Community, Peace and Sustainability: Leveraging Institutional Positionality to Affect Local and System Change

Abstract

In October 2018 the IPCC published a predictable, but no less grim, report on where 'we' are situated vis a vis climate change and what is yet to unfold. Despite over a hundred years of scientific concern from scientists on the human effects of industrialization and globalization we now face out of control wildfires, drought, desertification, intensity and frequency of hurricanes and catastrophic flooding. The report clearly outlines what experts have emphasized for years, there is no one strategy that will prevail in order to stave off impending planet-wide economic, social and environmental disaster. We need strategies that work with the institutionalized systems currently in place and organizations operating at the community level. International, national, or regional policy is not sufficient without community level buy in. Community level organizing is rarely sufficient to cement system-wide change. The bridge between institutional systems and community is education. Changing our educational institutions should be one of the primary strategies to tackle climate change. Post-secondary educational institutions are currently one of the best placed bridges between governments and communities because they wield power with and within community and government systems while simultaneously balancing the tension between these two groups. Educational institutions are both firmly within and of the system and yet are firmly embedded in and creators of community.This presentation will introduce the work done in this vein at Dawson College and their network of institutional and community partners that aim to connect and model solutions based on interconnecting community, institutions and sustainability.



Author Information
Diana Rice, Dawson College, Canada

Paper Information
Conference: IICEHawaii2019
Stream: Education

This paper is part of the IICEHawaii2019 Conference Proceedings (View)
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Posted by James Alexander Gordon