Members of the working group

Alyson Winks, Dan Baker, Jeff Lewis, Kendra Stiwich, Margot Croft, Misha Zvekic, Stacie Chappell, Susan James

Short description of the working group mandate

The Engagement and Dialogue Working Group (EDWG) will develop an engagement and dialogue strategy focused on climate change and sustainability to enable the VIU community to share their hopes, ideas, and potential solutions. It will organize and convene opportunities for engagement and dialogue and ensure that the work is informed by VIU’s Indigenous community and different campus locations. It will also record insights and lessons learned during engagement and dialogue and report out and advise the President’s Task Force on the outcomes of the engagement and dialogue strategy.

Summary of activities undertaken by the working group

Activities initiated and completed by the EDWG, President’s Taskforce on Climate Action and Sustainability (PTCAS).

1) Science and Tech Wednesday Lecture Series (March 2022): Members of the EDWG attended this series to promote the PTCAS with the following announcement shared at the beginning of the meeting: “We are excited to tell you about The President’s Task Force on Climate Action and Sustainability, which is working on opportunities for the VIU community to engage in conversations about how VIU can become more sustainable and act on climate change. The first opportunity to share your thoughts and get involved will be at CREATE, April 4^th - 8^th. Specific details will be announced in the coming weeks, but you can already start to think about what climate action and sustainability on campus looks like to you. If you are hosting an event that you would like the Task Force to be aware of, please contact sustainability@viu.ca. Thanks for being part of climate action at VIU.”

2) VIU CREATE (April 4-8, 2022): This was a chance for the EDWG to engage members of the VIU community by asking the question “What does climate action mean to me?” and enable student engagement and dialogue. Specific promotions were run in the Digest and Pulse for CREATE: The President's Task Force on Climate Action and Sustainability (Task Force) is excited to be a sponsor of CREATE 2022 and have the opportunity to recognize the exemplary work of VIU students on climate action and sustainability. Activities included:

• Pizza Party for the Planet: student participants at CREATE with environmentally focused projects were invited to share their perspectives on climate, sustainability, and ways VIU can participate. One major theme was active transportation including:  public transport between other towns and the Nanaimo campus, encouraging sustainable transportation (e.g., a student bus pass), and maintaining online infrastructure to reduce the need to travel to campus. Student members of the working group helped to organize the event.
• Students CREATE some O2: student participants at CREATE were invited to fill the planter boxes on the cafeteria balcony as a team-based activity. Awareness of Climate Change through Education and Research (ACER) student representatives helped organize the event and the horticulture department donated plants.
• EDWG members evaluated projects submitted for CREATE on a Climate Action and Sustainability (CAS) matrix for CAS prizes. More than 20% of submissions by students focus on this area, which demonstrates the importance of the topic to our students.    

3) ACER Symposium (April 23, 2022): This was another opportunity for face-to-face engagement with the VIU community through a symposium titled 2022 Climate Change Symposium: Climate Change and Extreme Events. There were four talks, a panel discussion, and several demonstrations, all aimed at engaging the public on the science and implications of climate change, with a focus on the 2021 extreme weather events in BC. There were approximately 100 total participants (80 in person and another 20 attending online). The Keynote Speaker was Dr. Elizaveta Malinina, Research Scientist, Canadian Centre for Climate Modeling and Analysis (CCCma) & Environment Climate Change Canada (ECCC). Dr. Malinina also worked as a chapter scientist on the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. Presentations: 1) Key messages on climate change from IPCC 6th assessment report (Dr. Elizaveta Malinina); 2) Human Influence on the 2021 British Columbia Floods (Dr. Elizaveta Malinina); 3) The 2021 Heat Dome (Dr. Jeff Lewis); 4) Co-benefits of climate change actions (Dr. Erik Krogh). Two demonstrations were shown: I) Ocean Acidification and ii) The Greenhouse Effect.

4) Earth Day Social Media Contest: The following challenge was posted on Instagram and Facebook:

Join our Earth Day contest

Today (April 22) is Earth Day. VIU’s President’s Task Force on Climate Action and Sustainability is sponsoring a social media contest starting today and running for a week (until Friday, April 29). Participate in two ways:

Help us all go green! Share your favourite easy sustainability hack. Use the hashtag #VIUGreenHacks to be entered.

Share a pic of what we can preserve. Where’s your favourite local, natural place that climate action will help preserve? Use the hashtag #VIUBeautiful.

The winners will be drawn and announced on Friday, April 29, 2022. Post your entries on either Facebook or Instagram.

Learn more about Earth Day: https://www.earthday.org/

Unfortunately, we did not receive any submissions; we think this is because Earth Day was the last day of exams. However, each post reached about 2,500 people.

5) Spring Go by Bike, Active Transportation weeks – VIU Digest, VIU Student Pulse, social media campaign.

Margot Croft liaised with the City of Nanaimo as well as encouraged the VIU population (who now look for this event) to get out and ride (or walk) and sponsored a Celebration Station where active transportation-ists could stop by for a snack and enter to win a prize. This was done in partnership with the school district. As well, Dr. Nicole Vaugeois put out a challenge to City employees to see who could rack up the most kms ridden -- VIU or City of Nanaimo. Members of the working group directly supported these activities by amplifying them through their networks and joining Dr. Vaugeois’ challenge.

The social media campaign for employees was run through the now closed Facebook group called Keeping Connected VIU. Group members were invited to share images of themselves on their active/sustainable commute. There were about a dozen entries. General posts about the weeks were also shared on VIU’s Facebook page, as well as Twitter and Instagram.

6) Fall Go by Bike weeks. Less activity through the WG than in spring but included social media and newsletter promotions.

7) ROCKVIU student fair - Students attending new student orientation were asked several open-ended questions about VIU’s sustainability profile and how they could be involved as well as being asked what climate action responsibility they could/would take on. Some rudimentary analysis would appear to indicate that incoming students are interested in what they, as students, can do at VIU to contribute to Climate Action and Sustainability, and what VIU, as an institution, is doing toward Climate Action and Sustainability.

Anecdotally, there would appear to be a shift in what students do that gives them a sense of being sustainable. Several years ago, most said that they recycled, whereas this year there is more emphasis on consumption habits. And this may be an anomaly, but one student, when asked about climate change and university involvement replied that they did not really think about the weather as related to university.

8) Open lunch hour re: CAS engagement – people were invited to join a Zoom meeting on October 11, 2022 during their lunch hour, invitations were distributed through the VIU Digest, the VIU Student Pulse and through email, with member Susan James sending it to 200 people on her own – there was minimal attendance but great feedback and ideas from chemistry instructor Erik Krogh regarding monitoring our carbon footprint and disseminating the information to increase awareness in staff and student populations.  

9) Media release on the climate action and sustainability position statement October 21, 2022: This release was drafted by a working group member, who then worked with their team to get news coverage flowing from the position statement. Dr. Nicole Vaugeois and Richard Lewis were interviewed by the media on the topic on a show called Climate 911. The release was also picked up by Academica, which is the sector-leading national newsletter. A variety of smaller outlets picked it up and ran it in its entirety. It also led the VIU Digest. Also included in the release was a statement about the signing of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) accord.

10) Climate Action election blog – The working group reached out to all the candidates running the fall municipal election asking CAS- related questions. Each candidate received the same opportunity to answer, and the answers were shared in the order they were received. The result was a story on the VIU blog, which has more than 10,000 weekly subscribers, which readers could use to help them consider their voting choices.  

11) New section in the Digest – Climate Action and Sustainability, resources shared in the Student Pulse. This new section runs once a month and features resources provided to the VIU Digest on the topic, or those curated by the editor.  

12) VIU Voices content – Two articles supported by the working group ran in the November issue of VIU Voices:

•  New amenities encourage sustainable transportation at VIU
• VIU has contributed much to reaching the UN Sustainable Development Goals in our region. MABBRI has created a video series exploring these contributions.

Analysis of insights gained by the working group

The working group gained several valuable insights through what we heard in our engagement activities about what community members would like to see VIU doing on CAS, and equally valuable in the context of this report about what worked and what did not regarding engagement activities on this topic.

1) Creating a conversation on CAS at VIU - The working group’s primary lesson is:

For engagement to work and further a conversation, there needs to be a shared, identifiable context and direction. The release of the position statement and the signing of the SDGs accord for post-secondary institutions provides this needed foundation for VIU. The position statement’s structure creates a set a topics identified by the institution as important which enables various engagement activities to have a communal focus and link. The release came near the end of the WGs concerted efforts. Our recommendations going forward build on this sentiment of intentional community engagement stemming from the position statement and the outline of the SDGs.

2) Confusion over the end goal – The WG struggled to understand the scale of their mandate. Specific points we struggled to resolve include:

1. Are recommendations meant to drive behaviour change, raise awareness of CAS or both?
2. Are recommendations to be directed at extra-curricular audiences, curricular audiences, or both?
3. Is the recommended strategy meant to inform how to collect more information, present the information we received on both points above, or both?

 3) Resourcing, planning, and implementation:

For engagement success, resourcing and planning are important for proper implementation. We had lots of strong ideas, but not enough bandwidth to implement them. These ideas are captured in our recommendations.

4) Indigenous and external site engagement:

Due to time and capacity constraints, the WG did not succeed in gathering feedback from the Cowichan or tiwšɛmawtx^w campuses. The invitation to attend the open lunch was extended to both, but not taken up. As well, the working group struggled to find entry for Indigenous feedback. However, our work was reviewed by VIU Elder Geraldine Manson and she provided the following statement.

“To mitigate Climate Change there are certain necessary cultural shifts. Individuals must look within and do their inner work first to connect to the earth and recognize it as sacred. Today’s humans don’t listen to the water and the birds and the plants and animals. We must relearn to only take what is needed and work with the seasons. We must engage in restoration and reparation work and stop the exploitation of our natural world. We need to give back. Focus on educating the youth, teach them about healthy living, making medicines, teach them the history of the land, share what it means to care for the food and forest and river, and for future generations.”

To fix this issue, a full engagement strategy should use Elder Geraldine’s comments as a guiding source for unique and effective opportunities.

To engage Cowichan or tiwšɛmawtx^w campuses, an individual from those campuses should be appointed.

Insights regarding possible CAS activities:

At our open lunch hour, we captured the following suggestions for engagement:

• Embed assignments into curriculum across disciplines
• Permanent display on campus around the legacy of coal and the Geo-Exchange system
• Air quality monitoring station – show how air quality and climate are related and archive data for research purposes, show how transportation behaviours are related. Encourage small steps to decarbonize roadways has improvement on public health, promoting active transport, less pollution, multiple wins with one action, save money,   
• Linking what VIU does to the greater community e.g. The Biological Station, City of Nanaimo projects like the donut model, community-based groups like Nature Nanaimo This can help give people some hope and ideas for action to help prevent despair
• Institution could take a larger role in disseminating information around new developments that can help us get to carbon neutral – Solar, Hydrogen, Wind, Fusion 
• Centralized location and public display around climate change and what is happening on campus - Research, Facilities, Student activities, sustainability in course curriculum list of names courses and projects that are already doing things
• We report our carbon – scope three emissions, but we have no tool to manage that– put in a recommendation to start tracking and reporting – putting in more monitors and making the data accessible – use parking data
• Form a student group to use the Methane sniffer – find hot-spots – create a map – report to facilities and suggest upgrades to connections – actionable
• Experiential projects for students – look at how this neighbourhood has improved?  Air quality changes, feeling of safety, more green space, cooler temperatures,  
• Connect with Eco-Club, VIU Eco-Restoration, ACER – get them under one umbrella and working together

We have observed that VIU is strong on sustainability initiatives but needs to expand its climate action commitments and targets. Please see Potential Priorities for more information.

Potential priorities for VIU

1. Create a comprehensive Climate Action Plan with ambitious and measurable targets. For a good example, see the UBC Climate Action Plan https://planning.ubc.ca/cap2030

Highlights include:

• an 85% reduction in campus operations emissions by 2030 and achieving net zero emissions by 2035. This is 15 years ahead of the original target of net zero by 2050. This includes emissions from buildings, energy, and fleet. And a 45% reduction in extended emissions.
• using low-carbon energy sources to heat campus buildings;
• eliminating fossil fuel systems and equipment in buildings;
• transitioning to zero emission vehicles and equipment;
• implementing sustainable transportation initiatives
• expanding climate-friendly food menu offerings
• applying a climate justice lens to the policies and actions

1. Conduct a comprehensive engagement strategy to get feedback on the Climate Action Plan. UVic is a good example of this. https://www.uvic.ca/_assets/docs/csap-phase01-engagement-summary.pdf
2. Better educate the community on the SDGs and clearly articulate expectations regarding their implementation.

Recommendations:

Short Term (1-2 years)

Medium Term (2-5 years)

Long Term (5+ years)