The GLRC’s evolving focus attends to the resulting social upheavals stemming from the climate crisis, including consideration of the distributional effects of how we are responding. From ‘green jobs’ initiatives to the deep and continuing socioeconomic impacts of resource extraction on Indigenous communities and others, and the accordant work of land defense, the GLRC will prioritize work at the intersection of the climate crisis and the decarbonization imperative, opening space for new conceptions of a “just transition” to a low-carbon global economy.
How do we forge space between despair and denial–space for collective hope, resolve and action?
GLRC Rechartering Application (2024-2029); Climate Action, Work, and Labour Project (2022-2023)
Background
From 2014-2022, a SSHRC-funded internationally recognized and award-winning project, “Adapting Canadian Work and Workplaces to Respond to Climate Change: Canada in International Perspective”, assessed the implications of global climate change for employment and work. That research was undertaken under the pioneering leadership of GLRC member Dr. Carla Lipsig-Mummé. A professor of Work and Labour Studies at York University, and the founding director of the Centre for Research on Work and Society, the predecessor to the GLRC, Dr Lipsig-Mummé actively contributed to the Centre’s profile on climate and labour research activities. While wide-ranging in scope, that research considered the ways climate change modifies production and transportation processes with a view to bringing work, the workplace and labour unions into climate struggles. The Centre’s work in this area owes a great debt to this earlier research.
- Passings: Professor Emerita Carla Lipsig-Mummé (January 2023)
- Adapting Canadian Work and Workplaces to Respond to Climate Change (ACW), 2014-2021
- Partnership Award Winner: Carla Lipsig-Mummé [SSHRC]
How do we confront the climate emergency without leaving behind existing and entrenched social, economic and environmental vulnerabilities and collective struggles for environmental justice, broadly conceived?
GLRC RECHARTERING APPLICATION (2024-2029)
The GLRC launched a focus on Climate Action, Work, and Labour in the 2022-2023 academic year. Through dedicated blog posts, research reports, seminars, and roundtable discussions, we have turned our attention to specific strategies for climate action.
We invite researchers who work at the intersection of climate action, environmental justice and labour to submit ideas for blog posts, research reports, or events; or be featured in a researcher profile. To submit a proposal or for more information on this series, email us at glrc@yorku.ca.