Upcoming Global Friday Event
‘Why Would They Care?’: Youth, Resource Extraction, and Climate Change in Northern British Columbia, Canada
Vanessa Sloan Morgan Postdoctoral Fellow Geography Department & Health Arts Research Centre University of Northern British Columbia
Date: January 31, 2020 Time: 12:00 – 1:30pm Location: 5-175 Also available via Livestream www.unbc.ca/livestream
ABSTRACT: Discussion about local decision-making tends to overlook rural and remote youth engagement. Resource extractive industries are, however, fixtures in many rural, remote, northern, and Indigenous communities in settler colonial British Columbia (BC), Canada. These industries shape youths’ perceived options for social and economic ventures when they are looking towards their futures. By engaging literature on climate change, settler colonialism, and critical Indigenous studies, and drawing on empirics from workshops conducted with youth from the Nechako Valley Lakes District in northern BC, we will explore how rural and remote northern and Indigenous youth engagement and perspectives can transform discussions on climate change and resource extraction. This talk will share how rural and northern youth have been engaged in environmental decision-making, particularly in light of resource extraction and the current climate crisis. We will also suggest that environmental decision-making has at times been extractive itself. We will conclude that when engaged meaningfully, youth desire to work collectively against social and environmental injustices.
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Global Friday gratefully acknowledges funding from the Dean of CASH