Stories

The first in a series of COP26 blog posts considers the background to COP in Glasgow, the key agenda items for a successful conference, and Canada's actions in the weeks leading up to COP.

Frequent and severe extreme weather events throughout 2021 have highlighted the human toll and economic consequences of global overheating. Canada is warming twice as fast as the global average. In British Columbia we saw temperature records broken in the town of Lytton, reaching nearly 50°C before a wildfire destroyed the town and took two lives last summer. On the other side of the world in Pakistan, global high temperatures of over 50°C have been recorded, which is hotter than the human body can withstand. 

Juvarya Veltkamp is the Director, Canada Climate Law Initiative, Peter A. Allard School of Law; and a UBC delegate to COP26.

Recognizing the lack of diverse voices and perspectives in climate conversations, UBC students Sitashma Thapa and Simone Rawal launched 'Anthropause', a podcast amplifying voices from the Global South.

The world of climate negotiations can be confusing and overwhelming. The flurry of acronyms, the complex geopolitical bargaining, the painstaking minutia of the negotiations. Get the UBC A-Z for citizens and delegates.

The UBC Sustainability Initiative prepared this set of resources for UBC's delegation attending COP this year, and for citizens who want to get involved.

The scope and scale of actions required by the Climate Emergency Task Force report (CETF) are deep and broad.

As a result, the UBC Sustainability Initiative has prioritized the recruitment of two experienced managers in the field of climate expertise and community engagement — Nadia Joe and Pablo Beimler.

Nadia and Pablo look forward to meeting and working with many students, faculty, and staff across both campuses to advance the CETF report over the coming months.

Following an open competition for all students, faculty, and staff, UBC is sending a delegation of eight to the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow this November.

By attending the COP as official observers, UBC delegates deepen their understanding of how global climate negotiations work, with positive impacts for their research and programs. The delegates will also share UBC’s exemplary work on the climate emergency with this global gathering, and share their experiences with the wider UBC community when they return.

From 72 very high-quality applications, a selection committee agreed on eight delegates based on the final number of observer badges available.

A human rights-based approach to food production will have environmental, social and economic benefits.</p.

Feeding eight billion people healthy, sustainable food by 2030 is a monumental challenge. Yet transforming food systems that inflict tens of trillions of dollars in health and environmental damages is essential for realizing human rights.

This article by David R Boyd, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights & environment and Associate Professor of Law, Policy and Sustainability, University of British Columbia, explores issues related to industrial food production as a major driver of the planetary environmental emergency.

New funding for student climate emergency action demonstrates the power of student advocacy and UBC’s institutional leadership on climate justice.

Advocacy by members of the student-led UBC Climate Hub, working closely with elected AMS and GSS student leaders, led to support by the administration for the creation of a $1.5 million Climate Emergency Fund (CEF) made up of incremental funding from tuition fees.

A unique Advisory Committee co-chaired by a student and a staff person and composed of equal numbers of students and faculty/staff evaluated the submissions before recommending distribution of the Fund to the final decision-makers: Andrew Szeri, VP Academic, and Ainsley Carry, VP Students.

Join UBC's delegation at COP26 to engage with the international climate negotiation process, share UBC's leading research and climate actions, and build new partnerships with people from around the globe.

The UBC Sustainability Initiative is pleased to announce details of a competition for COP26 passes open to all current UBC students, faculty, post-docs, and staff. UBC has received four badges for each week of the event (October 31-November 6, and November 7-12). Applications are open now and will close on September 10, at 12pm (noon) PST.

A campaign to raise awareness and fight for Indigenous rights is being launched by the "Teia das 5 Curas" Indigenous network, including Brazilian educator and UBC Professor Vanessa Andreotti, Canada Research Chair in Race, Inequalities and Global Change, and Cash Ahenakew, a First Nations' (Cree) scholar, Associate Professor, and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples' Wellbeing, as well as Dr. Sharon Stein assistant professor in the area of Higher Education and students and artists involved in the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Arts/Research Collective.

On 25 August 2021, the supreme court of Brazil is due to give its decision on ‘marco temporal’. If this decision goes in the government’s favour, it will strip the rights of Indigenous communities over all lands on which they cannot prove they were physically present in 1988. The wave of industrial exploitation that would follow is likely to push the Amazon as an ecosystem across the tipping point into collapse.

The environment is indeed in grave health and urgent action is desperately needed. But there is genuine optimism that solutions to some of the largest environmental challenges may finally be at hand.

Take, for example, the decades-long problem of oilsands tailings ponds in Canada, the third-largest reserve of crude oil in the world. The recovery of this oil consumes nearly threefold its volume in water and leaves behind a slurry of water, solids and organic contaminants as waste. Oilsands operations are into their seventh decade, and more than a trillion litres of wastewater now resides in tailings ponds.

But a rapidly growing collective of engineers, scientists, activists and entrepreneurs are delivering some of the biggest gains in environmental remediation in recent decades by blurring the lines between physical, biological and digital sciences.