Waterloo Region Record

Hope, anxiety on climate crisis

Expert reflects on COP26 summit,

Katarina Kuhnert sees first-hand what the climate crisis is doing to the landscape.

She has used mapping tools to create models of landscape change for northern communities where temperatures are rising and melting permafrost is changing the landscape.

Kuhnert, who divides her time between Inuvik and Waterloo, recently completed an internship as a graphic information science technician at the Aurora Research Institute, a branch of Aurora College.

So when she was selected as one of four people to travel to Glasgow for a week as part of a 32-member delegation from the Lutheran World Federation to the COP26 international conference, she already had a heightened sense of urgency.

The conference earlier this month disappointed many when a lastminute intervention by India and other countries meant the nations pledged to “phasing down” coal subsidies instead of “phasing out.”

But Kuhnert participated in a panel discussion, entitled “Energy Transitions — Deciding our Futures” that offered hopeful alternatives.

One panellist from India described a large-scale transition to solar energy within his community in India, for example.

Old Crow, Yukon is a remote Indigenous community that traditionally relied on diesel, flown in, for fuel. But now there is a massive solar energy project underway that takes advantage of the 24-hour periods of daylight in the summer. The community pledges net zero carbon emissions by 2030.

“They are showing us the way forward,” said Kuhnert. “I can look to my neighbours in Old Crow, Yukon, and be a bit humbled.”

Kuhnert herself gave a presentation entitled: “Energy Transitions and Colonial Reparations in the Mackenzie River Watershed.”

She emphasizes the importance of consulting Indigenous peoples when energy transitions happen.

“We have to reject a colonial attitude toward energy.”

For example, the Hydro-Québec project to create hydroelectricity in James Bay did not consult Cree communities before beginning the development in 1971, she said.

But Cree leaders responded by negotiating Canada’s first northern comprehensive land claim, the James Bay and Northern Quebec agreement, which governed further development of the hydro project after 1975.

“I lived in northern Quebec for four months, and met some of these leaders, and their story is really powerful,” she said.

At the conference, Kuhnert was also struck by the important role that each participant played, and how each of them mattered; politicians, experts, negotiators and the public who demonstrated “to remind us of the urgency that people are facing in their daily lives.

“People are still facing dire circumstances,” she said. “Each one of these different roles plays a part in pushing us in the direction we want to go for our collective well-being.

“My hope is still greater than my despair, but my sense of urgency is increasing.”

‘‘ We have to reject a colonial attitude toward energy.

KATARINA KUHNERT CLIMATE EXPERT

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2021-11-29T08:00:00.0000000Z

2021-11-29T08:00:00.0000000Z

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