Announcing the PWIAS Catalyst Collaboration Fund Awardees – Cycle 3

December 12, 2022

Congratulations to the awardees for the third cycle of the Catalyst Collaboration Fund. The fund provides up to $10k support for collaborative research projects and/or events, knowledge translation and mobilization related to the climate and nature emergency.

We look forward to bringing you more updates about these exciting projects and events in the coming months.

Azul Duque
Nurturing Decolonial Relationalities Between North and South
This project emerged from conversations with the Indigenous network Teia da 5 curas, where they expressed the importance of having spaces for Indigenous communities across the continent join in conversation, ceremony, and relationship-building on their own terms in order to strategize how to face the asymmetrical violences of our global crises. We will bring three Indigenous women from the Pitaguary community to be special guests at the Indigenous-led “Decolonizing/Indigenizing Climate Action” gathering organized by the Hollyhock Leadership Institute, and then will travel to the Natosi Okahn Sundance of the Kainai Nation to participate in ceremony, medicine sharing and relationship building.

Dana James
Envisioning Secwépemc Foodland Conservation Areas
This participatory action research project emerged from a community interest in identifying a vision and priorities for Indigenous Foodland Conservation Areas (IFCAs) in Secwépemc territory. Drawing on lessons learned from Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs) — Indigenous-led conservation areas that uphold Indigenous Peoples’ rights and responsibilities to sustainably steward their lands – our overarching aims are to: Document the integrated conservation methods of food harvesters in Secwépemcul’ecw; Deliver training and support for a network of Secwépemc hunters to conduct environmental monitoring of the migration corridors of elk, wild salmon, and other culturally important animals; and Co-develop insights for regionally adapted IFCAs based on the ecological and cultural scope and scale of Indigenous Food Sovereignty, resulting in research and policy proposals for a Secwépemc IFCA to protect, conserve, and regenerate Secwépemc biocultural heritage.

Naomi Klein
Housing Justice in a Climate Emergency: A Research and Advocacy Partnership
Climate change induced extreme weather—from heatwaves and extreme cold to flooding and wildfire smoke—has complicated the fight for affordable and secure housing in British Columbia. Extreme weather is intensifying the housing crisis in a province that is already home to the region with the highest rates of evictions in Canada: Metro Vancouver. UBC’s Centre for Climate Justice (CCJ) and the Tenant Resource & Advisory Centre (TRAC) have partnered to collaborate on community-engaged advocacy efforts to support tenants navigating the intersecting housing and climate crises.

Sara Nelson
Climate Justice Study Collective
The Climate Justice Study Collective (CJSC) builds opportunities for connection, reflection, and strategizing among climate justice activists and practitioners within and outside of UBC. This initiative provides financial support for climate justice practitioners from the Vancouver area – including movement and community leaders, traditional knowledge holders, organizers, activists, staff at nonprofits and organizations, and others – to engage in collective, self-guided study and to inform the research agenda of the Centre for Climate Justice (CCJ) and our partner, SFU’s Community Engaged Research Initiative.

Saori Ogura
Growing Millet Together! Global Cultivation Stories for Climate-Resilient Communities
2023 is the UN Year of Millet, which highlights the important role of millet as a food crop for climate-ready agriculture and high nutritional value to communities around the world. Millet has been heralded as having a high degree of environmental tolerance to difficult conditions, such as drought, cold, salinity, low-fertility soils, as well as having the ability to be stored for decades. However, millet cultivation is declining globally, and there is an urgent need to revitalize it and preserve ancient seeds. Collaborating with Indigenous and local millet farmers in Zimbabwe, India, Japan, and the gene bank in Canada, this project seeks to create a platform that enables ‘storytelling from millet producers around the world’, highlighting some of the diverse perspectives around millet cultivation and reciprocal relationships with the land. By growing millet together and exchanging stories across borders, this initiative aims to promote millet cultivation in each community, contributing to improve community and climate resiliency.

Veronica Relano
Socio-ecological Perspectives of National Park of Isla de Espiritu Santo
The main goal of this project is to raise awareness of the ecological, social, and economic values of Marine Protected Areas (MPA) and of the challenges that communities and ecosystems experience when MPAs are not properly managed. This project will focus on the Island of Espiritu Santo, a National Park in the Gulf of California, Mexico. This MPA preserves the largest body of water in the Gulf of California and is part of the 90 islands of the Gulf containing unique ecosystems, vulnerable habitats and a considerable number of marine species. The lack of regulation and control over tourism and fishing, including permits, and non-traditional and harmful practices, are putting the population’s livelihoods, food security and environmental resources at risk. The revision of the management plan of the National Park of Isla de Espiritu Santo will occur in 2023-24. This project will demonstrate how human-environment interactions can be improved in the MPA to allow for a more inclusive management plan, which will ultimately lead to more effective, sustainable governance. This will be done using accessible science communication, promoting local participation, and providing spaces for reconciliation and capacity development.

Jose Reyeros
Sharing Land Protectors’ Stories
This project aims to create a digital media platform in the form of a website to host films, short stories, and other art/activism projects created by frontline communities and land protectors in Latin America. Using existing connections to media executives and political spaces, this platform, when developed, will be mobilized to support and advance the actions being called for by these communities. We are centering stories from our first two partners: Ecuadorian-based Fundación Maquipucuna, and Guatemalan-based Saqchahim Organization de Mujeres para la Seguridad Alimentaria en Barrio La Union (Saqchahim Women’s Organization for Food Security in Barrio la Union).

Dino Siwek
Indigenous Just Transition – Strengthening global north/south relations
A long-term collaboration with chief Ninawá Huni Kui, supporting his work on protecting the Amazon forest, the lives of Huni Kui People and Indigenous led alternatives to climate crisis. With Portuguese-English and contextual translations, we are also co-writing articles and investigating ways to promote indigenous cosmologies and proposals to address climate change in non indigenous context in a way that these knowledges are not appropriated and used in ways that can be harmful for Indigenous people.

Jack Suchodolski
UBC Journal for Climate Justice
The UBC Journal for Climate Justice (JCJ) aims to publish research-based and creative insights into climate justice at the intersection of art, activism, and academics. Through regular publications and collaborations, featuring academic and creative work within climate justice, the JCJ will bridge disciplinary divides within UBC and encourage collaborative work that extends to broader communities (eg: artists, policymakers and analysts, activists, educators, journalists, etc.) This platform will share the collective efforts of students (from the undergraduate to postgraduate level), recent graduates, professionals, and community members with an interest in climate justice.

Charlotte Taylor
The Critically Engaged Voices Research Collaborative
Charlotte Taylor will collaborate with Camilla Cardoso (Researcher, Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures) and Dr. Pasang Sherpa (Wall Scholar and Assistant Professor of Lifeways in Indigenous Asia) to mobilize the Critically Engaged Voices interdisciplinary research collaborative project. Through this research collaborative, Dr. Pasang Sherpa, Camilla Cardoso, and Charlotte Taylor will advance vital discussions of critically engaged perspectives on climate justice by conducting relational research and deepening understandings of socially and ecologically responsible frameworks for systems change. Ultimately, the goal of this collaborative research project is to bring together a wide range of inter and trans-disciplinary perspectives to engage and mobilize frameworks for critically engaged climate education and critical engagement with climate justice issues more broadly.

Jennie Zhou and Sagorika Haque
asha ; a  transnational arts, education, research, & community organizing collective
Asha is a transnational arts and research collective developing local, global embodied knowledges based interventions through community organizing and multimedia social justice educational programming by, for, and with peoples who have experienced racialized and gendered oppression. We aim to be an open source multidisciplinary network of ecosystem of documentation around marginalized histories and futures that aim to uplift, celebrate, and mourn the urgent intersections of land, memory, climate crisis, and collective storytelling to foster senses of agency and belonging through community. Our multibranched structure addresses intersections between lived experiences of historical, ongoing structural violences, and cultural heritages threatened by ongoing colonial legacies.

Karl Zimmermann
Worldwide Voices for Water Partnerships
Changing climate threatens access to safe drinking water, leaving people and especially women and children vulnerable to health risks and ‘plumbing violence’. With half the population estimated to experience water stress by 2050, we need tools to ensure safe and equitable access to water and sanitation for all. This proposal will create a film to share water stories from around the world on creating resilient safe water solutions through adopting a partnership approach and placing local voices central to the process.