Knowledge for an Ecologically Sustainable Future?: Innovation Policy and Alberta Universities – Parkland Institute

As scientists and Indigenous elders have been informing us for decades, life on this planet as it has evolved over millions of years is on the brink of a precipice. Planetary ecosystems are threatened with collapse by the pressures of humans’ appropriation of nature and their production of wastes, toxins, and greenhouse gases. The seriousness of making a quick shift from economies based on nonrenewable fuel sources and ever-growing usage to net-zero-carbon economies that leave space for prospering biodiversity and make possible multiculturalism and protected, significant lives for Earth’s human residents simply can not be overemphasized. If ever there were a time for universities to assume a leadership function in offering the understanding required for socio-ecological change, this is surely that minute.

Alberta has actually entrenched political, institutional, and cultural barriers that must be overcome to accomplish a shift to an environmentally sustainable and socially simply way of cohabiting. At the very same time, Alberta is likewise one of the world’s expect food production in the climate of the future, and for the preservation of spaces for remaining wildlife. We have remarkable chances for generating renewable resource, and for developing the technologies and products the world requires to live sustainably. The Indigenous peoples that have resided on these lands for centuries have much to teach settler cultures about the relationships of kinship and regard for limits that are fundamental to ecologically sustainable societies. Our universities have huge capabilities, drawn from all corners, to add to eco-friendly and social sustainability in all their measurements– both in Alberta and internationally. The services lie not only in technologies, or in the facilities required to scale these up rapidly, but in institutional and cultural modifications. We require to offer all our varied understandings and experiences to make this shift– and we require to do it quickly. These are the possibilities that promise and motivation to our youths, which lots of university scientists are committed to realizing.

All universities have management roles to play in this great transition. Alberta’s universities are located in a jurisdiction that has actually been for decades highly dependent for profits and work on the extraction of the fossil fuels that are forcing environment destabilization. Our universities helped to develop the technologies that made exploitation of the oil sands possible, but we have actually known for years that greenhouse gas emissions from the combustion of nonrenewable fuel sources are driving environment change. We have also understood that oil and gas exploitation in the province has cumulative environmental and social expenses– above all, for Native neighborhoods whose traditional territories have actually been devastated by the expansion of the extractive industries. How, then, has knowledge production in Alberta’s universities been responding, over time, to the growing recognition of the requirement to produce a decolonizing, post-carbon course of advancement?

There are numerous methods of addressing this concern, such as tracing the development of curriculum and degree programs, making an ecological audit of university financial investment portfolios, or measuring efforts to decrease the environmental footprints of buildings and utilities used. In this report, we examine the kind of knowledge production that has actually been focused on within the universities by scientists and administrators, along with by the companies that money research study and innovation development (R&D). We assess these kinds of knowledge production in relation to fossil-fuel or post-carbon courses of development. Research and development may serve to deepen our “carbon lock-in” by discovering new reservoirs of nonrenewable fuel sources or developing new technologies for their extraction. Even the research study that intends to reduce the expenses of production or transport of fossil fuels or to remediate the environmental damages of carbon extraction may be used to prolong our dependence on these fuels while reassuring us that these are “clean” or “sustainable” sources of energy. On the other hand, research study that seeks to establish low-carbon, sustainable sources of energy, ecologically sustainable replacement for damaging chemicals and products, planning and structure designs for cities with net-zero-carbon footprints, sustainable farming, water preservation, green tasks, brand-new forms of ecological governance, and a host of other needed technologies and reforms, puts us on a different path– a course of ecological and social sustainability.

One way to learn what kind of research study is being performed in our universities in relation to energy transition, climate modification, sustainable farming, and related ecological locations, would be to send a study to all the continuing academic personnel and inquire to report. Assuming that we received an excellent action and had the resources to analyze and code thousands of reports, this method could give us an extremely great photo of the terrain of existing research study. Even if feasible, his method would, however, give us a snapshot only of current research activity. We desired to see if there have actually been any substantial modifications in instructions over a longer period. The timeframe of this study covers nearly twenty years, from 1997/98 to 2016/17 (depending upon the data source)– a period that is concurrent with the growth of investment in the oil sands, several scientific reports on climate change and rounds of climate policy, as well as other advancements that have actually formed Alberta and Canada’s “development” policies. The priorities set out in federal government development policies are very important motorists of the kinds of R&D performed in the universities.

To address our research question about the contributions of the understanding being produced in Alberta’s universities to eco-friendly and social sustainability, we searched for data sources that we might trace back to at least 1999/00 and that would permit us to classify both scientists and research tasks according to a fairly fine-grained set of criteria. These data were available from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Study Council (NSERC), the Canada Structure for Innovation (CFI), and the Alberta Science and Research Investments Program (through its yearly reports). They were supplemented by lots of other sources, as described in higher detail in the report. These data, however, cover just those scientists and projects that received funding from government firms, giving us an image of externally funded research. It is crucial to note that a lot of research study is carried out in universities that is not externally funded, either because of the nature of the research or the schedule of funds “internal” to the university. The image we have the ability to offer in this report, then, is always partial, however it does show us what type of research governments and corporations (through collaborations or endowments) are prioritizing.

The intro discusses the objectives of the report in greater information, details the scope of the study and its limits, and lists the data sources.

The 2nd area maps the research study concerns of the national financing agencies relating to energy, environment, sustainable farming and forestry, water problems, or other locations of research study related to sustainable development. We recognize the financing priorities– and modifications in these in time– by observing the varieties of scientists operating in chosen locations along with the flows of research financing to these areas. Our focus in this section is the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary, although we likewise examined CFI moneying for tasks at the University of Lethbridge. This section even more documents the orientation of federal research study funding toward university-industry-government partnerships and the heavy weight of corporations in the oil and gas sector in such partnerships.

In the third area of the report, we rely on provincial funding for energy and environment-related research study. Here, we reconstruct the financing concerns of the Alberta Science and Research Investments Program (ASRIP) and of the innovation companies and funds that finance federal government, university, and corporate-based R&D.

Area 4 explains the many research centres, institutes, research chairs, consortia, and networks that have actually been established since the 1970s in the locations of energy and environment. We identify which ones have actually gotten government and/or corporate financial investment and have been considered as main to the province’s economic advancement, and which have needed to seek support from other sources. In this area we likewise record the dense network of connections amongst the business sponsors, university-based scientists, and government companies involved in fossil-fuels-related R&D, and the significance of these relationships for knowledge production within the universities.

Area 5 evaluations information from the provincial government and Data Canada that help us to construct a minimum of a partial image of corporate financial investment in energy R&D, and the implications of this out-sourced investment for the orientation of university research study.

Area 6 sums up the cumulative data on financing top priorities by locations of research, highlights the evidence of modifications of direction over time, and goes over the implications of our findings for the universities’ role as manufacturers of the knowledge required to advance environmentally and socially sustainable development in Alberta.

The report documents– for the very first time utilizing systematized rather than only anecdotal data– the allocation of research financial investment in the areas of energy, environment, and sustainability, at the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary. The findings confirm the heavy weighting of this investment toward fossil-fuels-related research study and innovation development centred in the professors of engineering. Highlights of the findings include:

Total, some small actions are being taken in the instructions of greater support from the provincial and federal innovation firms for sustainable energies, water research, and greenhouse gas mitigation technologies. The federal TriCouncil firms are also facilitating cross-disciplinary grant applications in such areas as “environment and farming,” “sustainable, resistant neighborhoods,” “governance and organizations,” and “ecological influences on population health” (SSHRC 2016). Some space might be opening for interdisciplinary, environmental understanding production as federal governments come to grips with the effects of environment modification on vital facilities, insurance coverage expenses, food production, and international need for nonrenewable fuel sources. However, it appears from our research study that, up until now, the interests of the nonrenewable fuel source markets have predominated in federal government funding of energy-related research study, which other measurements of a sustainable development research study program– such as sustainable food production– have hardly been on their radar (a minimum of in Alberta).

In addition to being industry-driven, the development discourse and agenda are greatly technocratic and oriented toward the production of commercializable knowledge by scientists in engineering and natural sciences. By definition, then, the kinds of understanding produced in other sectors of the universities by social science, liberal arts, and arts scholars– while also critically important to developing an ecologically and socially sustainable future– fall beyond the “development” framework and are significantly underfunded. The “sustainability” work being done in some parts of the universities related to environment modification progressively conflicts with the fossil-fuel-industry-driven work that is being brought out in other parts of the universities. Hence, the universities are producing inconsistent understanding and are divided in their analyses of research and teaching that serve the general public excellent.

The influence of corporations in the carbon-extractive and allied financial sectors on the research study concerns of universities shows up in the presence of market agents on the boards of research institutes or university boards of guvs, along with in the corporate names attached to research labs, buildings, schools, or scholarship funds. Our research study suggests that less noticeable types of impact on the production of knowledge in our universities are similarly (if not more) important. Corporations have a privileged role in identifying what will be moneyed by governmental companies like NSERC, the National Research Council (NRC), Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), CFI, and Alberta Innovates by virtue of their economic power and relationship to the state.

Lots of university administrators, like political leaders and business leaders, have actually embraced a sustainable development discourse that sees technological development as the preeminent option to the conflict between fossil-fuels-driven economic growth and the defense of the communities that are the structure of human life and biodiversity. This discourse has actually ended up being a crucial element of what some scholars are now calling “the brand-new environment denialism,” in which the existence of environment modification is acknowledged, however its seriousness is downplayed, and incremental, market-friendly reforms, combined with financial investments in innovation, are represented as constituting an adequate reaction. Just as the governments of Alberta and Canada have actually pursued an incoherent two-track technique of funding nonrenewable fuel sources production while executing carbon taxes with the aim of minimizing downstream greenhouse gas emissions, university administrators have provided their institutions’ research study on oil sands extraction and hydraulic fracturing as advancing “cleaner, more cost-efficient methods of extracting energy” that are proceeding together with research on “low carbon” energy systems.

Administrators might see this balancing act as a technique for positioning their organizations to benefit from the external funding provided by the innovation firms and the economic sector. Significant constituencies within Alberta’s universities are now greatly– though not irrevocably– purchased fossil-fuels-related research study. Nevertheless, the conflicts over the objective of the university in relation to the climate crisis and the general public interest (now being played out in fossil fuel divestment projects as well as struggles around research study and teaching priorities) are not reducible to the political views of individual deans or university presidents, nor to differences of values between, for example, “engineers” and “liberal arts” scholars. Rather, these trenches have been dug and maintained by the interests and ideologies that federal governments have actually made main in the requireds of the development organizations.