“We’re thrilled to announce this year’s Green Investment Fund recipients and grateful for the careful thought and innovative thinking demonstrated by all applicants,” said Raman Dhaliwal, associate vice-president (Admin).

The funded projects will tackle sustainability issues through the lens of the UM Climate Action Plan’s (CAP) four pillars: waste, energy and buildings, transportation, and land.

Green Investment Fund projects

Out like a light

The first of the two projects selected, which falls under the energy can buildings CAP pillar, is the replacement of old fluorescent light fixtures in the Duff Roblin Animal Holding Facility. These fixtures are not energy-efficient.

The Animal Holding Facility is a 13,000 square-foot facility that relies solely on artificial lighting, as it is in the basement of the Duff Roblin building. Mark Fry, associate professor in the Department of Biological Science, has proposed that the existing fluorescent fixtures be replaced with an energy-efficient LED system, which would save roughly $2,000 per year in electricity costs.

The new LED system is also expected to last more than 20 years, amounting to a minimum of $40,000 in savings over its lifespan.

High-pitched recycling?

It may surprise many UM community members to learn just how critical helium is to chemistry research on campus. 900 litres of the inert gas is used every year in the operation of four nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometers, which are incorporated into both research and teaching.

As the only non-renewable element on Earth, there are no feasible alternatives to the use of helium, which is why Ute Kothe, Dean of Extended Education and former Chemistry department head, and team are proposing the installation of a helium capture-and-liquification system to mitigate waste.

This system will recover 90 per cent of the used helium, helping to prevent irreversible helium loss and dramatically reducing carbon emissions caused by the spectrometers. It’ll also reduce annual helium costs by at least $25,000, while reducing auxiliary carbon emissions even further by reducing the transport of liquid helium to UM.

Projects funded through other means

Though they don’t fully meet Green Investment Fund requirements, the committee identified three other projects that will viably demonstrate UM’s commitment to sustainability within our community and for all Manitobans. These projects will receive funding through other budgets within the Office of Sustainability.

Bikes on bikes on bikes

Simon Wang, Director of Facilities, has proposed double-stacking bike racks, which would be installed near the Active Living Centre instead of the traditional bike racks planned for the cage. This will more than double the capacity from 28 to 60 bikes in a space that would normally fit just two cars.

Flame efficiency

The second project aims to reduce UM’s carbon footprint by studying the burners in the power plant, which relies on natural gas combustion to produce power. Our Energy and Combustion Laboratory in the Department of Mechanical Engineering has developed significant expertise in improving combustion efficiency, and their goal would be to analyze and optimize the existing burners in order to save energy.

Operation: Recycle

With the health care sectors significant environmental impact due to its high consumption of resources and proportional waste, one team is proposing better recycling systems in operating rooms throughout the province. Recycling bins in ORs is actually rather hit or miss, so Sydnee Tuckett and Sarvesh Logestty are suggesting recycling standards, along with staff education programs for proper waste streams. This project has been referred to Shared Health for funding, as its implications are far-reaching for Manitoba health care.

Got a project idea?

This year’s application period for the UM Green Investment Fund will be opening soon! Keep an eye on UM Today for all the details.

If you have any questions about the Green Investment Fund or its projects, reach out to greenfund@umanitoba.ca.

His current work with H.C. Avery Middle School and The Green Minds project goal is to support students with climate crisis and mental and emotional wellbeing. “Like many other trauma inducing events, the climate crisis is a difficult experience to discuss. Our work is to support students and provide tools with unpacking difficult experiences and feelings so that they can manage eco-anxiety, and engage in personal growth and collective action for ecological justice,” Durling explains.

Scott Durling, grad student

Durling’s work with The Green Minds project developed through Manitoba Teacher Idea Fund (TIF), “engaging students in land-based learning and ecological justice is the most important need we have in education for action with the climate crisis, reconciliation, and resurgence,” says Durling.

A key part of this project is to support mental health among students “when we feel good, we can do good for our community. The goal of the project is to support student mental health and to learn more about the climate crisis through a solutions-frame,” explains Durling. He explains how difficult and overwhelming it can be for teachers to integrate climate change and climate action into the curriculum. “The goal of our project is to inspire and develop creative learning experiences that make connections between ecological justice and land-based learning within Manitoban curriculum. We are currently implementing our own Green Minds curriculum to support classroom projects and learning experiences connected to climate change,” explains Durling.

He is working with four classrooms on a national “Future City” Project and Challenge, organized by the non-profit Canadian organization Engineers of Tomorrow. “Students are learning about ecological justice issues in urban settings, and what a sustainable, ecologically just city might look like in 100 years from now. Classroom teachers have chosen themes to focus on with their students from their own personal interests, including waste, water, social justice, or the TRC’s 94 calls to action. Students are designing and building physical city models that will demonstrate their learning of what a city might look like through the 94 calls to action or a municipal policy of zero-waste,” explains Durling.

To start, I’m proud and grateful for our students and faculty members who continue to advocate for change and work to improve our ways of knowing and doing. Some of these individuals and programs are being highlighted in stories we’re featuring on our channels, including our homepage.

There have also been two big developments I’m excited to highlight today. First, this year the Board of Governors officially approved our Responsible Investment Principles and continues to monitor the asset mix of the University Investment Trust, ensuring it adheres to our priorities of addressing social and environmental issues. These principles ensure we divest from fossil fuels and any holdings that violate the rights of Indigenous Peoples.

And second, the Board of Governors also recently approved Southwood Circle’s development plan, which marked a momentous shift in how UM will develop the former Southwood golf course. The development plan is unique to Winnipeg, and we are proud that the policies approved by the Board set a new standard for sustainable community development in the city and the province. UM has also committed to ensuring these policies, which will guide development that prioritizes humans over cars and protects the natural environment, are reviewed every five years and are continually improved over the 40-year development period.

Also, guided by our Sustainability Strategy 2019-2023, UM is committed to being a sustainability leader through initiatives such as the Climate Action Plan, set to be released later this month. That plan will guide us through changes and collaborative action on energy use and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as a signatory to the Global University and Colleges Climate Letter.

I’m thankful to our UM community of students, faculty and researchers, staff and administrators for showing they care about our planet and finding solutions that work in our community. I encourage you to continue to think big.

It takes a lot of teamwork to make meaningful progress in this area, and I’m grateful for how this community continually comes together to drive change. Thank you.

Michael Benarroch, PhD
President and Vice-Chancellor, University of Manitoba

Here are eight enthralling ones teaching students how to view and do things differently, from incorporating Traditional Knowledges into building designs so they are kinder to worms, to learning how the right entrepreneurial mindset can help protect animals.   

Architecture serves all, not just humans 
Course: Nature as Mentor, Faculty of Architecture 

A rendering of Zebra Muscle Processing Facility by student Dominico Obmerga for the course Nature as Mentor, a course that challenges students to think how architecture can imagine a future with the natural world.

In the first term you design a project for extreme environments on Mars and in Churchill. In the second term you combine Traditional Knowledge with climate data to expand your views of climate change and help you anticipate the environmental changes to come so you can build a better community.  

“The recurring theme that comes up in this course is how to design architecture that forms a reciprocal exchange with the ‘more-than-human-world’. Architecture is not just for humans. This speaks to traditional Indigenous ways of thinking about responsibility and giving back—to this idea of sympoiesis, or ‘working with’,” associate professor Lancelot Coar says of the course he co-teaches with assistant professor Mercedes Garcia-Holguera.  

“And a lot of the conversations students have is around the innovative ways they can create buildings that provide habitat for other creatures, from worms to crabs to fish. It’s the idea that Architecture should be built to serve all, not just humans.” 

Design studios are taught all over the world, but this fourth-year undergrad studio takes the unique approach of working with climate data and Traditional Knowledge provided through collaborations with the Prairie Climate Centre and the Pacific Institute for Climate solutions. 

We’re focused on training students to dream and be imaginative in thinking about how architecture can co-imagine a future with the natural world rather than just building on it as has been done for too long,” Coar says.  

Social leg in this stool of sustainability 
Course: Impact of Engineering on the Environment, Price Faculty of Engineering 

The very first thing you do is audit your household’s greenhouse gas emissions, right down to the yogurt in the fridge. Then, you think about how a few changes could reduce emissions. And then you’ll ponder if someone in another part of the world could do the same.  

It’s perhaps the closest an engineering course gets to teaching empathy as you learn to view the built world through the lenses of social, economic and environmental sustainability.  

For professor Nazim Cicek, who has been teaching a version of this course – now mandatory for second-year students – for 23 years, the “social leg in this stool of sustainability” has become one of the more engaging for his students.  

“The course has changed to include a lot more on public engagement, specifically with Indigenous communities and how to meaningfully engage and learn from Elders and anyone else with a close connection to the land because such knowledge is crucial. You need Traditional Knowledge and western scientific knowledge together to understand and recognize changes…. We have these great discussions about Reconciliation and Indigenous land rights and by the time we reach the end of the course, students have a broader awareness of social implications of our work, and how, to make something sustainable, it has to benefit all parties involved.” 

Attention citizens of Earth 
Course: Earth: A User’s Guide, Clayton H. Riddell Faculty of Earth, Environment, and Resources 

Did you read the manual? // Image: NASA

A classic first-year course for those wanting to know a bit more about how to run a planetary system. It caters to students who are not familiar with Environmental Sciences and gives them great exposure to the different aspects of the environment. Associate professor Mary Benbow authored the course years ago, so that it captures a balanced view of the Riddell Faculty’s units, from acknowledging human needs to the potential impacts or our actions. The goal is to have students leave as informed Earth citizens.  

What gets students chatting the most in class? Hydrogen. “Hydrogen as a source of fuel seems to appeal to many students,” says this term’s instructor Johny Stephen. “And one thing that struck me was how students who have a farming background – either farmers themselves or come from a family of farmers – were worried about the changing weather patterns. They had some very helpful insights into changing agricultural practices due to climate change. Other students also learned a lot from their experiences.”  

Hope and possibilities in the face of Climate Change 
Course: Ecology and Design 2, Faculty of Architecture 

If you’re a fan of Aaron Sorkin’s famed “walk and talks” then you’ll love this course taught by associate professor Brenda Brown. On one of the first days of the course a walk-and-lecture in a Winnipeg landscape focuses on layered non-human and human systems at work providing students with a multi-pronged view ecology and design.  And Brown has designed two other major projects she flips between depending on the season to do this.   

Warm weather (fall term): choose a small, say 3×3 or 5×5 meter space and observe it on two different scales, every week at the same time of day. Then, design something that draws people’s attention to the phenomenon observed. Cold weather (winter term): imagine and design an animal that fits into an existing or imagined landscape ecosystem. Often this is a hybrid animal of some kind, Brown says, but by considering the animal’s anatomy, physiology, habitat, behaviors, trophic relationships and lifespan, students better understand the interrelationships at work in landscape ecosystems.  

“I don’t think I have to remind students of climate change” she says with a laugh. “I think what I’ve been more conscious of lately is offering hope. I seek out varied thoughtful and meaningful writings and design examples. Part of what I’m doing is laying out relationships of social problems to ecological problems and considering what that might mean in terms of landscape design and planning. It’s not that it’s a sad course or anything, but I have been more conscious of the importance of making sure there are good things, positive things, for students to accentuate. Possibilities.”   

Hold your horses 
Course: Animals and the law, Faculty of Law 

Illustration from Chambers Book of Days depicting a sow and her piglets being tried for the murder of a child in 1457. The sow was found guilty and the piglets were acquitted.

What legal rights do geese on our campus have and what rights does the university have in protecting people from goose attacks? Why does Canada offer dogs more legal protections than the pig, a creature with perhaps greater intelligence? What rights befall an animal that moved to a new location because of climate change? What is a domestic animal and what is wildlife, and for that matter, if a wolf mated with a dog, is the progeny domestic or wild? 

If you take professor Mary Shariff’s class you will ask many more questions as your personal philosophies collide with the law. Over the course you learn about the chronology of laws surrounding animals, including biblical views of animals as property and how animals were once tried for their deviance in the Middle Ages. You ponder our legal definitions. You question if our current laws and regulations are upholding our duties and obligations to incorporate Indigenous perspectives of animals under the Constitution.  

“I love the practical components. We sometimes bring in a student from the Natural Resources Institute, and since they are in the field looking at animals from a management perspective, they share their practical experience, and the law students can share the legal limits and opportunities. It’s super neat to watch,” says Shariff. “My favorite part is when we dig apart why people hold the beliefs that they do—and we all learn from that. Just unpacking why we hold these perspectives and then say, ‘OK, how does the law approach what you think?’ It really gets people talking.”    

Kale-ifornia dreaming in your backyard 
Course: Urban agriculture, Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences 

This first-year class is filled with students from across campus eager to learn how to start, tend, harvest and store an urban garden and its bounty. You’ll learn about vertical and raised gardens, greenhouses and hydroponics and apply this knowledge in, say, designing a garden for a school. Big ideas are encouraged: This year a local entrepreneur spoke to the class about his invention wherein he can mail a hydroponics system to anyone using an 8×10 envelope. The class took hydroponics for a test drive and grew lettuce – without any soil. Students also work in groups to grow and keep alive edible plants in a greenhouse throughout the course. (Did you know you can eat daylilies?)

“It’s an interesting course to teach in that you’re teaching to a real range of student skill levels. I think there’s something in this course for everyone,” says Yvonne Lawley, assistant professor in Plant Science. “We connect with practical, experience-based learning through different projects…. Environmentalism is at the heart of the course and drives a lot of people’s interest in in local food.” 

Life moves pretty fast 
Course: Ecological Crisis, Work and Capitalism Today, Faculty of Arts 

Bringing ecology to sociology and labour studies. Every second year, associate professor David Camfield, coordinator of the labour studies program, teaches a special topics course that gives students a taste of how Earth System science and social science can come together, providing them with a richer view of what’s causing the complex ecological crisis, including climate change. But “life moves pretty fast” (thank you Ferris Bueller), so this course stays dynamic and fresh.   

“I first taught a version of this course in 2019 and I’ve had to revise it to address the COVID-19 pandemic as another aspect of the global ecological crisis,” Camfield says.   

The fast-paced course tackles question of great relevance to students, such as what distinct challenges young people experience in Canada and similar societies. And it asks, to what extent are today’s ecological and societal crises interconnected?   

Solving global issues through imagination and debate 
Course: Introduction to Entrepreneurship, I.H. Asper School of Business 

Send in the big-picture, risk-tolerant, dreamers. This entrepreneurship course steps through environmental and social paradigms by having students engage with issues as social entrepreneurs. Taught this year by a fourth-year PhD student Li Yu, students are challenged to find viable solutions to everyday wicked issues such as water scarcity, child labor and animal cruelty. Students imagine and debate how they could solve these problems by developing some innovative ideas.  

“I try to prep students to think about social and environmental issues and to try various ways to account for social and environmental changes,” Yu said.  

To address the growing climate challenge, UM has made significant changes to become leaders of sustainability research and practices, from building the highest standard of environmentally-sound buildings, to altering our purchasing policies to account for environmental impacts—all things you can learn more about in our Sustainability Strategy 2019-2023. Our efforts to date have earned us gold in the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System, and we are now aiming to earn a platinum award.

We have also recently focused on our financials. Last year, UM, alongside 14 of Canada’s other leading universities, signed a pledge to follow environmentally responsible investment practices. This pact also holds signatories to cut their institution’s emissions in half by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. UM’s Climate Action Plan, which will outline how we will meet these goals, is expected to be complete and available to the public this fall.

These are ambitious goals, and I look forward to the continued progress we need to make to reach them. We have a lot of work ahead of us, because we know we need to do things differently, as an institution and as individuals.

This year—this long pandemic year— forced us all to make behavioural changes that lessened our impact on the natural world. Indeed, ecologist Nicola Koper, from UM’s Natural Resources Institute, quickly realized that lockdowns offered an incredible opportunity to see how wildlife behaved when humans quieted their behaviour. She and her colleagues did research on 82 bird species, and almost all of them changed their habitat use during the lockdown, often increasing their use of human-altered landscapes. (UM even recently posted a cautionary notice of coyotes roaming the Fort Garry campus.)

I don’t suggest we live in lockdown, but we do need to make long-term changes to our behaviour, and the pandemic has shown us that drastic change is possible. Now we must do our part and seize this opportunity.

The Land Back movement has gained international attention, including support from the David Suzuki Foundation (DSF). In order to help provide context to the movement, the DSF released a series of three informative videos covering the past, present and future of Land Back that features many prominent Indigenous voices including land protectors, artists and academics. 

In response to the popularity of the movement and in conjunction with the release of the videos, the Centre for Human Rights Research (CHRR) is hosting a live viewing and panel discussion exploring the topic of Land Back on Earth Day, April 22 in partnership with DSF and Indigenous Engagement at UM. 

“Earth Day is a critical time for the CHRR to host a discussion on Land Back and what it means for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and communities on the territories we inhabit,” says CHRR’s director, Faculty of Arts professor and historian Dr. Adèle Perry. “[The event] will provide us with an opportunity to highlight the connections between environmental degradation and colonialism, as well as racism and dispossession, while addressing how Indigenous rights are connected to the restoration of Indigenous lands and waters.” 

CHRR’s event will screen the first video in the series, titled Land Governance – The Past, with a panel presentation from one of the series’ producers Aimée Craft, UM alumna Danielle Morrison [JD/19] and environmental studies student Taylor Galvin. The panel will be moderated by Dr. Perry. Participants are also encouraged to preview videos two and three in the series on the DFS website before the event.

All are welcome to register and attend the event on April 22 at 1 p.m. 

Colin Garroway, assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, is studying one of Winnipeg’s most notable urban species – the grey squirrel. Garroway and his team are looking at grey squirrels in and around the University of Manitoba Fort Garry campus, and a natural forest population outside Morden. His team has found that the urban squirrel population density is higher than in their natural habitat.

“It’s strange because the city is not a proper forest and you would think there’s no food for the squirrels, but yet they can still sustain higher population sizes and densities outside their natural habitats,” says Garroway. “We’re pretty certain that this is due to them relying on human based food, whether it’s bird feeds or just food waste.”

A picture taken of Colin Garroway and team’s automated squirrel detector they use to measure activity and survival of squirrels with microchips.

With the temporary shutdown of many businesses, urban squirrels may experience increased stress.

“Humans are a resource for urban species. When we stop behaving in the ways we do, such as littering and dropping food, that will affect urban animal populations.”

While the effects of decreased human activity of the urban squirrel population is still up in the air, some species may thrive. With the reduction of noise pollution, we may see more birds nesting closer to the typically high-traffic areas they once avoided, like busy streets and intersections, where their songs, which they use to communicate many things, would normally be drowned out by traffic.

“In general, reduced disturbance is probably going to make urban species become less wary about different habitats that they may have avoided before,” says Garroway. “We’ve got lots of information about how birds change their songs due to noise and avoid noisy areas. You might see a relaxing of habitat restrictions.”

Other species also use sound to communicate, like bats who use echolocation to navigate.

“For bats, noise pollution is bad for them and we know for sure it alters their activity,” says Garroway. “I suspect we might see more bat activity for the same reasons that birds might be a little freer to do as they please.”

We may also see an increase in pest species, like geese. To students, staff, and faculty the UM campus is known for its goose population. With the significant decrease in human activity, geese will now be free to roam campus without the stress of human conflict, most likely laying their nests wherever they please, from garden beds to parking lots.

We are currently living through unprecedented times. This kind of global interruption to human activity has never been seen before in modern history and time will only tell what effects this will have on species that rely on our presence, or absence, to thrive.