The Climate Change Project, City of Mississauga
The Port Credit-based Association for Canadian Educational Resources (ACER) works with educators to foster environmental observation and literacy among youth. Their recently launched Citizen Science program equips participants with the technical tools, scientific expertise, and leadership skills necessary to conduct local studies of environmental change. Founding President Alice Casselman notes that citizen scientists adopt this role through ACER’s training, which encourages sustained observation and measurement of local surroundings. For instance, Casselman notes the importance of “ground-truthing,” the practice of direct observation that verifies or elaborates on satellite imagery. In this process, citizen scientists can mobilize large volunteer teams—as in the case of annual bird counts—to obtain data that would otherwise be unfeasible for professional scientists to gather. Equipped with measuring tape, binoculars, notepads, and smartphones, citizen scientists document their local environments in ways that are important to professional scientists and policymakers alike. The growth of citizen science comes not only from the necessity to document climate change, but also from a desire for greater embodied connections with natural spaces.
For the Credit River Anglers Association, fishing is largely the final outcome of an ambitious program aimed at restoring fish populations in the Credit River. Over nearly three decades of operation, the CRAA has faced the challenges of ecological restoration for a river that has been degraded by human activities for two centuries through pollution, erosion, deforestation, and damming. Conscious that fish are a key indicator of overall ecosystem health, the CRAA’s activities are diverse: members plant native species on riverbanks, optimize fish ladders for migration, and operate a fish hatchery that requires daily oversight year-round. In doing so, the CRAA maintains partnerships with municipalities and regional governments, conservation areas, private partners, and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Fisheries. Although the latter oversees fish populations, the CRAA’s activities promote fish stewardship practices that go beyond the animals’ characterization as a natural resource. Paying close attention to the diversity of ecological stressors, the CRAA intervenes in waterway environments in ways that work to reverse human-caused harms.
The Household-level Urban Socio-Ecology Laboratory (HOUSE Lab), directed by Tenley Conway, Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Toronto Mississauga, examines the diversity of human-environmental interactions in cities, suburbs, and exurban sites. Conway’s lab has studied a variety of local issues in Mississauga, including the impacts of the 2013 ice storm, residents’ attitudes toward municipal tree policies, urban agriculture, and urban forestry. HOUSE Lab uses diverse methodologies, including digital mapping, remote sensing (such as satellite imaging), interviews, surveys, and historical data. This multifaceted approach is crucial to the study of human-environmental interactions, given that residents’ positions are informed by diverse motivations—be they economic, emotional, historical, scientific, or spiritual. HOUSE Lab’s work observes growing urbanization amid environmental change—two converging issues that are acutely felt with the rise of extreme weather events—as well as increased interest in urban agriculture, and rising challenges to urban forests caused by invasive species and climate change. Conway’s lab provides data and studies to inform citizens, scientists, urban planners, and policymakers about issues concerning natural urban environments.
Making Social Knowledge is the collaborative project of Elizabeth F. Hall, Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, and Todd Sanders, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Its central concern is to explore how natural scientists, social scientists, and humanities scholars produce “useful,” impactful,” and policy-relevant knowledge about global environmental change, as well as how their knowledge practices relate to others within and beyond the academy. The statement published on their website reads:
“We live in a knowledge society, wherein knowledge of every sort makes the world go round. We produce and manage knowledge. We commodify and sell it. We use it to know and to govern ourselves, others, and the planet. But what is this thing we call ‘knowledge’? How is it made? How does it work? What’s it worth? When is it new? Or useful for policy? And who says? […]
The Riverwood Conservancy’s Enabling Garden is a teaching garden that creates inclusive space for people of all ages and abilities. It is animated by planters that accommodate mobility devices, raised beds, and ramps; wide-edged planters that support sitting, resting, and leaning; and sensory gardens with red, white, yellow, and orange plants for people with vision loss. At the core of Riverwood’s educational programming is the notion that participation in urban wilderness, horticulture, and conservation is not simply about building skills in environmental sciences, biology, or geology, but also about integrating the natural world into everyday wellbeing. Embracing this commitment, the Enabling Garden roots access and inclusion into the cycles of seeding, planting, and harvesting. Making space for nature beyond the cultivated space of the garden, Enabling Garden programs feature opportunities to engage with birding, tree and plant identification, rocks and fossils from the banks of the Credit River, as well as programs focused on healthy eating and personal renewal, as well as the management of trauma, grief, and anxiety. Throughout these programs, the Enabling Garden encourages participants to respond to the land beyond information gathering and scientific analysis: as a space for re-envisioning embodied and spiritual connections to our surroundings.
With growing concern over Colony Collapse Disorder (the disappearance of large numbers of worker bees from otherwise stable honeybee colonies) since the mid-2000s, many environmentalists, beekeepers, and citizens are turning their attention to urban methods for conserving and sustaining pollinators. At the University of Toronto Mississauga, a project to introduce beehives to a green roof atop the Instructional Building was launched in 2017, and aims to increase food sustainability on campus and support pollinators and the plant communities that rely on them. The University’s Facilities Management and Planning Team identified the rooftop as an under-utilized and ideal apian habitat, and together with Hospitality & Retail Services and beekeeper Don Forster (who works with hives across Southern Ontario) and introduced about 5,000 bees to the campus last June. Since then, the population of Buckfast bees has risen to over 15,000. Honey produced by these bees has been made available to the campus community, with the bees’ growing numbers facilitating the reproduction and diversity of plants well beyond the bounds of the university.