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Co-Creating Innovative Solutions to Foster Sustainability Justice

About

Our work on sustainability justice builds upon the call for just sustainabilities by Agyeman and colleagues, who define this as “the need to ensure a better quality of life for all, now and into the future, in a just and equitable manner, whilst living within the limits of supporting ecosystems” (Agyeman et al., 2003, p.5). Sustainability justice links the planning, implementation, and assessment of sustainability and climate mitigation and adaptation initiatives with considerations of equity, social justice, and accessibility to ensure we are actually transitioning toward just sustainabilities. At VERiS we are especially interested to research and promote sustainability justice in the local and organizational context.

What Are We Doing?

VERiS and its affiliated research streams currently lead five projects related to this theme.
  1. An emerging international partnership led by VERiS addressing issues related to equity and accessibility in municipal climate action planning by identifying, developing, and testing innovate approaches to addressing this complex challenge.
  2. A partnership with the social enterprise Sustainable Through an Inclusive Lens (STIL) to explore the impact of the solutions they created to make multi-stream waste bins more accessible to people who experience low vision.
  3. A partnership of the FEI and VERiS with the City of Kitchener and the social enterprise REFOCUS to study the effort of the city to completely innovate the way they do business and strategic planning to better address sustainability and equity in a holistic way.
  4. A partnership of VERiS’s European Stream with the Portuguese NGO Critical Concrete exploring ways to promote Just Sustainability Transformations in the context of affordable housing in Porto.
  5. A collaboration with ClimateActionWR to integrate sustainability justice into the long-term community climate action plan for Waterloo region.

Read more below

Key Consideration: Sustainability Justice in the Context of Municipal Climate Action Planning

September 3 2020

Prepared by: Jennifer Dobai, Dr Manuel Riemer and Bianca Dreyer

 

Sustainability Justice Workshop One

September 24 2020

Project Overview with Co-Leads Manuel Riemer and Randy Sa’d

Keynote Speaker – Julian Agyeman

Keynote Speaker – Justin Readman

 

Sustainability Justice Workshop Two

October 23 2020

Dialogue with Bill Baue and Randy Sa'd - Innovation in Sustainability

Dialogue with Bill Baue and Randy Sa'd - Indications of Transformation

 

Sustainability Justice Workshop Three

November 12 2020

Keynote Speaker – Ciann Wilson

Contact Us:

E: veris@wlu.ca
T: 519.884.0710 x2982
Office Location: Evolv1 Building 420 Wes Graham Way Suite #102 Waterloo, ON N2L 0J6

Office Hours:

We are currently working remotely.