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.

Browse

Now showing 1 - 20 of 71

Open Access
A research collection of historical maps and prints of the Caribbean Islands. Part 1: photographic prints, photocopies and facsimiles
(2011-10-13) Found, William C.
Part 1 of the collection of historical Caribbean maps and prints is composed of facsimiles, photographic copies, and photocopies of originals, acquired over a period of approximately 30 years (beginning in 1980). All of the copies were selected for research purposes, primarily for my research on the “Making of the Caribbean Landscape”. The bulk of the copies were purchased from libraries, with the legal understanding that the maps/prints were to be used for personal research – and that duplication or publishing of the items could occur only with the full, written agreement of the library in question. Consequently, the maps/prints in this collection may not be copied. In this report, however, I provide full information regarding each item (if available) so that anyone who wants to obtain a personal copy may do so by contacting a relevant library or map/print dealer. If available, I provide information from the British Library since the on-line ordering of copies from that library is particularly expeditious. The copies in this collection will be available for study in the York University Archives.
Open Access
An Analysis of the Ontario Power Authority’s Consideration of Environmental Sustainability in Electricity System Planning
(2008) Gibson, Robert; Winfield, Mark; Markvart, Tanya; Gaudreau, Kyrke; Taylor, Jennifer
This report focuses on the Ontario Power Authority’s (OPA) consideration of environmental sustainability in the development of the proposed Integrated Power System Plan (IPSP). The research was centred on a comparison of what the OPA did with what should reasonably be expected of the OPA in meeting the requirement, contained in Ontario Regulation 277/06 (The IPSP Regulation), for ensuring due consideration of environmental sustainability in plan development. In its decision on issues to be considered in the IPSP hearing, the Ontario Energy Board indicated that in order to meet this requirement the OPA is required to demonstrate that it has “weighed and evaluated” environmental sustainability in a way that is “meaningful” in the development of the IPSP.
Open Access
Applying the Total Resource Cost Test to Conservation and Demand Management Initiatives of Local Electricity Distribution Companies in Ontario: Assessment and Recommendations for Reform
(2009) Winfield, Mark; Koveshnikova, Tatiana
This study has its origins in my participation in the Ontario Power Authority’s Conservation and Demand Management Program Development Advisory Committee in 2006 and 2007 while serving as a Program Director with the Pembina Institute. In discussions with local electricity distribution company (LDC) staff involved in conservation and demand management (CDM) activities that served on the committee, one of the issues raised was the role of the Total Resource Cost (TRC) test in the evaluation of proposed CDM initiatives. It became apparent that the test was perceived as a significant barrier to CDM program innovation, development and delivery. The opportunity to investigate the role of the TRC test in local utility electricity conservation and demand management activities more formally arose as a result of discussions between the Electricity Distributors Association (EDA), the York University Foundation and the Faculty of Environmental Studies. Through the LDC Future Fund the EDA kindly provided a grant for a study of the impact of the TRC test on local utility CDM initiatives. The resulting study, presented here, recognizes the value of the TRC test in program design and evaluation. At the same time, the study identifies a number of areas where specific modifications and adjustments to the TRC test as currently applied by the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) and Ontario Energy Board (OEB) to LDC proposals for CDM initiatives could be made to encourage and facilitate such activities. More broadly, the study concludes that the most important barriers to LDC-led CDM initiatives do not lie with the TRC test and its application by the OEB and OPA per se. Rather the study finds that the most significant barriers relate to the wider regulatory and institutional framework for electricity CDM within which LDC initiatives occur and the test is applied. These types of barriers are the focus of the recommendations made here.
Restricted
Assessing the impacts of urban beehives on wild bees using individual, community, and population-level metrics
(Urban Ecosystems, 2023-05-22) MacKell, Sarah; Elsayed, Hadil; Colla, Sheila R
Several species of wild bees are in decline globally and the presence of managed honey bees is one of many proposed stressors on wild bee populations. However, there is limited knowledge of the impacts of honey bee hives on wild bees, especially in urban landscapes. We performed a field study to assess the associations between honey bees and wild bees within the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, Canada. We measured relative abundance of honey bees, wild bee metrics (abundance, community composition, functional diversity, and body size), and floral resources (floral density and richness); we also calculated impervious surface at 500 m and 1 km for each of our sites. Our main findings were that increasing honey bee abundance was correlated with decreases in wild bee species richness and functional diversity, as well as two wild bee species’ abundances and one wild bee species body size, out of many assessed. This research adds to the growing body of literature aiming to evaluate whether honey bees are a stressor on wild bees in urban landscapes, which will be valuable for informing conservation management practices and future research.
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
Common Areas, Common Causes: Public Space in High‐Rise Buildings During Covid‐19
(Urban Planning, 2022-11-22) March, Loren; Lehrer, Ute
This article explores forms of public space that have been rendered palpable during the Covid‐19 pandemic: public spaces in high‐rise buildings. We consider both physical and social public space in this context, thinking about the safety of both common areas and amenities in buildings and the emergence of new publics around the conditions of tower living during the pandemic (particularly focusing on tenant struggles). We determine that the planning, use, maintenance, and social production of public space in high‐rise buildings are topics of increasing concern and urgency and that the presence of public space in the vertical built forms and lifestyles proliferating in urban regions complicates common understandings of public space. We argue that the questions raised by the pandemic call upon us to reconsider the meanings of public space.
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
Conservation Conundrum: At-risk Bumble Bees (Bombus spp.) Show Preference for Invasive Tufted Vetch (Vicia cracca) While Foraging in Protected Areas
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Entomological Society of America., 2019-03-02) Gibson, Shelby D; Liczner, Amanda R; Colla, Sheila R
In recent decades, some bumble bee species have declined, including in North America. Declines have been reported in species of bumble bees historically present in Ontario, including: yellow bumble bee (Bombus fervidus) (Fabricus, 1798), American bumble bee (Bombus pensylvanicus) (DeGeer, 1773), and yellow-banded bumble bee (Bombus terricola) (Kirby, 1837). Threats contributing to bumble bee population declines include: land-use changes, habitat loss, climate change, pathogen spillover, and pesticide use. A response to the need for action on pollinator preservation in North America has been to encourage ‘bee-friendly’ plantings. Previous studies show differences in common and at-risk bumble bee foraging; however, similar data are unavailable for Ontario. Our research question is whether there is a difference in co-occurring at-risk and common bumble bee (Bombus spp.) floral use (including nectar and pollen collection) in protected areas in southern Ontario. We hypothesize that common and at-risk species forage differently, predicting that at-risk species forage on a limited selection of host plants. We conducted a field survey of sites in southern Ontario, using observational methods to determine bumble bee foraging by species. The results of a redundancy analysis show a difference in foraging between common and at-risk bumblebee species. At-risk bumble bee species show a preference for foraging on invasive, naturalized Vicia cracca (tufted vetch). This finding raises the question of how to preserve or provide forage for at-risk bumble bees, when they show an association with an invasive species often subject to control in protected areas.
Open Access
Diversity, local economies, and globalization’s limits
(Inanna Publication, 2002) Perkins, Patricia E. (Ellie)
Open Access
Drivers and consequences of apex predator diet composition in the Canadian Beaufort Sea
(Springer, 2020-09-08) Florko, Katie; Thiemann, Gregory W.; Bromaghin, J. F.
Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) rely on annual sea ice as their primary habitat for hunting marine mammal prey. Given their long lifespan, wide geographic distribution, and position at the top of the Arctic marine food web, the diet composition of polar bears can provide insights into temporal and spatial ecosystem dynamics related to climate-mediated sea ice loss. Polar bears with the greatest ecological constraints on diet composition may be most vulnerable to climate-related changes in ice conditions and prey availability. We used quantitative fatty acid signature analysis (QFASA) to estimate the diets of polar bears (n = 419) in two western Canadian Arctic subpopulations (Northern Beaufort Sea and Southern Beaufort Sea) from 1999 to 2015. Polar bear diets were dominated by ringed seal (Pusa hispida), with interannual, seasonal, age- and sex-specific variation. Foraging area and sea ice conditions also affected polar bear diet composition. Most variation in bear diet was explained by longitude, reflecting spatial variation in prey availability. Sea ice conditions (extent, thickness, and seasonal duration) declined throughout the study period, and date of sea ice break-up in the preceding spring was positively correlated with female body condition and consumption of beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas), suggesting that bears foraged on beluga whales during entrapment events. Female body condition was positively correlated with ringed seal consumption, and negatively correlated with bearded seal consumption. This study provides insights into the complex relationships between declining sea ice habitat and the diet composition and foraging success of a wide-ranging apex predator.
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.