The Atmospheric Fund (TAF) has worked since 1991 to lower greenhouse gas emissions in the GTA area through policy, awareness, and implementation measures that primarily target the building and transportation industries. TAF works in diverse ways to reduce emissions in these sectors through providing best-practice benchmarks for retrofitting existing buildings, advocating progressive green energy and building policies, providing grants to municipalities and organizations to advance climate action, and leveraging financial tools to incentivize green initiatives. In 2017, TAF expanded its focus from its previous mandate covering the City of Toronto alone to include the entire GTHA region. Since playing a key role in Toronto’s coal energy phase-out in the mid-2000s, TAF’s new implementation-focused programs include improving electric vehicle infrastructure, and “deep” energy retrofits to apartment buildings. Entitled TowerWise, the latter program works with architects, landlords, property managers, policy-makers, and residents to improve energy efficiency in high-rise apartments—of which over 2,000 were built during the postwar boom in the GTHA region. Beyond energy efficiency alone, however, TowerWise aims to foster vibrant, proud, and engaged communities in apartment buildings, with the recognition that green initiatives must work in tandem with community health and development.
The Dam is a drop-in centre for youth with locations in Meadowvale and Cooksville communities in Mississauga. Since 1995, The Dam’s programs have supported youth with diverse activities such as out-trips, sports and active games, board game afternoons, retreats, and mindfulness programs. Aside from structured activities, The Dam’s locations simply offer open space for youth to visit, and to connect with like-minded people outside school, work, or home. Their “Dam-Bassador” program strengthens participants’ involvement and input into the organization, by making participants into mentors and program leaders. Short for Develop / Assist / Mentor, staff of The Dam highlight its role as a metaphoric “dam” providing mutually-supportive community to empower youth, free of stigma. Likewise, staff emphasize The Dam’s role both as a safe space—and a “brave space,” that is, a place where youth can find the bravery to express their identities and vulnerabilities among peers.
The University of Toronto’s Environmental Governance Lab (EGL) is a network connecting scholars and policy-makers who work to implement measures that address the challenges of climate change. The EGL’s international reach includes partnerships with universities, non-profit organizations, and governments in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, UK, and US. In one ongoing research project, members of EGL are studying the how the transition to green energy (“decarbonization”) can be facilitated through state governance at all levels, and through non-state actors such as industries and citizen groups. In another, UTM professor Andrea Olive studies civic action and inaction to hydraulic fracturing in the Prairies and British Columbia, charting how historically resource-driven regional economies are coping with the entangled everyday realities of climate change and economic development. At an international scale, EGL members contribute to the Earth System Governance Project, an alliance of social science researchers who advocate for sustainable development and social justice. Locally, the EGL commits to public-informed research through talks and events, including work-in-progress sessions by PhD students to share and solicit feedback on their ongoing research.
Partners in Project Green is a network of businesses, municipal and regional governments, and conservation authorities working toward creating the world’s “largest eco-business zone” in the Toronto Pearson Airport area. According to the Neptis Foundation (a Toronto-based urban think tank), the area they dub the “Airport Megazone” is the second most significant employment area in Canada. As such, Partners in Project Green links a crucial network of businesses through programs and resource-sharing—from comprehensive energy efficiency benchmarking services, to the more basic administration of a material exchange program, which helps businesses donate or trade unneeded resources to community partners. Partners in Project Green’s tangible actions toward waste and emissions reduction are buttressed by engagements in the area, such as community tree plantings and team energy-reduction challenges. Further, the organization shares local environmental research both online and in presentations, and profiles members’ energy retrofit successes, thereby inspiring members to learn from and act on green initiatives. By working both at the level of community-building through green initiatives, and through corporate input and benchmarking, Partners in Project Green works to mitigate the environmental effects of air and ground transportation on which the business zone depends.
Peel Poverty Action Group (PPAG) is a citizen-led organization that advocates for the alleviation of poverty throughout the region. PPAG’s efforts are largely focused on its bi-monthly Tough Times newsletter, which reports on issues such as affordable housing, food security, access to shelters, settlement services, and more. In Tough Times, local MPPs, councillors, trustees, and union leaders are given a platform to discuss how their policies work to address poverty, and the newspaper shares resources for people who are under-resourced or facing poverty. PPAG holds open public meetings monthly in Brampton and Mississauga. PPAG members note the unique issues confronting the area, where unaffordable housing and low vacancy rates, precarious work, and unemployment contribute to the broader reality that half of Peel Region residents are considered low-income (according to the United Way in 2017). PPAG’s initiatives thus serve both to share support and resources for people facing poverty, and to dispel ideals of suburban affluence that proliferate in the region.
Water Allies is a group connecting communities and scholars on water issues in Toronto and the Great Lakes, centered at New College at the University of Toronto. The group foregrounds allyship as a core aspect of its purpose, stating that allies are formally partnered together in networks of mutual aid and respect. Water Allies’ focus on forming alliances is strengthened through its events, which have included walks, discussions, and film screenings — and in June 2019, their Gathering with the Credit River offered three days of Indigenous-led water ceremonies, teachings, and healing sessions. Water Allies invited guests to camp onsite in Erindale Park, crucially claiming space alongside the Credit River where camping is not typically allowed. By connecting diverse communities through allyship — from Indigenous nations and urban Indigenous communities, academics in water policy and engineering, organizations such as Lake Ontario Waterkeeper (see SDUK02 p. 24) and Decolonizing Water — members of Water Allies advocate for a rooted and connected relationship to water, which looks beyond its characterization as a resource, financial hedge, or source of energy.