UBC Okanagan Department of History and Sociology Speaker Series

The Department of History and Sociology presents the third installment of its speaker series featuring Dr. Ania Zbyszewska, Assistant Professor with Carleton University’s Department of Law and Legal Studies.

Her presentation examines how “just transition” from fossil fuels is understood and operationalized in specific contexts. What is just about the transition as it is being envisioned and designed by policymakers, and what are we to transition towards?

By drawing on examples from her research in Brazil and Canada, Dr. Zbyszewska positions the debate on just transition against the backdrop of historic and ongoing injustices on which settler colonial states and racial capitalist economies rest. These injustices include the dispossession of Indigenous peoples and others pursuing traditional land-based livelihoods, but also socio-environmental harms faced by racialized communities and workers who supply labour in most essential yet least valued economic sectors.

Dr. Zbyszewska maintains that unless we shape just transition as an opportunity for a more fundamental change away from the status quo, transitional measures might very well reproduce existing inequalities.

This community event is free and open to the public.