Events and Workshops

Climate Lecture Series

Wednesdays, 11:30 am

Off-campus guest lecturers/specialists are brought to speak on a variety of topics for Academic Programs and the general public. These occur in Week 3 and Week 7 of each quarter on Wednesday at 11:30 am in Purce Hall 1 (exceptions detailed below).

Climate Lecture Zoom Link

Upcoming Events
Spring Quarter

April 24 | Rosemary Collard & Jess Dempsey
Associate Professor, Simon Fraser University
& Associate Professor, University of British Columbia 

"The Extinction Paradox”

Domestic and international laws and agreements to protect wildlife from extinction have proliferated over the past half-century. But over the same period, wild animal abundance has nosedived. What explains this extinction paradox – why are environmental policies failing to turn the tide? The clearest answer is that the policies are not slowing the extractive land-use change that causes biodiversity loss. Our research investigates what holds extraction in place. To do so, we ask two questions. The first is a (classic academic) three-parter: who benefits from extraction; who bears the costs; and what systems of power uphold these geographical distributions? Second, why does the state approve extraction that harms endangered species the state is committed to protect? In this talk, we report answers to these questions from our research team’s long-term study of extraction causing caribou endangerment in northeast BC – Treaty 8 territory of West Moberly First Nations and Saulteau First Nation. In this region, where caribou decline has been called an act of environmental racism, our analysis of financial statements and government decision making materials shows the state supports extraction in the name of a “general interest,” seeking growth, revenue, accumulation, and legitimacy. Yet the benefits and costs of this extraction are actually starkly and, arguably, non-accidentally uneven in their distribution, falling along grooved racial, colonial and gendered lines. We draw two main conclusions: the state is at the centre of the extinction paradox, and biodiversity loss’s root drivers are entangled with racial, colonial and patriarchal systems of power. 

Speaker Bios:

Rosemary Collard – Rosemary-Claire Collard is an Associate Professor in Geography at Simon Fraser University, specializing in the political economy of environmental change. Her research focuses on identifying the drivers behind the extinction and loss of wild animal abundance, particularly examining the role of colonial and capitalist structures in wildlife over-exploitation and habitat loss. She holds a PhD and MA in Geography from the University of British Columbia and a BA Honours in Geography and Environmental Studies from the University of Victoria. Collard is the author of "Animal Traffic: Lively Capital in the Global Exotic Pet Trade" and has contributed to numerous academic essays and books on critical animal geographies and environmental justice.

Jess Dempsey – Jessica Dempsey is an Associate Professor and Associate Head of the Undergraduate Program in Geography at the University of British Columbia. Her research and teaching focus on environmental politics, with a special emphasis on understanding the persistent problem of biodiversity loss despite extensive conservation efforts. Dempsey's work explores the political economy of extinction and the increasingly economic and financial approaches to conservation. She completed her PhD and MA at the University of British Columbia and holds a BSc from the University of Victoria. Her publications include various academic essays on liberal environmentalism, the gendered impacts of mining, and transformative change in global biodiversity frameworks. 

May 15 | David Pellow
Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara