New certificate prepares students to tackle a major issue of our time: climate change

King’s is launching a certificate that will help prepare students to deal with one of the major issues of our time - climate change – and one that calls for complex and creative thinking to inform skillful and courageous action. The certificate came about in response to expressed needs from students for help living amidst planetary climate change in positive, engaged, and transformative ways so they may be leaders in responding to this worsening situation.

Dr. Allyson Larkin, Associate Professor and Department Chair of Social Justice & Peace Studies (SJPS) says that the Ecological Justice and Climate Ethics Certificate, which will be part of SJPS, “will be an invaluable resource and opportunity for King's students.”

 “Young people are increasingly aware that business as usual is not an option, and they are seeking ideas and skills for creating the systemic material changes that climate change requires,” says Dr. Russell Duvernoy, Associate Professor of Philosophy.

However, as Dr. Duvernoy explains, the problem's complexity means there will not be a single, one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, it calls for creative and engaged action from a variety of perspectives and skill sets.

The program will deepen students' understanding of the social and existential dimensions of climate change. Their studies will prepare students to contribute to ethical and proactive adaptation and response to climate change and become engaged leaders in meeting this challenge. They will learn about how the climate crisis is embedded in our social, political and economic systems and how society contends with greater challenges from the crisis.

Courses in Social Justice & Peace Studies, Sociology, and Politics and International Relations, which are all part of this certificate program, will help students understand the complex historical and socio-economic roots of climate change, especially as it is bound up in the history of colonialism and oppressive and unjust socio-economic patterns. Other courses in English, Thanatology, Philosophy, and Religious Studies will help students develop existential resilience for facing these challenges in positive ways.

“Through the philosophical and existential dimensions of the certificate, they will be more personally resilient in facing the depth of climate crisis, and through its social and experiential dimensions, they will have viable skills for participate as leaders in fostering ethical social change,” says Dr. Duvernoy, adding that “our certificate program is uniquely situated, balancing academic coursework in a variety of disciplines with an experiential learning requirement.”

The certificate’s experiential learning component will help students develop professional and interpersonal skills in the emerging ecological sector. Students will have opportunities to work with local environmental organizations to learn more about how climate ethics and ecological justice can translate into diverse career paths.

As students progress through the SJPS program, they will have opportunities to learn more about Indigenous relationships to the land and the disproportionate impact of the climate crisis on racialized and lower-income communities.

“It is exciting to see so many of our graduates already in positions of leadership in local and provincial environmental positions. Care for the environment is a critical principle in Catholic social thought and it has long been embedded in most of our SJPS courses. Further, identifying the intersections between ecology and Indigenous communities demands that we, as a university community, strive to incorporate climate ethics and ecological justice into our curriculum as part of our responsibilities for truth and reconciliation,” says Dr. Larkin.