Course:IGS585/OK2022WT2

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Knowledge Mobilization and Sustainability Policy
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Google Streetview capture of Brandt's Creek outflow north of Clement in Kelowna.
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IGS 585
Section:
Instructor: John Janmaat
Kh Md Nahiduzzaman (Nahid)
Email: john.janmaat@ubc.ca

kh.nahiduzzaman@ubc.ca

Office: ART 231

EME 4288

Office Hours: By appointment
Class Schedule: Tuesday 08:00 - 11:00
Classroom: FIP 139
Important Course Pages
Syllabus
Lecture Notes
Assignments
Course Discussion
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Knowledge Mobilization and Sustainability Policy - Student Reflections

Guest Speakers

  • March 7, 2023
    • No reflections.

Reflections

Knowledge mobilization is, in the end, a process of integrating new knowledge into ones own personal existing body of knowledge. Reflection is an important part of that integration. For each of our guest speakers, each student will post a reflection. The links above take you to the reflections on each of the guest speakers.

Each reflection is a maximum of 500 words. Each student's reflections will be posted on the Wiki page for the guest speaker linked to above. A table below shows the reflection that each student is to reflect on. A reflection on a peer's reflection is not a grading or criticism, but a comment on what has been gained by considering how someone else was affected by the session. This reflection on the reflection will be no more than 200 words.

A good reflection should contain:

  • Reflective thinking as a clear explanation of your own thinking and learning processes, as well as implications for future learning,
  • Analysis explores in in-depth the learning experience, the value of the derived learning to self or others, and the enhancement of your appreciation for the interdisciplinary intersections,
  • Making connections articulates multiple connections between this learning experience and content from other courses, past learning, life experiences and/or future goals.

Reflections on Reflections

Each student will review and write a reflection on the reflection of one other student. These are the 'reflections on reflections'. Assignments are in the table below.

Reflection
# Student Name #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9a #9b #10 #11 #12
1 Kevin Auster 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 9 12 11 10
2 Sofia Bahmutsky 1 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 4 1 12 11
3 Anjali Desai 2 1 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 2 1 12
4 Anne Furman 3 2 1 12 11 10 9 8 5 3 2 1
5 Gabrielle Heschuk 4 3 2 1 12 11 10 9 7 4 3 2
6 Em Isaak 5 4 3 2 1 12 11 10 1 5 4 3
7 Ilyas Kanybek 6 5 4 3 2 1 12 11 8 6 5 4
8 Thomas Letcher-Nicholls 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 12 10 7 6 5
9 Hoda Pourpirali 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 3 8 7 6
10 Daisy Pullman 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 11 9 8 7
11 Shaiyan Siddique 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 12 10 9 8
12 Leandra Vanbaelinghem 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 2 11 10 9

Reflections Notes

John Janmaat

Thanks to all of you who wrote reflections. It is interesting to read what you took away from the material our guests shared, and how it affected your thinking.

A few things stood out to me.

  • Disappointment that we can't just move the system towards the more sustainable approaches pretty much everyone agrees are needed for our future wellbeing.
  • An appreciation for the dedication of our guests for moving the system towards more sustainable solutions through the channels where they have some influence.
  • Discouragement and even disillusionment that efforts at integrating Indigenous people's and perspectives into decision making is as limited as it seems to be.

Early on we talked about the importance of systems thinking. These things you have noticed are, from my perspective, a consequence of the interconnections of a complex social-ecological system. Among the English speaking nations of the world, individuals are charged with much of the responsibility for protecting and promoting their interests. The system that has developed is meant to provide individuals with the tools to do so. There is a great reluctance to use the powers of the state to override the choices of individuals. Rather, laws and courts provide means by which individuals can seek protection from being wronged and redress if they have been wronged. It is easy to find many injustices, many of which reflect that people with more money can buy themselves more justice. However, the alternative of a more activist state that limits individual choices to pursue some conception of the collective good is by many seen as worse than the injustices that are a consequence of the system we have. And many also see the risk from 'too much government' as more serious than the risks posed by environmental degradation.

A consequence of our Anglo-Western approach is that we have to bring enough people on board with a change if it has any chance of success. On board means that enough (influential) people have had their own position protected or enhanced so that they won't try to block the change. This process takes time and is fraught with politics, where people try to enhance their own position. Is it the best process, particularly in the face of a global environmental crisis? What is the alternative? This is a classic wicked problem, where there is no right answer. Any path forward is a negotiation between people having different values. In the strongly Anglo-Western influenced cultures, individual freedom is a strong, although sometimes poorly defined, value. We spend considerable resource, both time and money and environmental damage, trying to ensure that freedoms are not compromised. Other nations and cultures, with different governance systems, have sometimes been able to change the direction of the ship of state more rapidly. Is it time for an environmental dictatorship to force pro-environmental choices on us, before it is too late? Can we convince enough people of the urgency of the current crisis so that change can happen quickly within our existing system? A different system might make it easier to do something good for Brandt's Creek. However, I think Brandt's creek is small enough in most people's minds that there is little scope for changing the system in order to do something good with Brandt's Creek. So, given the system we have, what can be done to the creek, and how might that contribute towards changing the larger system? The dedication of some of our guests, within their domains, to making a positive change is inspirational. One thing for sure is that we need people to dedicate themselves to ongoing work for sustainability, and I hope you found some of our guests inspirational in this regards.

Finding a path forward that is truly inclusive, particularly reconciling the past and ongoing violence against Indigenous peoples that results from colonization, is complicated. There has been a substantial change in thought about Indigenous peoples and their place in our societies over the last half century. When I was in elementary school in the early 1970's, there was not much respect for the members of the Sto:lo nation in my community of Chilliwack. Assimilation was seen as necessary. Colonization was seen as progress, as Europe bringing modernity, both technologically and culturally, to the 'savages' inhabiting those places that were colonized. There are still many who retain this perspective, but most dare not speak it out loud. Over the past decades, a set of court cases and revelations about the abuses suffered on Indigenous Canadians in the efforts at assimilation have substantially changed the conversation. My interpretation is that we colonists have been forced, thorough the application of our own laws, to recognize that we didn't respect our own legal principles when we forced our system onto the inhabitants of the lands we colonized. We are now saying sorry, but are left with the legacy that much of the wealth built up in our nation is the result of the exploitation of land and resources that were, had we honored our own laws, stolen from the peoples who were here first. How do we rightly atone for this injustice? What share of this wealth rightly belongs to the Indigenous peoples? And since Indigenous peoples and colonists/settlers have substantially intermixed, to who do we owe reparations?

I heard a Ktunaxa scholar, Christopher Horse Thief, speak once, who described culture as the collection of values and practices that enabled a people to survive and thrive in a place. Culture embodies a connection to the land. Language is a key element in transmitting the knowledge embodied in the culture from person to person and generation to generation. If we allow languages to disappear, we loose not just a means of communication, but the knowledge embodied in that language. These cultures and languages were adaptations as humans slowly colonized the planet, settling in new places, bringing with them old ways, some of which worked and some of which didn't work, and adjusting those ways until they found a stable relationship with the land. In the process, the evidence suggests that these early human colonizers displace and/or drove to extinction other proto-humans and large land animals that were unable to survive in the face of the technologies and practices that human colonizers brought. The sustainability and connection with the land that Indigenous cultures are seen as embodying is an outcome of a process of learning and adaptation to a place. As Jeannette Armstrong has said, Indigeneity, as a concept, is not about race, but about connection to place, about living in harmony with a place. How do we 'Indigenize" the people of Kelowna and the processes of land use planning and decision making? How do we adapt Kelowna to live in harmony with the place where Kelowna is?

I think that some of the lessons from Maria's study of the Return of the Salmon project are relevant. There were a number of key elements, but one of them was a common objective. All of the participants wanted to see a successful return of salmon to the Okanagan river system. It was important enough to the Okanagan Nation Aliance that they were willing to dedicate resources to it. I think that Westbank First Nation is the relevant nation for where Kelowna is located. Is Brandt's Creek, or for that matter many issues in Kelowna, important to the ONA or Westbank First Nation? They may care, but they have limited capacity - in terms of number of people in particular who can give time - to participate. We can't put everything on hold until there is enough capacity for the ONA to participate. Is this a failure to engage? Is it sufficient to consult things like the Okanagan Water Declaration and reflect on how redevelopment of Brandt's Creek aligns with the values in this declaration? Can we use a redevelopment of Brandt's Creek to contribute to 'indigenizing' the people of Kelowna?

Final Reports

Working across disciplinary boundaries is challenging, particularly within the confines of a 16 week course. The material below represents the results of the students integrating information they gathered from guest speakers, academic sources, and non-academic public documents.

The recommendations made do not represent professional advice.

This material is made available so that readers can themselves consider the research, analysis, and recommendations against their own knowledge of their own community, as a starting point for further investigation. In this way, we hope that by sharing these results of our experience as a class, we can contribute to furthering the dialog around sustainability and resilience issues in our communities.

Useful Links

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