The Climate Change Project, City of Mississauga
Commons: Spaces or things that are shared before, above, or in conflict with their enclosure as private property. Often describing elements such as water and air, the commons are invoked to suggest that Earth’s resources are finite and shareable (on shared responsibility, ownership, and urban space, see Radović; McCallum; and The Climate Change Project). In many societies, common goods have been inscribed in law (Japanese iriai law, for example, recognizes the forest as common space). Conversely, a “tragedy of the commons” occurs when a public resource is contaminated (see Shear) or depleted by individual actions. Privatization occurs when commons held in the public trust by a government are sold to a private entity (see Muehlebach).
Dispossession refers to the removal of rights, status, possessions, or land (either by formal or informal methods). In the Canadian settler-colonial context, Indigenous activists and scholars often highlight land as a central component of dispossession, but are equally attuned to its cultural and legal forms (see Prieto; Naveau; Hart; and Shear).
Ebullient: Boiling, bubbling up. Exuberant, buoyant, lively, enthusiastic—a pleasant quality in people, a disorderly one in liquids (see Hern and Johal).
E-waste, or electronic waste, consists of discarded electronic devices or electrical equipment. Unlike other household waste, e-waste contains substances like mercury, lead, cadmium, and arsenic, and should be carefully discarded or donated in order to mitigate contamination (for more on waste management, see Canada’s Waste Flow). Also see McCallum for a discussion of often-overlooked e-waste impacts from the production and recycling of electronic vehicle components.
Extractivism: A relationship with the Earth where natural resources are harvested based on their desirability and value in global markets and turned into capital gain (see Prieto; Hern and Johal; and McCallum). Rooted in the capitalist logic of perpetual growth, extractivism nevertheless has to contend with the reality of finite resources (see Cochrane), and remains highly controversial for its tendency to destroy Indigenous lands, exploit labour, and contaminate the environment.
Futurity refers to predictions and aspirations about the future, where divergent possible outcomes arise from current actions and/or inactions. As such, futurity is often used to examine and critique the present, and its plural form (futurities) allows for a consideration of multiple perspectives and possibilities. Future-oriented imaginings may draw on existing worldviews (see Murphy; and Muehlebach), or may be implicated in pragmatic or unpredictable outcomes of current realities (see Canada’s Waste Flow).
Geoengineering: technological intervention aimed at changing climate systems. Cloud seeding is a well-known example, where physical processes of cloud formation are altered (often through the addition of silver iodide to the atmosphere, shot from aircraft) to cause or prevent precipitation. Geoengineering includes tools proposed to fight climate change, such as carbon capture, climate cooling through cloud seeding, and outer space sun diffusion. Critics of geoengineering often assert that the gaps in our understanding of climate systems create risky conditions for intervention (see Sobecka).
An incredible variety of processes generate dust on Earth. Glacial dust, for example (see Moore), consists of sediment collected through the movement of water over thousands of years of glacial activity and deposited as glaciers recede. Volcanic dust includes fine rock particulate shot into the atmosphere after an eruption (see Sobecka). Fugitive dust describes particles that mainly come from the Earth’s soil (but not from a single specific source) which “escape” into the atmosphere.
Leachate typically refers to the often highly toxic liquid by-products resulting from the decomposition of waste (see Canada’s Waste Flow). Leachate storage is an ongoing consideration (as sequestering it and preventing groundwater contamination are paramount concerns), and creative, clean solutions are very desirable.
MODIS stands for Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, a technology used aboard NASA satellites to capture views of the Earth’s surface every one to two days, in order to contribute to the study of Earth’s dynamic processes (see Moore).
Multi-modal: involving many different modes. The Climate Change Project describes the city of Mississauga itself as multi-modal, which refers to the variety of options for people moving around the city. In the context of transport, tools like shipping containers (also described as intermodal containers) are lauded for their capacity to offer dimensional standardization for the transport of diverse goods; however, a shift towards containerization has also entailed drastic impacts on the environment and global trade (see Hart).
Particulate: Microscopic, pollutive particles of solid or liquid matter that circulate in the Earth’s atmosphere, and in human and animal bodies through inhalation (see Murphy; Prieto; and Sobecka). Particulate sources vary, from the natural to human-made, including vehicle emissions, dust storms, volcanoes, and power plants (see Canada’s Waste Flow). This term may also describe the nearly invisible plastic particles (termed microplastics) circulating in bodies of water throughout the globe (see Shear).
Reciprocity denotes a relationship of exchange and mutual benefit, commonly referring to transactions external to the formal, money-mediated market (see Cochrane). Reciprocity is based in social interaction, where peers negotiate their informal debts and credits to one another (see Prieto; and Radović). Reciprocity is used as a technical term in many different fields, from psychology to international relations, but common among them is the belief that relationships depend on an acknowledgment of mutual responsibility (see Murphy; Naveau; Muehlebach; and Shear).
Rematriation: The practice of returning people, territories, ancestral remains, artifacts, property, and other articles of symbolic value to their original homelands and/or stewards (see Hern and Johal). Rematriation shifts from ideas of repatriation (from the Latin repatriare—“to return to one’s fatherland”) in order to resist its patriarchal connotations. The concept of rematriation understands colonialism as an ongoing process and reality that must be resisted in the present day, rather than a purely historical occurrence, and is closely related to strategies of decolonization (see Murphy; Naveau; and Muehlebach; as well as the first issue of the SDUK broadsheet: GRAFTING).
Reproductive justice recognizes structural inequities in who has access to reproductive choices, including barriers based on race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, age, nationality, and legal status. Originating in racialized communities, the term views reproductive decisions within a web of interconnected economic, social, and environmental issues. Indigenous reproductive justice (see Murphy) highlights how settler colonialism and extractivism (see Hern and Johal) impose their destructive will on both land and bodies.
Vitality ascribes liveliness both to human and non-human beings, and thereby questions the nature of life and agency (see Naveau; and Muehlebach). Formally theorized in the European post-Enlightenment field of vitalism, this notion contrasts strongly with a mechanistic understanding of life, where entities are seen as machines determined by biological or chemical processes. Vitality/liveliness also complicates the primacy of humans as thinkers and decision-makers, and opens us up to understanding the ways other beings shape our world (see Murphy; Hart; and Radović).
Waterways are routes for travel by water, including rivers, canals, or seaways that provide access for ocean-going ships. The language of waterways emphasizes their relationship to navigation, shipping, and transport (see Hart), and stands in contrast to other ways of describing bodies of water that encompass social, historical, health, climate, and ecological aspects of water (for more on these intersections, see Moore; Murphy; Naveau; Muehlebach; Shear; and profiles of the Great Lakes Water Walk and the TRCA’s Multicultural Connections Program).