EUC Research and publications

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/10315/6201

This collection consists of research and scholarship produced by faculty members and graduate students affiliated with the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change (FEUC). It may also contain scholarship from faculty members and graduate students previously affiliated with the Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES) during the period of 1968 to 2020.

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 50

Open Access
Building Commons Governance for a Greener Economy
(Sense Publishers, 2015) Perkins, Patricia E. (Ellie)
Open Access
Canadian Indigenous female leadership and political agency in climate change
(Routledge, 2014) Perkins, Patricia E. (Ellie)
Open Access
Celebrating Economies of Change: Brave Visions for Inclusive Futures
(Women and Environments International Magazine, 2019-09) Perkins, Patricia E. (Ellie); Sanniti, S.; Ruder, S.; Ruttonsha, P.; Mancini, J.; Van Schie, R; Rahder, B.; Atwood, M.; Gobby, J.
This issue has been inspired by a path-breaking conference held by the Canadian Society for Ecologi-cal Economics (CANSEE), which took place this past May 2019 in Waterloo, Ontario. Entitled Engaging Economies of Change, the conference aimed to ex-pand existing research networks in the economy-environment nexus by building connections beyond the academy in order to meaningfully engage with the practicalities of building and implementing change. This issue captures the rich content shared during the event, as well as descriptions of the pro-cesses and efforts made to create a welcoming and respectful space where academics and community activists could build alliances and discuss common challenges. The conference organizers – all graduate students and activists themselves -- called this ‘building a brave space’.
Open Access
Climate Justice Partnership Linking Universities and Community Organizations in Toronto, Durban, Maputo and Nairobi
(Peter Lang Scientific Publishers, 2012) Perkins, Patricia E. (Ellie); Tavares Leary, A.L.
This paper describes a project based at York University in Toronto, funded through the Climate Change Adaptation in Africa program of the International Development Research Centre and the UK Department for International Development (DFID), which is working to increase the participation of marginalized groups, especially women, in urban water governance.Students and faculty members from the University of Nairobi, Kenya; Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, Mozambique; and the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa are working with civil society organizations in the three cities and with York University researchers to show how organizing in local communities can help the vulnerable to deal with climate change.As people in marginalized communities begin to address collectively the impacts of climate change, this summons political attention and allows those with direct experience to influence government policy. Civil society organizations, with support from local and international faculty and students, facilitate and focus this activism. University students help to document the NGOs’ work during internships with the NGOs. They also learn community development skills and make contacts. Faculty members publish and disseminate ideas about grassroots climate change adaptation and resulting political responses through presentations, publications and the project’s website (www.ccaa.irisyorku.ca)
Open Access
Climate justice, commons, and degrowth
(Elsevier, 2019-03-05) Perkins, Patricia E. (Ellie)
Economic inequality reduces the political space for addressing climate change, by producing fear-based populism. Only when the safety, social status, and livelihoods of all members of society are assured will voluntary, democratic decisions be possible to reverse climate change and fairly mitigate its effects. Socio-environmental and climate justice, commoning, and decolonization are pre-conditions for participatory, responsible governance that both signals and assists the development of equitable socio-political systems. Degrowth movements, when they explicitly prioritize equity, can help to focus activism for climate justice and sustainable livelihoods. This paper overviews the theoretical grounding for these arguments, drawing from the work of ecofeminist and Indigenous writers. Indigenous (and also ecofeminist) praxis is grounded in activists' leadership for commoning and resistance to extraction, the fossil fuel economy, and commodified property rights. These movements are building a politics of decolonization, respect, solidarity, and hope rather than xenophobia and despair.
Open Access
Climate Justice, Gender, and Intersectionality
(Routledge, 2019) Perkins, Patricia E. (Ellie)
Women are generally more vulnerable than men to environmental disasters and extreme weather events due to four main factors, which are related to women’s gendered roles in society: women are economically disadvantaged in comparison to men and are more likely to live in poverty; sexual and reproductive health and physical demands on their bodies during pregnancy, child-bearing and rearing, and menopause put them at special risk; their lives tend to be longer and they spend more time as seniors / widows, with resulting economic and health implications; and their social options are restricted so that they often fill paid and unpaid roles related to physical and emotional caring that put them at special risk of environmental injustice. This means that environmental and climate injustice are gendered in both rich and poor countries, and this can be manifested in a variety of ways: housing, transportation, food insecurity, stress, mental illness, disability, heat exposure, interruptions of electricity and water services, violence against women, partner and elder violence, toxic exposure, health vulnerability, worker safety, political voice/agency/leadership, and many others. Gender also intersects with other categories of vulnerability such as ethnicity, ‘race,’ sexuality, dis/ability, etc. to heighten climate risk and injustice. The gendered effects of extreme weather events are often not disaggregated in government statistics and research literature, and an explicit gender focus, including attention to the access of women and marginalized people to participation in climate policy setting, has been minimal. Both at the local level and globally, climate change adaptation and response initiatives can downplay or suppress democratic, equity-enhancing politics.
Open Access
Commoning and climate justice
(Routledge Studies in Environment, Culture, and Society Series, 2019-08) Perkins, Patricia E. (Ellie)
Commoning represents a dynamic and emergent means of risk-reduction and livelihood provision which can address the shortcomings of both market and state-oriented economic systems -- increasingly relevant as climate change threatens human subsistence worldwide. This paper brings together international examples of responses to climate-related threats that are collective (not privatizing), to provide preliminary empirical evidence about how and in what circumstances people may develop equitable communal institutions rather than ones that worsen community fragmentation. The examples include traditional and new forms of commons which help to meet local subsistence needs and develop communities’ social, political and economic resilience in the face of climate change, exploring how climate justice -- improving the local and global equity of climate change impacts and processes – can advance in parallel with commons development.
Open Access
Diversity, local economies, and globalization’s limits
(Inanna Publication, 2002) Perkins, Patricia E. (Ellie)
Open Access
Ecofeminism, Commons, and Climate Justice
(Inanna, 2019) Perkins, Patricia E. (Ellie)
Much recent work in ecological economics, degrowth, climate justice, and political ecology focuses on ‘commons’ as an emergent paradigm for sustainable governance institutions to address or rectify ecological crisis. This paper summarizes definitions and typologies of commons, give some examples of commons which help to further climate justice, and discusses these ideas from an ecofeminist perspective.
Open Access
The Ecological Economics of Sustainability: Making Local and Short-Term Goals Consistent with Global and Long-Term Goals
(The World Bank, 1990-06) Perkins, Patricia E. (Ellie); Haskell, B.; Cornwell, L.; Daly, H.; Johnson, T.
There is increasing awareness that our global ecological We support system is endangered Decisions made on the basis of local, short-term criteria can produce disastrous results globally and in the long run. There is also increasing awareness that traditional economic and ecological models and concepts fall short in their ability to deal with these problems. The International Society for Ecological Economics is concerned with extending and integrating the study and management of "nature's household" (ecology) and "humankind's household" (economics). Ecological Economics studies the ecology of humans and the economy of nature, the web of interconnections uniting the economic subsystem to the global ecosystem of which it is a part. It is this larger system that must be the object of study if we are to adequately address the critical issues that now face humanity.
Open Access
Education for Regeneration
(University of Alberta Press, 2016-11) Perkins, Patricia E. (Ellie)
Open Access
Environmental activism and gender
(Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013) Perkins, Patricia E. (Ellie)
Open Access
Equitable, Ecological Degrowth: Feminist Contributions
(2010) Perkins, Patricia E. (Ellie)
This paper uses feminist ecological economics and ecofeminist methodologies and theory to contribute to Degrowth in theory and practice. These feminist contributions involve highlighting unpaid work and ecological services, redistribution, and participatory processes as crucially important in developing the new paradigm and movement for equitable material Degrowth.
Open Access
EQUITY, ECONOMIC SCALE, AND THE ROLE OF EXCHANGE IN A SUSTAINABLE ECONOMY
(1999-05) Perkins, Patricia E. (Ellie)
This paper explores these theoretical and practical issues, considering the question of the environmental and ecological impacts of economic activity from the viewpoint of the scale at which this activity takes place and the exchanges across time and space which affect its sustainability. Following a consideration of the dynamics of economic change in the next section, the paper discusses the meaning of trade/exchange, economic scale, and political/ecological/economic boundaries before returning in the final section to the two equity-related issues outlined above.
Open Access
Feminist Ecological Economics
(UNESCO and EOLSS Publishers, 2008) Perkins, Patricia E. (Ellie)
Open Access
Feminist Ecological Economics
(Routledge Handbook of Feminist Economics, 2019-07) Perkins, Patricia E. (Ellie)
Open Access
Feminist Ecological Economics and Sustainability
(Journal of Bioeconomics, 2007) Perkins, Patricia E. (Ellie)
New developments in feminist ecological economics and ecofeminist economics are contributing to the search for theories and policy approaches to move economies toward sustainability. This paper summa- rizes work by ecofeminists and feminist ecological economists which is relevant to the sustainability challenge and its implications for the discipline of economics. Both democracy and lower material throughputs are generally seen as basic principles of economic sustainability. Feminist theorists and feminist ecological econ- omists offer many important insights into the conundrum of how to make a democratic and equity-enhancing transition to an economy based on less material throughput. These flow from feminist research on unpaid work and caring labor, provisioning, development, valuation, social reproduction, non-monetized exchange relationships, local economies, redistribution, citizenship, equity-enhancing political institutions, and labor time, as well as creative modeling approaches and activism-based theorizing.
Open Access
Feminist Understanding of Productivity
(Inanna Publications and Education, 2002) Perkins, Patricia E. (Ellie)
The concept of productivity, meaning output per unit of input, is at once general and specific. Economists have used productivity as a very specific measure, denominated in dollars, which shows the output of a produced or consumed good per unit of labour or capital used in the production process. However, productivity can also be understood more broadly as a fundamental human value which denotes optimal use of the natural environment for individual, social and cultural benefit. This involves questioning, testing and replacing many of the static assumptions of the neoclassical economics paradigm: What are the significant inputs and outputs? Can their cost or value be measured in dollars? What additional, related outputs and inputs are silent, "external", or ignored in the production and consumption process? How do improvements in productivity take place, and how can they be measured and fostered? Feminist economists critique the exclusion of many important aspects of production and reproduction from most economic equations; the discussion on alternative ways of valuing inputs and inclusionary approaches to the question of productivity is well advanced in feminist debates. Building on recent research in ecological economics, feminist economics, community economic development, political ecology, and social/cultural studies, this paper explores and articulates several alternative conceptualizations of productivity. The paper's intent is to re-examine the capitalist concept of "productivity" which Maria Mies calls "the most formidable hurdle in our struggle to come to an understanding of women's labour" (Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale, p. 48).
Open Access
Gender and Climate Justice in Canada: Stories from the Grassroots
(Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2017-07) Perkins, Patricia E. (Ellie)
Climate change has gendered effects across Canada. Extreme weather events, warming cities, melting sea ice and permafrost, ice storms, floods, droughts, and fires related to climate change are directly and indirectly causing widespread economic and social impacts. Fossil fuel extraction, transport, and processing affect many people in Canada. Women and men have different experiences and views regarding climate change, and are affected differently as a function of their gendered social and economic positions. They also have different access to redress and to policy processes shaping public responses. Indigenous women, in particular, are on the front lines of climate injustice and are leading inspiring resistance movements. This paper examines climate justice issues across Canada through a gender lens, using a literature review and interviews with researchers and activists to identify the major themes and knowledge gaps. The paper also summarizes preliminary results of grassroots research into how individuals, community-based organizations, women’s groups and indigenous activists across Canada experience and articulate the gendered impacts of climate change, what their priorities are for action, and how they are organizing -- for example, by incorporating climate change education, outreach, networking, activism, and policy development into their work.
Open Access
Gender Justice and Climate Justice: Building women's economic and political agency in times of climate change
(Women and Environments International, 2015) Perkins, Patricia E. (Ellie)
This article analyzes some initiatives and models for community-based climate change activism, through examples in three different types of communities. It outlines the methods and results of two international projects- the Sister Water-sheds project, with Brazilian partners (2002-2008), and Climate Change Adaptation in Africa project with partners in Mozambique, Kenya, and South Africa (2010-2012)- as well as the Green Changes Project in the Jane-Finch neighbourhood of northwest Toronto. The main point of this paper is to show that these projects have demonstrated that local-level initiatives led by civil society organizations provide a way to address gender equity challenges by building women's knowledge, interest and engagement in water-related and climate change politics