The following was first published in the Monday, March 18 edition of YFile.

York is celebrating Earth Hour 2013 and there is plenty to cheer about, including a reduction in energy use at the University.

The event will kick-off Wednesday, March 20, with opening ceremonies beginning at 2:30pm at Michelangelo’s, lower level of Atkinson College, Keele campus. Talks, games, poetry, dinner, music and a lantern walk will follow, wrapping up with a closing ceremony at 9pm. Click here for the full schedule.

The good news? York has reduced its annual energy costs and greenhouse gases by more than 20 per cent, according to Brad Cochrane, director of energy management at Campus Services & Business Operations (CSBO). York approved an Energy Performance Contracting Program in 2006 to invest in plant and building system renewal and retrofit projects, which are almost complete, to reduce annual energy costs and greenhouse gases by 25 per cent.

“Results have been very positive, as weather-normalized savings have been calculated at 22 per cent,” says Cochrane. “The project is well along the path to reaching the 25 per cent goal, even with the five per cent campus growth in buildings, and a higher student population.”

For example, 51 buildings across both campuses have had new energy-efficient lighting installed, which has reduced demand by more than 2.3 mW or 2,300 kW.

In addition, York embarked on a pilot project that began January 2012 to save energy during off-times – summer, holidays, weekends etc. – with estimated savings of between $83,171 and $118,816 in electricity annually. The first test occurred on the Family Day weekend, targeting 127 building ventilation fans in 19 buildings.

So what did 2012 scheduling achieve? “Nothing less than amazing – absolute year-over-year savings of more than three per cent,” says Cochrane, who will speak at the Earth Hour event at 3pm to share much more about the University’s energy goals and results.

Rob Shirkey, executive director, Our Horizon, will speak at 3:30pm about his organization’s plan to get municipalities to require gasoline retailers to put warning labels on gas nozzles like those found on tobacco packages.

From 4 to 6pm, there will be games, provided by tabling clubs and organizations, or a poetry workshop – Poetic Energy: Writing in a Warming World – in which participants will be asked to reflect on the role of reading and writing poetry in environmental activism, particularly dealing with issues of climate change, social justice and sustainability.

All levels of interest and experience are welcome. There will be an opportunity to share writing at the Earth Hour dinner celebration after the workshop. The Poetry Workshop is run by grad students, under the direction of Faculty of Environmental Studies Professor Cate Sandilands. Click here to sign up.

The tabling groups will include:  Sustainability@YorkU/President’s Sustainability Council’s Student Sub-Committee, the Centre for Human Rights, Regenesis@York, BESSA – Bachelor of Environmental Studies Student Association, Undergraduate Political Science Council and Sustainability & Education Policy Network Project.

Dinner will take place from 6 to 7pm, followed by poetry readings. From 8 to 9pm, there will acoustic music, with a lantern walk led by Regenesis@York and closing ceremonies beginning at 9pm.The acoustic music acts will feature students and the Environmental Music Collective from the Faculty of Environmental Studies.

Earth Hour is sponsored by the Institute for Research & Innovation in Sustainability, Centre for Human Rights, McLaughlin College and Professor Cate Sandilands.

Other Earth Hour events organized this year are:

• March 22 – The York Earth Hour Show will be held from noon to 2pm in the Accolade East Fine Arts Lobby (across from the Starbucks). There will be businesses on hand to showcase the strides they are making towards sustainability. This event is organized by Professor Jose Etcheverry’s Business and Sustainability: Issues and Strategies course (ENVS 3505).
• March 23 – Earth Hour Concert will be held from 7:30 to 10:30pm in Vari Hall. There will be bands and other musical performances. During Earth Hour, between 8:30 and 9:30pm, the lights will be turned off and everyone can listen to the acoustic talents of some of the performers. Because it’s such a big space, feel free to bring your own chair, blankets, pillows, towels and friends. The event is organized by Sustainability@YorkU.

For more information, visit the Institute for Research & Innovation in Sustainability website.

The following appeared in the Tuesday, January 22, 2013, edition of YFile. W3 is a project affiliated with IRIS.

Leading labour environmentalists and academics will discuss the challenges and creative strategies for labour leadership on global warming as part of the Work in a Warming World (W3) panel discussion, “Green Work, Brown World: Labour and the Dilemma of Climate Change”.

The discussion will take place Friday, Jan. 25, from 5:30-7:30pm, in Alumni Hall at Victoria College, University of Toronto, 91 Charles St. W., Toronto. It is an initiative of the Work in a Warming World Research Program. The Panel is free, but registration is essential as seating is limited. To register, click here.

York Professor Carla Lipsig-Mummé (right), director of Work in a Warming World research program, will deliver the opening remarks. Lipsig-Mummé teaches work and labour, and environment and work, at York University and was founding director of York University’s Centre for Research on Work and Society. The author of more than 200 works and a frequent commentator in the international media, Lipsig-Mummé was a union organizer in Québec and the US before becoming an academic.

W3 is a community-university research initiative of the Social Science & Humanities Research Council of Canada. Previous public panels have been held in Fredericton, Vancouver and Toronto.

John Shields

Across the planet, the world is browning, not greening. Greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow and grow, and strategies for slowing global warming remain ineffective. The world of work is a major producer of GHGs, but can work also be a leading site for reducing greenhouse gasses? Can workers and their unions lead the struggle to slow global warming? The question is central to decent work in the 21st century.

The five panelists will discuss the hard issues that unions face and share the strategies that work. The hard issues have, to date, kept unions from playing the major role they can and must play in the struggle to slow global warming. Labour’s strategic creativity, however, is less well-known.

Panellists:

Chair: John Shields is a professor in the Department of Politics & Public Administration at Ryerson University. He holds the rank of Senior CERIS Scholar and is a past recipient of the The Sarwan Sahota ? Ryerson Distinguished Scholar Award (the highest research award at Ryerson). His research and publishing is centred on Canadian public policy, with a particular focus on labour.

Karen Hawley (right) is currently working as a freelance environment researcher and educator. She has more than 25 years’ experience in the field of environmental activism. For the past five years, she held the environment portfolio at the National Union of Public and General Employees. Karen spends most of her time working at the municipal level, organizing and lobbying for sustainable communities.

Donald Lafleur (left) is the fourth national vice-president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) responsible for staffing, education and consultation, an elected position he’s held since 1994. Lafleur quickly became involved in the union a little more than one year after starting as a postal worker back in 1978. His involvement in the environmental struggle began with making personal choices many years ago and at work when he was appointed to the CLC Environment Committee in 1996. He is also representing CUPW on the Green Economy Network, the Council of Canadians Ad Hoc Committee and the Work in a Warming World project.

Isabelle Ménard (right) has worked for the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CNS) in Québec for the past seven years as an environment officer in the Labour Relations Department. During that time, she has led training courses and conferences for members and officers, and developed and led a research study with the Hautes Etudes Commerciales on union best practices for climate and environment issues. The report continues to be the central resource for training officers, militant-e-s and members of the CSN on environment and climate issues. Ménard received her BA in biology-ecology from the Université du Québec à Montréal, her MA in science specializing in freshwater ecology from the Université de Montréal, a diploma in environmental toxicology at Concordia University and a certificate on soil contamination. Before coming to the CSN, she worked as a field biologist and on impact studies in the private sector, as a waste management manager in the pulp and paper industry, and carried out soil contamination studies as an industrial and commercial consultant.

Andrea Peart (left) of the Canadian Labour Congress has been a committed environmental and political activist all of her life. Previously, as director of health and environment with the Sierra Club of Canada, one of Canada’s foremost environmental organizations, Peart has intervened in two Supreme Court of Canada cases and helped a number of communities pass by-laws restricting the cosmetic use of pesticides, among other successes. She has worked with the Canadian Labour Congress for seven years, primarily in government relations, energy policy and on women’s issues, before settling in as the national representative for health safety and environment. She is a labour and environmental researcher and advocate who has focused on green job creation and the urgent need for Canada to act on the climate crisis. Often looking broadly at greening the economy, Peart has long advocated for green job creation in Canada.  Firmly believing that we live in an unsustainable economy, which is already starting to have a devastating effect on nature, human health, well-being and employment, she advocates the need to move to a sustainable economy to achieve a sustainable environment that is local, low-carbon and toxin-free.

Joseph B. Uehlein (right) is the founding president and executive director of the Labor Network for Sustainability and Voices for a Sustainable Future. He is the former secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO’s Industrial Union Department and former director of the AFL-CIO Center for Strategic Campaigns. Uehlein spent more than 30 years doing organizing, bargaining and strategic campaign work in the labor movement. He also served as the secretary to the North American Coordinating Committee of the International Federation of Chemical, Energy and Mine Workers unions. He is a founding board member of Ceres, a member of the National Advisory Board of the Union of Concerned Scientists and served as a senior strategic advisor to the Blue Green Alliance for five years. He also served on the United Nations commission on global warming in the 1990s. In addition, he serves on the advisory board of the Future of Music Coalition. In the early 1970s, he worked in an aluminum mill as a member of the United Steelworkers of America, and on heavy and highway construction projects as a member of the Laborer’s International Union of North America.

For more information, visit the Work in a Warming World website.

The following was first published in the Monday, January 13th edition of YFile.

Named one of Fast Company’s Most Creative Business People for 2012, Tal Dehtiar, co-founder of MBAs Without Borders, and founder and CEO of Oliberté, will deliver the first talk Tuesday in a new joint Sustainable Value Creation Speaker Series.

Dehtiar’s talk, “Doing Business with the Poor”, will take place Jan. 15, from 7 to 8pm, at W256 Seymour Schulich Building, Keele campus.

Tal Dehtiar

“The speaker series will profile a number of individuals with stories of success, failure and lessons learned in reducing poverty globally through an enterprise-led market-based approach,” says Kevin McKague, Schulich School of Business course director.

The series is a joint effort between York’s Institute for Research & Innovation in Sustainability (IRIS) and McKague, an IRIS Senior Research Fellow, along with his MGMT 6500 Sustainable Value Creation course. Also known as Business Model Innovation for Poverty Alleviation, the course is cross-listed by both the Centre of Excellence in Responsible Business and the Nonprofit Management Leadership specializations at Schulich, and is open to Masters of Environmental Studies students. It explores the disruptive for-profit pro-poor business models which are emerging in developing countries.

Dehtiar brings enormous experience working with the poor. In addition to MBAs Without Borders, an international charity that has engaged hundreds of business professionals around the world to volunteer and help build small and social businesses in more than 25 developing countries, he launched the first premium footwear brand made in Africa, Oliberté Ltd., in 2009. Oliberté’s footwear is manufactured across Africa and sold globally.

Kevin McKague

“He illustrates how a local entrepreneur can take on a major business challenge – creating manufacturing jobs in Africa –  overcome many obstacles and grow a successful social business,” says McKague (MBA ’00, PhD’12), a Schulich alumnus. “Tal’s insights will help students and participants learn about the realities of creating and building a social business and provide inspiration for others who may follow.”

Dehtiar is a recipient of the Ontario Global Trader Award, CYBF Chairman Award, Arch Award and was nominated for the YMCA Peace Award, Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 and Ernst & Young’s Social Entrepreneur of the Year. In 2007, he was named one of the International Youth Foundation’s Young Social Entrepreneurs. He has also been on television show “Dragons’ Den” twice.

“Students taking the course may be interested in starting their own social enterprise or working in a non-governmental organization, small or medium sized business or large company that wants to create social and economic value for themselves and for low-income individuals. The speakers were chosen to meet the class learning objectives, but their stories are applicable to sustainable development more broadly,” says McKague.

“This is a relatively new area of interest for many organizations and many experiments have been tried. Many have failed. But a number of innovative ventures are showing signs of success. It is from these examples that we aim to learn what works in doing business with the poor in ways that are mutually beneficial.”

The next speaker in the series will be Bryan Smith, president, Broad Reach Innovations Inc., and advisor for the Uganda Rural Development & Training Programme, on Jan. 29. Smith will discuss “Innovations in Education and Sustainable Development: The Uganda Rural Development and Training Program”.

For more information and a complete list of speakers and topics, visit the Sustainable Value Creation Speaker Series website.

The following appeared in the Monday, January 7th edition of YFile.

As a philosophy professor researching the ethics of climate change policy, York’s Idil Boran found her recent experience at COP18 in Doha, Qatar, illuminating and informative.

“I place real value in backing theory with practice,” she says. Attending the 18th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) allowed Boran to witness negotiations in real time, thanks to York’s Institute for Research & Innovation in Sustainability (IRIS), which secured accredited spots (see YFile story, Nov. 30, 2012). “I thought it would be really important for a philosopher to see the actual conference where the deliberations between sovereign states take place.”

Idil Boran in Qatar

She returned with so much more useful information than she ever expected and is now determined to share it with other researchers at the University and beyond. “I would like to think ahead to what the research community could do with it.”

There were three key issues that came out of COP18 that Boran thought were noteworthy and important to monitor for future developments, but that also presented opportunities for research. First, “for the first time in the entire history of international debates on climate change there was an agreement in principle for compensating countries for loss and damage incurred by climate change,” she says. “It’s a very important achievement.” That’s especially true as it is often developing countries that are hit by the adverse effects – present and future – of climate change, and Western countries have typically, so far, been resistant to the idea of compensation. One of the challenges going forward will be in deciding what constitutes loss and damage as a result of climate change. Boran predicts there will be more discussions on the matter at future conferences.

Idil Boran was one of two York professors to attend COP18 in Qatar

But it also opens up “a wide array of questions that could be pursued by formal research,” she says, such as how “to integrate scientific assessment – in probabilistic terms – of the likelihood of a given event being caused by anthropogenic climate change to a policy of compensation.” Fundamentally, Boran suggests, these are problems of a philosophical nature pertaining to the justification of law and institutions, both at domestic and international levels.

Second, the issue of financing clean technology and the tension between the use of private or public funds was one of the most “heavily discussed questions” in Doha, says Boran. It is usually assumed that once an agreement or treaty is reached, a system of international cooperation by sovereign states to achieve investment in clean technology and development in the developing world and emerging markets would follow. That, however, hasn’t been the case.

Qatar in December during COP18

“The idea of turning to alternative instruments for finance is now at the forefront of the debates,” she says. As one speaker put it, investing is already risky for private investors; investing in clean technology is even riskier. But as Boran points out, “investment banks are actually talking about how that obstacle can be overcome” and she finds that hopeful.

Third, the question of financing also came up at “Momentum for Change: Women for Results”, a high-profile special event in relation to women in the developing world, organized by the Rockefeller Foundation and the UN Climate Change Secretariat. “Women tend to be more vulnerable than men, on a global scale, to the loss and damage caused by climate change as the effect of poverty is harder on women,” says Boran. This is because women are more likely to run the household, but their status in traditional male/female relations leaves the burden they carry largely unrecognized in the public sphere. At the same time, women are recognized as extremely resourceful and resilient in the face of adverse circumstances. If given the opportunity, women present a remarkable human resource worldwide.

There was much thinking going on during the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Qatar

With these things in mind, the “idea of designing financing policies and instruments with the express purpose of offering real opportunities to women was heavily discussed,” she says. The idea would be to provide financing specifically targeted to women, an idea that grew from the microfinance model, which “provided women in developing countries life-transforming opportunities that didn’t exist through traditional means of banking and credit”.

One of the recurrent challenges is that international aid funds often don’t reach those who can make good use of them, however, women are seen as an important resource to foster development. As a result, “experts are now discussing the idea of making clean development financing ‘gender-sensitive’,” says Boran. She expects this too will be an ongoing topic of debate going forward. “It is important to do more work around this concept.” It needs further examination, such as “how, conceptually, the idea of genderizing policy could fit into a model”.

The banners spelling out: Every step you take makes a difference

Overall, Boran is optimistic with the process of climate change debate. “It’s an extremely complicated issue with many different global perspectives,” she says. She found it heartening that there were some productive discussions that could potentially yield significant results. She acknowledges there won’t be a quick solution, but highlights one of the banners at the Qatar National Convention Centre, which read: “Every step you take makes a difference”.

“This idea,” says Boran, “is precisely what should keep motivating us, both for policy and for research.”

Anyone interested in attending next year should watch the UNFCCC website and contact IRIS at irisinfo@yorku.ca.

For more information, contact Professor Idil Boran at iboran@yorku.ca.

By Sandra McLean, YFile deputy editor