This story is featured in the Spring 2016 issue of Showcase: The Champions of Change Issue. » View the complete publication

Policies designed to protect and conserve Canada’s environment and natural resources don’t just happen overnight. The path from policy idea to implementation is crowded with the vested interests of different stakeholders. Scientific, economic, political, and cultural perspectives leave policy makers with the challenge of getting it right.

In Canadian Environmental Policy, a third-year course in the Environmental & Resource Science/Studies (ERS) program, students are taught to navigate and analyze modern-day environmental policies such as climate change, toxic chemicals, land disputes, renewable energy, and more.

As students strike out into the community to question, discuss, and experience, the reach of this course extends well beyond the textbook. Gathering around the campfire to listen to the second chief of the Temagami First Nation discuss his concept of sustainability, or providing hard data to local initiative, Sustainable Peterborough, are all in a day’s work.

Big change starts small

Dr. Stephen Hill, the course instructor and professor in the ERS department at Trent, always includes a community project in the course. This past fall, students in the class took part in the Community Climate Conversation project, a project which offered them the unique opportunity to work hands-on with consultants and members of the Climate Change Action Plan, in coordination with Sustainable Peterborough, a community-based regional collaborative working to integrate the sustainability plan throughout the greater Peterborough area.

“By integrating our coursework into a community project, we were challenged to examine how different people are influenced by policies, and how to best present the issues and solutions to a diverse audience,” said Emily Amon, a third-year ERS student who took Professor Hill’s class this past fall.  “We learned to respect multiple forms of knowing, and value community support in making these decisions, and discussing environmental problems.”

Students were assigned to engage with various local community groups in Peterborough to hear their ideas for reducing local greenhouse gas emissions. Their findings were shared with members of the Climate Change Action Plan and incorporated into the plan’s ongoing development.

Learning from those who lived it

 As part of their course work, students are also encouraged to participate in the longstanding Trent Temagami Colloquium.  Now in its 43^rd year, the colloquium allows students from across campus to join alumni, faculty, and guest speakers at Camp Wanapitei in Temagami, Ontario. At the retreat, students examine Canadian environmental and Indigenous issues on the land in ways that bring their environmental studies to the forefront.

“As we talk about forestry controversies and challenges over First Nations jurisdiction, we are able to walk through the forests that were logged and the road that was blockaded during the Temagami land use conflict in 1989,” explains Prof. Hill. “By talking with the people who have been there about the stories, issues, and people who were affected, we are bringing classroom studies to life.”

Making policies with people in mind

Dr. Hill hopes students will take away a sense of the possibilities for creating more thoughtful environmental policies. 

As they become the policy makers of the future, students will build upon the knowledge and experience of the people they encountered in the community and the woods.