This March, York University is recognizing and participating in SDG Month Canada, a national initiative to advance collaboration, awareness and engagement around the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
Throughout the month, YFile will present a series of articles that highlight contributions from York University and its efforts to advance the SDGs. These stories reflect the people, research and initiatives that make the University an international leader in sustainability.
There is a term in the sciences called "helicopter research." It refers to the practice of researchers coming to low-income or marginalized communities, conducting field studies, gathering data with no local collaboration and then leaving without providing any benefits to the local community.
Jennifer Korosi is a professor of geography and environmental science in York University’s Faculty of Environmental & Urban Change. She studies inland waters to understand the impacts of environmental change and frequently works with and near northern and Indigenous communities and has seen how helicopter research can exclude local voices. “In the north, local communities weren’t really involved in the research and didn’t feel like a part of the process,” she says.
This lack of collaboration could be both a research and human oversight, as those experiencing the effects of climate change can share valuable knowledge and benefit from the findings.
Growing awareness for the need to partner with local communities, however, has led to a notable shift. “There's been a big push in northern research over the last decade to change the way we work,” Korosi says.
Korosi has been a key part of that push, most recently through her study of how climate change affects permafrost – ground that remains frozen for two or more years.
Over half of Canada’s land mass is underlain by some form of permafrost – including in northern and Indigenous communities – which plays a critical role in infrastructure, as well as water volume and quality. Climate shifts have led to more frequent thawing, which can have serious consequences: buildings may be condemned as foundations subside, roads can crack and require highway rerouting, Indigenous populations may no longer be able to access hunting or fishing grounds, sediment can enter water bodies supplying drinking water and greenhouse gas emissions can increase.
To better understand what Korosi says isn’t just a northern or Canadian issue but a global one, she has partnered with the Dehcho Collaborative on Permafrost.
The initiative is named after a region in the Northwest Territories where thawing has led to pronounced change, as it is one of the most rapidly warming areas on Earth. The collaboration aims to pursue much-needed information about permafrost to mobilize knowledge, develop predictive tools and strategies, and enable more effective responses.
A key component of achieving that goal is the integration of Indigenous knowledge with scientific investigation through the involvement of Korosi and other academic researchers, First Nations in the Dehcho region, a field station called Scotty Creek Research Station and others.
“We realized we had a shared goal: to understand what permafrost means for the lands and waters of the Dehcho and to work together to tackle these issues from a holistic perspective – putting not just community engagement at the forefront, but community leadership,” she says.
That leadership comes not just in the form of more than 30 Dehcho investigators and guardians, but also through the project being led by the Scotty Creek Research Station which is owned and operated Łı́ı́dlı̨ı̨ Kų́ę́ First Nation. They, like many others, have taken on the responsibility of collecting samples, monitoring and maintaining data collection – the antithesis of helicopter research.
The empowerment of northern partners to be active participants in research is a shift that has been occurring over the last few years but was accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. During that time, many southern researchers couldn’t travel, so northern Indigenous guardians either received training or took on more active roles in scientific studies so that vital long-term research and monitoring activities wouldn’t be disrupted.
Now, it is not only more common to see members of northern communities supplying information for research projects, but also taking part in capacity-building, co-developing research questions and more.
Korosi notes, however, that the significance isn’t just about Indigenous communities becoming involved. “It's not just about including the data of First Nations in the work that we're doing, or including them in our data collection. It’s about ensuring that they're in leadership positions and playing an important role in developing the questions we’re answering,” she says. “The idea is to create opportunities for people to come together and learn from one another.”
Another example is Korosi’s collaboration with First Nation communities on a project involving Lake Nipigon. Despite being the largest lake entirely within Ontario’s borders, little is known about it from a western perspective, says Korosi. Among the unknowns is how it has been impacted by industrial developments over time, as there has been no scientific monitoring of the changes to the basin.
However, those changes have not gone unnoticed by First Nations communities living along the lake. A challenge that has emerged from the data gap is that as interest in developing new mines or hydroelectric projects in the area grows, these communities lack the capacity to meaningfully participate in consultations, Korosi says.
“They've seen changes to the lake. They've seen impacts on the fisheries,” she says. “But it's difficult for them to go to a consultation table and explain their concerns about the cumulative effects of past developments and how new changes will fit into that.”
The need to ensure that past and future environmental impacts are properly understood led to Korosi’s involvement, as a major component of her research program examines lake sediment cores to reconstruct historic ecosystem changes, particularly in areas like Lake Nipigon where contemporary monitoring records are unavailable.
The partnership – particularly with the Biinjitiwaabik Zaaging Anishinaabek (formerly known as Rocky Bay First Nation) – has enabled Korosi to generate the scientific data in a way that allows it to be meaningfully integrated with generations of Indigenous knowledge and history that fosters a deeper understanding of the lake.
By intertwining scientific inquiry with generations of Indigenous knowledge, Korosi and her partners are shaping a new model for research – one where lived experience and western science inform and strengthen each other. “We can weave those stories together,” she says.
And as more researchers follow this path, the future of northern research can move beyond inclusion to true collaboration.
“The main goal of partnerships should be ensuring that the people most affected by the changes we’re studying are part of the effort and that they benefit from all the resources and work dedicated to research in the north,” Korosi says.
In this way, the story of climate change – and of resilience – can be as a shared narrative, woven together by those who live it and those who study it, side by side.