FES Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Series
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Browsing FES Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Series by Subject "Climate change"
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Item Open Access Tree Planting for Corporate Social Responsibility: A guide for prospective investors(2020) Holloway, Elizabeth; Warkentin, TraciTree planting is a growing corporate social responsibility (CSR) activity. Companies gain strategic benefit from engaging in tree planting for CSR and have done so for decades. The characteristics of reforestation and afforestation projects have historically made these initiatives less attractive to institutional investors and corporate sponsorship has filled the gap. Recently, firms have begun to place tree planting at the center of their value propositions. The world has reached a tipping point, recognizing the urgent threat of climate change and the potential of forest-based natural climate solutions. Companies are leveraging online tree planting platforms and social media trends to connect with their customers over trees and these firms are experiencing rapid growth and success and planting vast numbers of trees. However, realizing long-term benefits from tree planting is an involved and evolving process. Several environmental, economic, and managerial factors must be carefully considered to achieve a positive outcome. Investing in a poorly run initiative may unfortunately waste limited CSR resources, be perceived as greenwashing, and in the worst case cause real environmental and social damage in the long term. By highlighting key considerations and providing guidelines for decision makers, this paper is a resource for CSR managers who are considering investing in tree planting activities or evaluating their existing planting sponsorship. This guide prepares managers to assess the relationship between tree planting and business strategy, to evaluate the benefits and co-benefits of a potential planting project, to select appropriate services from the offerings of tree planting providers, and to develop a plan for engaging stakeholders with a tree planting campaign. Chapter one outlines the tree planting value proposition, provides background information on the recent increase in corporate sponsored tree planting, and situates these activities within the growing field environmental CSR. Chapter two sets out considerations for developing a tree planting program that can deliver strategic benefits. It covers how firms can assess stakeholder needs, how biases affect manager decision making, and how an inappropriately planned project can result in greenwashing. Chapter three addresses the forestry economics that underpin the environmental benefits of tree planting and describes potential co-benefits, as well as the risk of negative outcomes for planting projects and investors, and strategies to mitigate these risks. Chapter four describes the services offered by tree planting organizations, current trends in connecting stakeholders with planting campaigns, and includes examples of innovative companies, campaigns, and platforms operating in this space.Item Open Access What is Canada’s “Fair Share” of the Global Emissions Burden? An Examination of Fair and Proportional Emissions Reduction Targets(2020) McLeod, Christina; Estrin, DavidAccording to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, global temperatures are warming by approximately 0.1-0.3°C per decade. As an estimated 1.1°C of global temperature warming above pre-industrial levels has already occurred, 1.5°C of global warming will likely occur sometime between 2030 and 2052. While international coordination is critically needed to allocate emissions amongst states, such a suggestion raises the contentious question of how to equitably distribute emissions amongst states. This paper uses several equity approaches to consider what might comprise Canada’s “fair” emissions reduction target. A literature review conducted by this author revealed two studies which allow for higher atmospheric concentrations that would not limit warming to 1.5°C as well as three studies which comply with 1.5°C pathways. Every “fair” target suggested by these five studies is significantly more ambitious than Canada’s present emissions reduction target. At minimum, these proposed targets call for Canada to nearly double its emissions reduction target, however, multiple targets call for Canada to reach net-zero emissions by 2030 and undertake mitigation efforts to further reduce emissions beyond its own borders. This paper concludes by highlighting several strategies to work towards setting and meeting fair emissions reduction targets in Canada.Item Open Access When Palm Trees Break: the Fractured Horizons of Black Caribbean World-Making in the Midst of Crisis(2021-08) Williams-King, Tahnee (Amber); Gosine, AndilFor communities pressed to the margins of society and the globe, particularly those who are poor, racialized or of the Global South, ecological crisis is not some unimaginable elsewhere but rather an omnipresent, pervasive reality. In the Caribbean basin, the increasingly powerful storms brewing in the warming waters of the Atlantic decimate various parts of the region yearly; volcanic activity darkens the sky and earth; landslides reconfigure geographies; drought and pestilence breed scarcity; and now pandemic wreaks havoc in spectacular fashion. My research explores the space that crisis takes up in the social and political imagination and material conditions of life, particularly in the context of the Caribbean diaspora. Via a theoretical and artistic conceptualization of “fracture”, I think through the ways Caribbean life and living may act as openings or cracks: quotidian practice s that call up the tensions and possibilities of an unknown/otherwise/elsewhere, or that may tear, rupture and destabilize the catastrophic structures and conditions that mark our current world. The entrances and exits charted by a Caribbean radical imagination present portals to or from other worlds, windows into (un)imaginable ecologies of life and living, and alternate horizons of being. Using found images and text, I discuss the ways archives capture and preserve crises, and the ways artistic traditions may be used to ‘fracture’ this presumed coherency by offering new ways of imaging and imagining past, present and future.