Action research and participatory approaches

By Geneviève Vachon, Florence Gagnon, Élisa Gouin and Samuel Boudreault
Indigenous communities are struggling with climate change that threatens their relationship to the territory that is the basis of their identity. Four concepts linked to indigenous realities – traditional knowledge, agency, temporality, and relationality – provide keys to understanding this threat. A research-creation project with an Anishinaabe community illustrates possibilities for adaptation as concrete levers for discussion and action.

By Tira Okamoto and Andréanne Doyon
Coastal cities around the world are facing intersecting problems of adapting to sea level rise while addressing social equity. Vancouver, British Columbia – located on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations – is no exception. The City of Vancouver recently completed the Sea2City Design Challenge (Sea2City), inspiring collaborative design concepts for False Creek, a narrow inlet near downtown Vancouver. Using Sea2City as a case study, this research applies the JustAdapt evaluative framework to evaluate equity and justice in coastal adaptation planning in Vancouver.

By Laurence Brière, Guillaume Moreau, Maude Prud’homme, Isabel Orellana, Marie-Ève Marleau, Martine Chatelain and Marie-Pier Lafrance
The eco-citizen movement for an energy transition is working to transform the dominant economic-energy system with a view to social justice and respect for the environment. By collaborating with stakeholders in this mobilization as part of an action-research project, we raised the epistemic justice issues inherent in this political project, and attempted to create spaces for reciprocal training, highlighting the diversity of types of knowledge. An innovative conceptual framework for energy justice was proposed, taking into account the very concrete realities of eco-citizen struggles and initiatives.

By Franck Scherrer and Jeanne Paré
For three years, the Chemins de transition initiative brought together the academic community and the driving forces of Quebec society in a forward-looking, participatory process to map out a trajectory towards more sober and resilient ways of living in the territory by 2042. This text summarizes the process, focusing on the role of social justice in the mobilization of knowledge about the future.

By Caroline Côté
ILEAU is a greening campaign created in 2015 coordinated by the Conseil régional de l'environnement de Montréal that is being rolled out in eight boroughs in eastern Montreal. The ILEAU campaign has developed a series of actions aimed at greening and creating islands of freshness through the involvement of different milieus: community, institutional and corporate. A vision of collective action federated in the large-scale green and active grid project mobilizes organizations and citizens to improve living and working environments in the east end of Montreal.

By Ali Romdhani and René Audet
Ecological transition is a recent form of environmental discourse, the successor to sustainable development in many institutions. Transition discourse was initially conceived on an urban scale: the Transition Towns movement popularized citizen initiatives and local action. Later, in Quebec, municipal institutions took up the issue, and planning documents proliferated. Here’s an overview of the transition discourse in Greater Montreal.