Author: Milan

British Columbia floods and mudslides

Following up on summers with severe wildfires, BC has received an ‘atmospheric river’ of rain, in some places a month’s worth in a day.

The floods and landslides have cut off all the highways connecting Vancouver and the lower mainland to the rest of BC and Canada, and the Port of Vancouver has closed down, holding back over $400 million worth of exports per day.

In the National Observer John Woodside has a piece about how these disasters are partly climate-caused, since lost roots and ground cover would have helped hold the soil in place to prevent landslides. Of course, the clearcutting uphill of these slides is both an important cause and an activity that worsens climate change.

Maina, Murray, and McKenzie summarize the literature on campus fossil fuel divestment

From: Maina, Naomi Mumbi and Jaylene Murray and Marcia McKenzie. “Climate change and the fossil fuel divestment movement in Canadian higher education: The mobilities of actions, actors, and tactics.” Journal of Cleaner Production. 2020:

Prior to the current research, few studies have reviewed Canadian HEIs [higher education institutions] investment policies or divestment activities in relation to climate action (Curnow and Gross, 2016; Del Rio, 2017). There has been limited scholarly work on the FFD movement in HEIs in general. The few studies that have examined the movement have explored student activism in climate justice, the connections between FFD and sustainability in higher education, and the factors influencing divestment decisions across the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Netherlands (Curnow and Gross, 2016; Bratman et al., 2016; Grady-Benson and Sarathy, 2016 [sic]; Hamaekers, 2015; Healy and Debski, 2016; LeQuesne, 2016; Ringeling, 2015; Singer-Berk et al., 2014). Studies outside of Canada indicate that FFD is increasingly being engaged as a response to the failure of HEIs to adequately address climate change, and is seeking to (re)politicize climate action by demanding transformative and radical change (Bratman et al., 2016; Healy and Debski, 2016; Ringeling, 2015). In the US, several studies found that students previously involved in sustainability initiatives are now more likely to focus their attention on FFD, with support from other stakeholders such as sustainability officers (Singer-Berk et al., 2014).

Decisions to commit to and/or reject divestment have been reported across U.S., Canada, and U.K. HEIs, with most of the commitments coming from small universities and colleges with smaller endowment funds (Hamaekers, 2015; Healy and Debski, 2016; Grady-Benson and Sarathy, 2016). Common reasons for rejections have been said to include fiduciary duty, cost risk to endowment funds, and minimal impact on fossil fuel industry (Bratman et al., 2016; Healy and Debski, 2016; Singer-Berk et al., 2014). Despite rejections, studies have shown that organizers have escalated their campaign tactics to involve direct action and are prepared to carry out long term organizing until their demands are met (Grady-Benson and Sarathy, 2016; LeQuesne, 2016; Ringeling, 2015).

In the case of the Canadian higher education FFD movement, one of the two existing scholarly studies shows that campaign organizing is shifting towards an intersectional social justice framing (Curnow and Gross, 2016). It describes a shift among FFD student leaders and national organizers such as Divestment Student Network (DSN) towards engagement with race, colonialism, environmentalism and solidarity with Indigenous frontline communities (Curnow and Gross, 2016). The two Canadian studies focused on the campaign at the University of Toronto, outlining the motivations, goals, and outcomes of this campaign (Curnow and Gross, 2016; Del Rio, 2017).

References: (as formatted by these authors)

Curnow and Gross, 2016
J. Curnow, A. Gross
Injustice is not an investment: student activism, climate justice, and the fossil fuel divestment campaign
J. Conner, S.M. Rosen (Eds.), Contemporary Youth Activism: Advancing Social Justice in the United States, Praeger, Santa Barbara, California (2016), pp. 367-386

Del Rio, 2017
F. Del Rio
In a World where Climate Change Is everything…; Conceptualizing Climate Activism and Exploring the People’s Climate Movement (Master’s Dissertation)
Retrieved from McMaster University Libraries Institutional Repository (2017)

Bratman et al., 2016
E. Bratman, K. Brunette, D.C. Shelly, S. Nicholson
Justice is the goal: divestment as climate change resistance
J. Environ. Soc. Sci., 6 (4) (2016), pp. 677-690

Grady-Benson and Sarathy, 2015
J. Grady-Benson, B. Sarathy
Fossil fuel divestment in US higher education: student-led organising for climate justice
Local Environ.: Int. J. Justice. Sustain., 21 (6) (2015), pp. 661-681

Hamaekers, 2015
N. Hamaekers
Why Some Divestment Campaigns Achieve Divestment while Others Do Not: the Influence of Leadership, Organization, Institutions, Culture and Resources (Doctoral Dissertation)
Retrieved from Rotterdam School of Management: Erasmus University (2015)

Healy and Debski, 2016
N. Healy, J. Debski
Fossil fuel divestment: implications for the future of sustainability discourse and action within higher education
Local Environ., 22 (6) (2016), pp. 699-724

Singer-Berk et al., 2014
L. Singer-Berk, M. Matsuoka, B. Shamasunder
Campuses of the Future: the Interplay of Fossil Fuel Divestment and Sustainability Efforts at Colleges and Universities
(2014)

LeQuesne, 2016
T. LeQuesne
Revolutionary Talk: Communicating Climate Justice
Master’s Thesis, University of California, Santa Barbara (2016)

Ringeling, 2015
X. Ringeling
Transformative Reformism: A Study of the UK University Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement’s Potential for Significant Change
Master’s thesis, University College London (2015)

Theories for why the University of Toronto divested from fossil fuels

Not mutually exclusive:

  1. They are about to launch a bicentennial fundraising campaign with themes including healthy lives, sustainable future, and the next generation. They feared negative public relations attention if they launched the campaign while continuing to refuse to divest
  2. The university’s investment managers have decided that they can better retain authority and control by choosing how to divest on their own terms, and particularly with little reference to the culpability of the industry
  3. In trying to implement the prior environmental, social, and governance (ESG) screening method, the investment managers at the University of Toronto Asset Management (UTAM) corporation decided that divestment would be easier or better based on their secret internal metrics
  4. The Harvard announcement and COP26 have added to the pressure to announce new efforts
  5. U of T perceived that it was increasingly behind when a growing number of Canadian schools had made divestment commitments
  6. A student-led volunteer campaign persisted through multiple setbacks and core cohort graduations and was sustained by the University of Toronto Leap Manifesto chapter and subsequently the Divestment & Beyond faculty- and union-led campaign after the Toronto350.org / UofT350.org effort

As in the campaign as a whole, the university’s penchant for secrecy makes it challenging to explain or understand their actions. In particular, that includes the parlour trick of setting up your own investment management corporation as a means of evading oversight, by pretending that somehow the advice from this organization should only be available to the administration in secret.

Divest Podcast on the Leap Manifesto U of T divestment campaign

The latest episode of The Divest Podcast features Julia DaSilva from the Leap Manifesto chapter at U of T, the second of three groups to organize divestment campaigns, after the Toronto350.org / UofT350.org campaign and before / concurrently with the faculty/union Divestment & Beyond campaign.