The Leadership for the Ecozoic graduate project at McGill is training researchers to guide us to a better world.
While the current historic era is often referred to as the Anthropocene for humankind’s impact on the earth, students part of Leadership for the Ecozoic (L4E) are tasked with applying their research to find how we can get to the next era: the Ecozoic.
The Ecozoic, coined by the thinker Thomas Berry, would be characterized by a mutually enhancing relationship between the planet and humankind based on respect and care, rather than use.
“We’re in the Anthropocene, which isn’t really going great for a lot of reasons. We need to change the path we’re on to get to the Ecozoic, to have a different human-earth relationship,” says Peter Brown, Principal Investigator of the L4E project and a Professor in the Department of Natural Resource Sciences, the School of Environment and the Department of Geography.
“It’s daunting, it’s really different. We really go at the heart of everything that’s going on [with our planet]. If we’re going to change … how do we do it?” asks L4E student Mick Babcock, who researches an area of environmental thought concerned with conceptual frameworks. “We’re looking at transitions to a more just world.”
The importance of scientific literacy
L4E started in the fall of 2018, supported by major funding from an anonymous donor in the U.S. A fundamental principle of the project is that scientific literacy is essential to respect for the earth. To that end, students begin the program with the first of four courses designed to review the basics in chemistry, physics and biology and reveal prevalent unscientific narratives and myths in our society.
“The problem of scientific illiteracy is huge,” explains Dina Spigelski, L4E Project Manager and a lecturer in the School of Human Nutrition. “We want our students to know how and why the universe works.”
Babcock is the kind of transdisciplinary researcher who enriches and strengthens L4E – although he has a background in liberal arts, he has chosen to work within a department with heavy focus on the pure sciences. For his L4E internship, he will be researching agricultural systems at the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas.
“When we talk about planetary boundaries and the ranges of climate change, these are things that are scientifically substantiated,” he says. “If we’re going to change, let’s change because of what science is telling us about the world.”
Growth of the program
L4E was born out of a previous graduate project, Economics for the Anthropocene (E4A).
By next spring when it wraps up, E4A will have sent about 40 PhD graduates out into the world trained in ecological economics, which considers the economy as part of Earth’s larger ecosystem, not as an independent element.
“Ecological economics is about framing and defining a problem,” says Spigelski. “It looks at things from a more whole earth standpoint – from the point of view of energy and material flows.”
L4E and E4A students are from a variety of backgrounds, including law, engineering, science, economics and anthropology. This strengthens the project, by having students teach each other from different perspectives.
“Having that mix really allows us to have a much richer portfolio than if we just chose by highest GPA,” says Brown. “We’re looking for widespread competence and interest.”
Jen Gobby, BA’14, an activist and scholar, was one of three students in the first E4A cohort in 2014. She’ll be defending her PhD thesis in September.
“I really appreciated that there were diverse projects but a common commitment to doing research that was about transformation,” she says. “Research that is explicitly aimed at supporting transformation is so important. Climate change is an emergency situation.”
From admission to field work
To get into L4E, students must first be accepted into graduate studies at McGill or the University of Vermont, L4E’s partner institution. Once accepted, they learn the basics of ecological economics and the possibilities of the Ecozoic, and then apply that knowledge through a field course and a student-led seminar. Throughout there are internships, symposiums, retreats and conferences.
For Gobby, the retreats in the E4A program were invaluable. “That’s the dream in grad school, having a bunch of people to talk deeply with about the stuff that you’re really passionate about,” she says. “Some of those were hard conversations and debates, but they helped clarify my thinking.”
Gobby’s thesis will become a book in 2020 with Fernwood Publishing, and she starts a post-doc at Concordia this fall, working in collaboration with Indigenous Climate Action.
Graduates around the globe
Spigelski describes the ideal graduate as “someone who has gone through our program, collected some tools, looked at a problem and redefined the state of affairs [in their internship], who then gets placed in an area that’s influential where they can make real change.”
Such graduates are now located around the world. In addition to Gobby, graduates work at the Nature Conservancy, the Bank of France, in public radio in the United States, and at the World Bank, to name a few.
A global campus
The goal for L4E in the next few years is to continue to build a global campus with partnerships around the world, and to share courses with that network.
“We’re growing connections, sharing our vision with like-minded people and turning some others in our direction as well,” says Spigelski.
“We’re attracting students who are highly motivated to change the world and make it a better place and do it in a community rather than as individuals.”
Mobilizing McGill
Crucially, L4E works with other units across the university.
“The expertise on the campus is huge,” says Brown. “One of our strengths is that we’re in the Department of Natural Resource Sciences, which has an enormous spread of competencies. It’s a terrific melting pot of interdisciplinary work, often related to the work of our students.”
He also sees an important role for the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (AES) for facing future challenges.
“AES can be a global leader in rethinking the thought systems we’re talking about,” Brown says. “It can be a home run for the kind of interdisciplinary work that makes a difference: Humanities informed by competent scientific literacy.”
For his part, Babcock benefits from being on the Macdonald Campus, specifically in the Department of Natural Resource Sciences, working down the hall from cutting-edge research. “At Mac, there are so many wonderfully talented scientists doing amazing things,” he says. “They’re doing the things we’re trying to articulate.”