L4E members collaborate on place-based research-to-action projects through our Integrated Project Areas

Our Integrated Project Areas enable our members to test theories, engage with communities and implement L4E strategies.

CRITICAL MEDIA


DEGROWTH

ECOZOIC ALTERNATIVES

LAW & GOVERNANCE

TERRITORIES OF LIFE

Critical Media

About

Critical Media is a project area offering community members the chance to explore and experience new approaches to art, storytelling, and communication beyond traditional academic and research modalities. Specifically, it offers L4E students opportunities to creatively share and translate their research in multi-media contexts through podcasts, videos, artworks, and non-academic publications. Critical Media embraces innovative approaches to convey the pressing ecological, ethical and political problems of our historical moment.

Critical Media is a project area offering community members the chance to explore and experience new approaches to art, storytelling, and communication beyond traditional academic and research modalities. Specifically, it offers L4E students opportunities to creatively share and translate their research in multi-media contexts through podcasts, videos, artworks, and non-academic publications. Critical Media embraces innovative approaches to convey the pressing ecological, ethical and political problems of our historical moment.

Objectives

Critical Media tells stories of those inside and outside of our community by:

  • Hosting the Radio Ecozoic podcast

  • Offering learning opportunities in audiovisual methods

  • Supporting student-led projects

  • Finding new ways to share about our project, including Leadership for the Ecozoic, Explained

  • Collaborating with other project areas to create accessible resources for the general public

Project Leads

Julian Flavin
Alana Redden

Partners and Affiliates

Critical Media Club

Lisa Stevenson, CML Co-lead
Diana Allan, CML Co-lead

Degrowth

About

Degrowth is a school of thought and a social movement. It advocates for a planned reduction of production and consumption in order to achieve ecological sustainability, social equity, and well-being. Degrowth challenges the ubiquitous pursuit of endless economic growth and instead focuses on maximizing human flourishing.

Degrowth is a school of thought and a social movement. It advocates for a planned reduction of production and consumption in order to achieve ecological sustainability, social equity, and well-being. Degrowth challenges the ubiquitous pursuit of endless economic growth and instead focuses on maximizing human flourishing.

Objectives

Degrowth within L4E is focused on academic research and community outreach that places community, ecology, and well-being front-and-center. Everything we engage with challenges the neoliberal status quo and urges a different perspective. Our research considers:

  • Housing affordability: A supply shortage or investor surplus?

  • Inflation: Too much government spending or too much bank lending?

  • Industrial policy: Transitioning infrastructure from fossil fuel dependency.

  • Work: Labor and appropriation of surplus.

  • Political Economy: The State and politics in degrowth.

We engage with the community through:

  • Opinion editorials on local, regional, and national topics;

  • Policy briefs highlighting research;

  • Coffee hours with the community to share and gather ideas;

  • Teach-ins within the university;

  • Community presentations;

  • Engaging with local and international degrowth networks and gatherings;

  • Building partnerships with local organizations.

Project Lead

Joe Ament

Partners and Affiliates

Degrowth Institute (DGI)
International Degrowth Network (IDN)
US Society for Ecological Economics (USSEE)
International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE)
REAL - A Post Growth Deal



Ecozoic Alternatives

About

Ecozoic Alternatives serves as a program for L4E members and partnering communities to examine and enable ecological political economies in theory and practice.

Ecozoic Alternatives works within higher education to inspire new worldviews and transformative political economies grounded in social-ecological justice, and to provide training and experience in research-to-action for a network of leaders and communities enabling a just transition to an Ecozoic era.

Ecozoic Alternatives serves as a program for L4E members and partnering communities to examine and enable ecological political economies in theory and practice.

Ecozoic Alternatives works within higher education to inspire new worldviews and transformative political economies grounded in social-ecological justice, and to provide training and experience in research-to-action for a network of leaders and communities enabling a just transition to an Ecozoic era.

Objectives

Ecozoic Alternatives contributes to ecological political economic alternatives as related to priorities of L4E and partners to:

  • Inspire narrative shifts by raising awareness among practitioners, scholars, activists, and their communities regarding an ecological paradigm;

  • Support ecological political economic alternatives through systemic and structural analysis of practices, cases, and engagement in participatory learning with strategic partners;

  • Provide training and experience in real-world engagement for students and supporting faculty by employing methods and generating outputs that influence the form and direction of ecological political economies and their implementation;

Project Lead

Matthew Burke

Partners and Affiliates

Global Tapestry of Alternatives (GTA)
Next Systems Studies

Law & Governance

About

Law, broadly defined, transcends the enacted laws and common law of nation states and includes a diverse and pluralistic array of ways in which societies maintain communal order.  So defined, law and legal traditions are relevant to all of L4E’s work, and Earth-centred approaches to law, such as ecological law, Earth system law, Earth law and rights of nature, resonate in particular with Ecozoic thinking and L4E objectives.

Law, broadly defined, transcends the enacted laws and common law of nation states and includes a diverse and pluralistic array of ways in which societies maintain communal order.  So defined, law and legal traditions are relevant to all of L4E’s work, and Earth-centred approaches to law, such as ecological law, Earth system law, Earth law and rights of nature, resonate in particular with Ecozoic thinking and L4E objectives.

Objectives

L4E Law and Governance research, coordinated by Geoff Garver, aims to:

  • Reframe law and governance toward a mutually enhancing human-Earth relationship, with rigorous reliance on contemporary science and traditional knowledge systems;

  • Promote understandings of law that align with pluriversalism and critique; over-reliance on Western frameworks for law;

  • Integrate consideration of law and legalities into the full range of L4E work.

Project Lead

Geoffrey Garver

Partners and Affiliates

Society for Earth Law
Ecological Law and Governance Association
Earth System Law Task Force

Territories of Life

About

Territories of Life are areas governed and cared for by Indigenous peoples and local communities with deep cultural and historical connections in place, where land-based livelihoods, ecological health and biodiversity exist in complementary relations of respect and reciprocity. L4E applies this concept in the transboundary watersheds connecting McGill University and the University of Vermont – the Chateauguay River and Lake Champlain-Richelieu River systems – where researchers collaborate with Indigenous and local communities to envision and develop measures for the practical enhancement of these areas as thriving Territories of Life.

These measures include promoting agroecology and biodiversity protection, dealing with waste and contaminants, and phasing out harmful practices accompanying industrial-scale agriculture and extractive industries. Despite ecological and cultural richness, these watersheds, home to Kanien'kehá:ka and Abenaki nations and since colonization to settler citizens of Canada and the USA, now suffer from ecological degradation, unsustainable forms of production and consumption, and complex governance challenges.

Territories of Life are areas governed and cared for by Indigenous peoples and local communities with deep cultural and historical connections in place, where land-based livelihoods, ecological health and biodiversity exist in complementary relations of respect and reciprocity. L4E applies this concept in the transboundary watersheds connecting McGill University and the University of Vermont – the Chateauguay River and Lake Champlain-Richelieu River systems – where researchers collaborate with Indigenous and local communities to envision and develop measures for the practical enhancement of these areas as thriving Territories of Life.

These measures include promoting agroecology and biodiversity protection, dealing with waste and contaminants, and phasing out harmful practices accompanying industrial-scale agriculture and extractive industries. Despite ecological and cultural richness, these watersheds, home to Kanien'kehá:ka and Abenaki nations and since colonization to settler citizens of Canada and the USA, now suffer from ecological degradation, unsustainable forms of production and consumption, and complex governance challenges.

Objectives

L4E’s work explores how long-term community alliances and place-based governance could transform these “disturbed Territories of Life” into thriving, life-sustaining landscapes, guided by ecological limits and cultural renewal.

In view of the longstanding relationships of Indigenous peoples to the places where L4E does this work, the L4E community strives to stay true to the spirit of Teioháte Kaswentha (or Two Row Wampum) and the Silver Covenant Chain in our Territories of Life work.

Project Leads

Colin Scott, Co-lead
Geoffrey Garver, Co-lead

Dan Garand, Cartographer

Partners and Affiliates

ICCA Consortium
Centre for Indigenous Conservation and Development Alternatives (CICADA)

Leadership for the Ecozoic

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