28). The Transdisciplinary Approach [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5xGi9EFCSY

United Nations Secretary-General. (2022, April 04). Secretary-General Warns of Climate Emergency, Calling Intergovernmental Panel’s Report ‘a File of Shame’, While Saying Leaders ‘Are Lying’, Fueling Flames [Press release]. https://www.un.org/press/en/2022/sgsm21228.doc.htm

Working Group III Contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2022). Climate Change 2022 Mitigation of Climate Change. https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6wg3/pdf/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_FinalDraft_FullReport.pdf