For The Love Of A'Se'k: Piktukowaq's (Re)Assertion Of Autonomy In Pursuit Of A Healthier Community, Lands, Waters, And Future Generations, Serena E. Mendizabal

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Pictou Landing First Nation (PLFN) has experienced the impacts of being exposed to the effluent treatment facility for a pulp mill for decades, but in 2020, it was announced that the treatment facility would finally close. In my research, I will investigate and compare two sets of PLFN health data from 2014 and 2019 to answer the following research questions: 1) Does community health for the PLFN improve over time when community members have more autonomy over environmental decision-making?; and 2) Does Pictou Landing First Nation's relationship to place improve with more autonomy in environmental decision making? I will use …

Creative Common Worlding With Research Creation In Early Childhood Education, Sarah M. Hennessy

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Creative Common worlding with research-creation in early childhood education engages with provocations that disrupt dominant understandings of children and their relations with more-than-human and human others. Reconceptualizing alternatives through art, this dissertation contemplates the potent possibilities beyond human stewardship, underscores the influence of an uncommoning lens, and emphasizes the difficulties with humancentric notions of research. If, by disrupting how we understand ourselves and our role in place, we modify our actions and change our habits, then perhaps we can live differently and contribute differently to the planet. Through a common worlds framework together with research-creation, this dissertation considers climate education …

Participatory Knowledge Of Motion: Ezhianishinaabebimaadiziyaang Mii Sa Ezhianishinaabeaadisokeyaang. The Way In Which We Live, That Is The Way We Write Stories., Erin E. Huner

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This is a dissertation based upon the Customary Ways Dataset, which is comprised of 50 interviews given by Elders from Walpole Island First Nation, in 2010. The over-arching, community-designed research question that guided this dissertation was: How do the Elders of Walpole Island describe their relationship to the land? To answer this question, I co-designed a mixed-methods analysis that included traditional methods from the Social Sciences, including Grounded Theory, to establish emergent themes, and some simple statistical analysis using Chi-square and crosstab analysis. I also utilized methods closely related to the Humanities, deploying Story Mapping, Close Reading and a …

Water Governance In The Lerma-Chapala Basin Of Mexico: A Shift From State-Centred To A Multi-Stakeholder Approach?, Luis F. Silva Jimenez

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The purpose of this dissertation is to develop a framework for assessing water governance by consolidating and refining disparate principles of water governance in the existing research literature. The developed framework is then applied in a case study of the Lerma Chapala basin in Mexico to assess the state of water governance, and identify accomplishments and constraints in the implementation of an effective water governance system. The study conducts a content analysis of primary data collected through semi-structured interviews with multiple stakeholders in the basin (N=51) and secondary data from national water policy documents (N=18).

Overall, the study identified one …

Wind Energy Policy, Development, And Justice In Ontario And Nova Scotia, Canada: A Comparison Of Technocratic And Community-Based Siting Processes, Chad Jr Walker

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This thesis primarily examines wind energy policy and development through the lens of local acceptance and environmental justice in Ontario and Nova Scotia, Canada. It has been argued that encouraging more participatory planning alongside introducing financial benefits, can powerfully shape local responses. With little in the Canadian context to substantiate this claim, this dissertation attempts to fill a gap in the literature. The thesis also investigates a methodological question within the social scientific, mixed method literature. Using a small subset of this literature associated with wind energy development, research was undertaken to examine potential relationships between research design and method …

Wilket Creek: Urbanization, Geomorphology, Policy, And Design, Danielle Barr

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The understanding of the morphology of an urbanized channel is currently limited to a ‘black box’ understanding in that the main driving force of morphological change is hydrologic. This study aimed to expand our understanding of urbanized channels by conducting a socio-geomorphological investigation; that is, the natural and policy-driven events and processes leading to the current channel form. A fluvial audit including historical analysis and fieldwork was conducted in Wilket Creek, a southern Ontario urbanized channel, along with a review of provincial and municipal policy and reports. Overall, it was concluded that the current morphology of Wilket Creek is the …

Beyond The Edge Of The Planted Field: Exploring Community-Based Environmental Education, And Invisible Losses In Settler And Indigenous Cultural Contexts, Samantha Da Rosa Holmes

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The Walpole Island Land Trust and the Sydenham Field Naturalists came together for a focus group at the Walpole Island Heritage Centre and spoke of the relevance environmental education plays in the awareness of a shared history between communities from separate cultural contexts. From the focus group this research is able to contextualize the conversation between a non-Indigenous and an Indigenous community-based environmental organization, and their focus on the relationship between people, place, and history. The context of the conversation being the colonial legacies of land use management and educational practices and how these institutions prolong the effect of invisible …

Uncertainty Analysis Of The Performance Of A System Of Best Management Practices For Achieving Phosphorus Load Reduction To Surface Waters, Jason D.M. Igras

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The repeated occurrence of Lake Erie’s harmful algal blooms suggests an inadequate phosphorus management system that results in excessive loads to the lake. In response, Canadian and United States’ governments have issued a new management objective, a 40% reduction in total and dissolved reactive phosphorus loads relative to 2008. To provide scientific evidence to guide managers toward achieving their management objective, we used the International Organization of Standardization (ISO) 31010 Bowtie Risk Analysis Tool to analyze the performance of the phosphorus management system. The effectiveness of agricultural best management practices (BMPs) and their adoption were combined into a Bayesian belief …

Environment And Human Health In The Anthropocene: Interaction Between Natural And Social Systems In Coastal Tanzania, Frederick A. Armah

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Coastal Tanzania, a region of historical and geopolitical importance in the western Indian Ocean, is a place where the problem of rapid environmental change is inextricably entwined with the challenges of development. In this region, although the fingerprint of the anthropocene has been discernible over the last century, there is paucity of research on how the population has interacted with the changing environment to generate disparities in perceptions of climate change and human health outcomes. The objectives of this thesis are four-fold: to assess barriers to climate change adaptation based on context (place), to explain group disparities in barriers to …

Impact Of Agroecology Adoption, Migration And Remittance Receipt On Household Welfare, Joseph Kangmennaang

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This thesis aims to examine the impact of two livelihood strategies on household wellbeing in Northern and Central Malawi. Specifically, the study aims to examine how agroecology adoption, migration and remittance receipt impact household food security and asset poverty levels. Prior research has revealed that agroecological farming methods and remittance receipt can increase productivity, yield stability and resilience of family farmers as well as increase their incomes and propel them out of poverty. Agroecology as an alternative agricultural approach has gained momentum through some high-level FAO meetings as well as reports highlighting its potential. Migration and remittances flows have also …

Claims Of The City? Rights Of The Countryside? Politics Of Water Contestation In The Mumbai-Thane Region Of India, Bharat Khushal Punjabi

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This dissertation comprises three papers that focus on the interplay of formal and informal institutional processes in the sharing of water between the Mumbai Metropolitan region and an agricultural area to its north and east in Thane district. The first paper focuses on the interests and motivations that influence the everyday practices of the canal bureaucracy in the Surya project in Dahanu. This paper is largely a critique of the application of rational choice theory to analyzing bureaucratic corruption in a literature in development studies that was pioneered by Robert Wade. Using an ethnographic narrative style, the paper seeks to …

The Production Of Unequal Vulnerability To Flood Hazards In Metro Vancouver, Canada, Greg S. Oulahen

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Flood risk is a growing concern in Canada’s cities. Residents of these cities have differential risk according to their unique vulnerability and exposure to flood hazards. Factors related to societal structural forces, human agency, and place interact to produce vulnerability to hazards. Analysis of the factors that influence vulnerability will lead to a better understanding of how unequal vulnerability to hazards is produced among residents of a city. This dissertation investigates the factors that influence vulnerability to flood hazards in a Canadian coastal urban region, Metro Vancouver. It develops and applies a conceptual framework for looking across scales and across …

Dirty Modernism: Ecological Objects In American Poetry, Michael D. Sloane

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This dissertation examines how early-to-mid twentieth century American poetry is preoccupied with objects that unsettle the divide between nature and culture. Given the entanglement of these two domains, I argue that American modernism is “dirty.” This designation leads me to sketch what I call “dirty modernism,” which includes the registers of waste, energy, animality, raciality, and the sensual. Reading these registers, I turn to what I call “ecological objects,” or representations of how nature and culture come together, which includes trash, natural resources, inanimals, and tools. Through an ecocritical mode of analysis, I introduce dirty modernism with the Baroness Elsa …

Environmental Health Effects Of Multiple Exposures: Systemic Risks And The Detroit River International Crossing Study, Tor H. Oiamo

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This thesis examines cumulative exposures to traffic noise and outdoor air pollution on environmental and health related quality of life in Windsor, Ontario, and provides a critical analysis of the environmental assessment process for the Detroit River International Crossing (DRIC) Study. The research utilizes a systemic risk framework to understand environmental health and stress effects of cumulative exposures. The significance of this research is based on a relative absence of literature on the systemic health risks of cumulative exposures and the need to elucidate environmental annoyance as a health outcome for risk assessment. The objectives of the research were to …

Hungry Farmers: A Political Ecology Of Agriculture And Food Security In Northern Ghana, Hanson Nyantakyi-Frimpong

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Whilst Ghana has made momentous strides in national food security over the last decade, peasants in the rural north, indeed, those who produce the bulk of the country’s food, are also the hungriest population. This paradox immediately raises profound questions for research in human-environment geography. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate some of these questions, with particular emphasis on why Ghana’s food system is failing precisely those who produce food. The research combines insights from agrarian political economy and political ecology, and is informed by nine months of intensive fieldwork. Three carefully selected case studies uncover the full …

Climate Change And Human Rights: A Case Study Of Vulnerability And Adaptation In Coastal Communities In Lagos, Nigeria., Idowu M. Ajibade

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Lagos, Nigeria is one the world’s megacities at risk from climate change. Communities along the coast have been hit hard by floods, storm surges, and rising seas, due to the city’s geographic location, inadequate infrastructures, and poor urban governance. These factors together with social inequality have been known to shape vulnerability to climatic hazards but less understood is the role of human rights.

The objective of this thesis is to develop a grounded understanding of the links between human rights and the vulnerability of people to climate change impacts (i.e. floods and storm surges). The study combined qualitative and quantitative …

Geography, News Media Discourse, And Water Management: A Case Study Of The Devils Lake Outlet, Daniel J. Bednar

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This thesis explores the print news media discourse surrounding the dispute between Manitoba and North Dakota over a flood mitigation plan in Devils Lake North Dakota. In order to do so, critical discourse analysis was applied to news media from a seventeen year period during the dispute. Findings were compared between media sources as well as to pertinent policy documents. The thesis finds that the political arena provided by local newspapers as well as the discourses of scale, confrontation, history, and economics had the largest effect on the dispute’s public face. A total of nine findings within these areas are …

“Winds Of Change”: Explaining Support For Wind Energy Developments In Ontario, Canada, Chad Jr Walker

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This thesis addresses a major gap in the wind turbine and risk assessment literatures. It explains local support for wind energy in some areas in spite of vocal opposition in others. Findings from Port Burwell and Clear Creek, Ontario indicate that social and contextual forces may help explain much of the difference in opinion between the two communities. The case study was focused through 21 in-depth interviews. The interviews were analyzed verbatim using NVIVO 9 software. The findings were found to be consistent with Kasperson’s theory of the Social Amplification of Risk and seem to explain why Port Burwell is …