Tag Archives: climate change

Featured thesis: Behind the green screen – critiquing the narratives of climate change documentaries

By Paige McKellar Strapp Bennett

https://dspace.library.uvic.ca:8443/handle/1828/12488

A Master of Arts thesis in the Department of Geography

Abstract:

As the climate crisis continues unabated, documentary films have become an increasingly popular medium through which to communicate its causes and impacts. Such films are an easily accessible form of mass media that has the potential to reach wide-ranging and large audiences, and often star popular celebrities. However, few academic studies have examined climate change documentaries and considered the ‘story’ of climate change that such films create. The lack of critical engagement with climate change documentaries is significant as it suggests the narratives of such films have been left largely unexamined despite their importance as a form of popular environmental communication. In this thesis, I use content analysis and narrative analysis to examine how 10 popular climate change documentaries tell the ‘story’ of climate change and produce specific ‘imaginative geographies’ about regions that are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Though I note throughout my analysis that there are several moments of rupture in which counter-narratives emerge, the dominant discourse throughout these 10 films is one that generally reinforces Western science and technocratic modernity as the solution to climate change, and racialized ‘Others’ as its passive victims. Understanding how climate change documentaries construct their narratives and select their specific topics of focus provides important insight into how popular ‘imaginaries’ regarding the climate crisis have been produced.

To read more, visit UVicSpace

*UVic’s open access repository, UVicspace, makes worldwide knowledge mobilization possible. Through this platform, researchers at any institution have access to dissertations (and theses and graduate projects) published by our graduate students. This also makes works available to the interested layperson, who may be engaged in learning more about the research being done at UVic, with no paywall. UVic’s graduate students are doing valuable research every day – but sometimes it goes unsung. Our goal with this series is to shine a light on our students by featuring excellence, one achievement at a time.

The UVic LIbraries ePublishing Services Team

Some Corals Can Survive Through Relentless Heat Waves, Surprising Scientists

December 11, 2020|Smithsonian Magazine via UVic News

A team of researchers had the chance to collaborate on a study of brain and star corals in the middle of a heat wave that lasted from 2015 to 2016. The team narrowed their focus on Christmas Island (also known as Kiritimati) for in-depth observations on the recovery of bleached coral during a heat wave rather than after sea temperatures had cooled down.

In a sea of grim news, researchers have found a glimmer of hope: Some corals have the capacity to recover from bleaching, even in the middle of a heat wave, reports Erik Stokstad for Science. The team published their findings this week in Nature Communications.

This paper features co-authors, Danielle C. Claar, Samuel Starko, Kristina L. Tietjen, Hannah E. Epstein & Julia K. Baum. Collaborators include UVic Biology faculty members, postdoctoral researchers, and students. They are also a part of Baum’s lab team at UVic whose research is dedicated to the impact of climate change on the ocean and the marine life that thrives there. The Copyright and Scholarly Communications Office encourages you to explore this article and to read more of their important work by visiting UVic’s institutional repository, UVicSpace.

Featured Dissertation: Physical Controls on Extremes of Oceanic Carbon and Oxygen in Coastal Waters

by Zelalem M. Engida

UVic News recently announced that “Times Higher Education released its 2020 world university rankings by subject for physical sciences and psychology, placing UVic programs in these areas among the Top 200 around the globe”. To celebrate, we would like to feature some of our graduate research associated with those disciplines.

Today, we feature research in Earth and Ocean Sciences: https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/handle/1828/11209

Abstract (excerpt):

The west coast of Vancouver Island is located at the northern end of the California Current System, one of the world’s Eastern Boundary Current Systems. The region is characterized by wind driven coastal upwelling and high productivity, which supports fisheries and related industries. Climate change poses a challenge to these industries by increasing seawater acidity and decreasing dissolved oxygen levels, which are two of the multi-stressors of marine organisms. This thesis explores the relative importance of different physical and biological mechanisms that affect oxygen and carbon extremes in the region.
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This thesis has identified relative locations within the study domain of priority for effective monitoring of dissolved oxygen and carbon extremes in the study region. Finally, joint DIC- O2 extreme events are found to be common at the end of the summer. This information can be used to inform adaptation and mitigation plans aimed at protecting the economic and bequest value of the coast from potential hazards associated with oxygen and carbon extremes.

To read more, visit UVicSpace https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/handle/1828/11209

*UVic’s open access repository, UVicspace, makes worldwide knowledge mobilization possible. Through this platform, researchers at any institution have access to dissertations (and theses and graduate projects) published by our graduate students. This also makes works available to the interested layperson, who may be engaged in learning more about the research being done at UVic, with no paywall. UVic’s graduate students are doing valuable research every day – but sometimes it goes unsung. Our goal with this series is to shine a light on our students by featuring excellence, one achievement at a time.

The UVic LIbraries ePublishing Services Team

Featured Thesis: Climate Justice in the Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement

UVic News recently announced that UVic ranks among the top performers in 10 fields, according to the 2019 Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings by Subject.  To celebrate, we would like to feature some of the graduate research under each of these disciplines. Today, I will start with a 2018 School of Environmental Studies thesis:

Climate justice in the fossil fuel divestment movement: critical reflections on youth environmental organizing in Canada

by Emilia Belliveau

Abstract:

The fossil fuel divestment movement is a directed-network campaign that strategically uses economic and ethical arguments to challenge the social license of the fossil fuel industry. Fossil fuel divestment campaigns have become an induction point for the youth climate movement in North America (Grady-Benson & Sarathy, 2015; Rowe et. al., 2016). The analytical and operational approaches to social change employed by the fossil fuel divestment movement are having a ripple effect on the political orientation of a new generation of activists and environmental leaders. This thesis explores concepts and practices of climate justice in the fossil fuel divestment movement on Canadian university campuses, as a flashpoint in the shifting terrain of environmentalism. The research uses qualitative methods to analyze three case study campaigns, as well as supplemental interviews from additional campaign members and national coordinating organizations like 350.org and the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition. This project contributes to a growing body of literature concerned with applied political theory (Rowe et. al., 2016; Schifeling & Hoffman, 2017) and the social impacts of fossil fuel divestment (Bratman et al, 2016; Grady-Benson & Sarathy, 2015; Mangat et al., 2018), providing new insight into the potential of divestment organizing to disrupt dominant narratives of mainstream environmentalism. Fossil fuel divestment organizers are articulating climate justice analysis that calls for transformative system change, including critiques of neoliberal capitalism that are predominantly grounded in climate justice approaches.

To read more, visit UVicSpace https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/handle/1828/10052

*UVic’s open access repository, UVicspace, makes worldwide knowledge mobilization possible. Through this platform, researchers at any institution have access to dissertations (and theses and graduate projects) published by our graduate students. This also makes works available to the interested layperson, who may be engaged in learning more about the research being done at UVic, with no paywall. UVic’s graduate students are doing valuable research every day – but sometimes it goes unsung. Our goal with this series is to shine a light on our students by featuring excellence, one achievement at a time.

The UVic LIbraries ePublishing Services Team