The Love + Sustainability event with speakers (from left to right) Blake Poland, Andrea Olive, Shashi Kant, and Stephen Scharper (on the screen).

Love + Sustainability = Inspiration

Carla DeMarco

 

The Institute for Management and Innovation’s Sustainability Week 2023 kick-off event featured esteemed UofT faculty and was a genuine lovefest for Mother Earth.

The theme for this year’s Sustainability Week was Acknowledge. Align. Act., and the four panelists for the Love + Sustainability event that opened up the week’s events were all in agreement that the time is now to be moved, motivated and mobilize for action.

“We are at this moment in time where we  have to come together and make a difference as a collective for the sustainability of human life on our planet,” said Professor Shashi Kant in his opening remarks, introducing the speakers and initiating the talk on love and sustainability.

"In true love, you seek your happiness in the happiness of the subject matter or the object that you love and not vice-versa. Mother Nature provides everything for our survival and happiness, and therefore we have to love our mother nature, which means that we seek our happiness in the happiness of our mother nature. This will require reciprocal relations with the mother nature - we have to do it for our and our future generations’ survival and happiness.”

The Love + Sustainability event with speakers (from left to right) Blake Poland, Andrea Olive, and Shashi Kant.
The speakers from IMI's Love + Sustainability event (from left to right): Professors Blake Poland, Andrea Olive, and Shashi Kant.

The themes of nature and love for sustainability echoed throughout each of the presentations from the panelists that included Professors Andrea Olive, from UTM’s Departments of Geography, Geomatics and Environment (GGE) and Political Science, Blake Poland, from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health (DLSPH, with cross-appointments to the Department of Geography & Planning and OISE at UofT, Stephen Scharper, from UTM’s Department of Anthropology and UofT’s School of the Environment, in addition to Kant, director of the Master of Science in Sustainability Management (MScSM) program.

Poland talked about his personal need to be in touch with nature through plants and his love of camping, along with how this translates into his research area of expertise: the need to make cities healthier, which leads to flourishing and happier communities. 

“Aligning our values and having respect for the land, for our fellow inhabitants, improves our living conditions and promotes more a sense of community and common good,” said Poland.

“I would like to invite everyone to consider decolonizing from the dominant worldview of separation and exploitation, and come into sacred reciprocity with all of life, and, relatedly, to see that sustainability might be more than just a technical problem, or even one of political apathy, but rather a relationship problem – having fallen out of right relationship with ourselves and each other, and with the non-human world.’”

This connection to community and nature carried through Olive’s discussion, which focused on her own ‘migratory’ path each summer: when the academic term ends, she returns to the land she loves in Saskatchewan. Born and raised in Regina, she still has roots there, and she is continually inspired by the wildlife, particularly around the rural parts of the province, which also ties into her research on biodiversity and species at risk.  

“Creativity is nature manifested in us,” said Olive.

“In this regard, we have a need for human connection. We have a need for a world that inspires us.”

 
Professor Stephen Scharper from UTM's Department of Anthropology

Inspiration and nature were also woven throughout Scharper’s stories, which covered a lot of ground, from his encounter with famous primatologist Jane Goodall when he introduced her at a UofT convocation, where she was receiving an honorary doctorate, and they joyfully interacted as chimps when they were both on stage, to his adapting to life in Toronto without a car and the perceived “silver linings” of being less stressed and less wasteful, as well as connecting with his surroundings and the people he loves.

This emphasis on love also factors prominently into Scharper’s approach to research.

“Love is the method,” said Scharper.

“It is important to factor love, respect, and admiration into our methodology because it leads to amazing insights and new relationships with each other, with our research, with the ecosystem, with birds, with trees, and it can lead to a spiritual falling in love with everything in our natural world.”

The Love + Sustainability event was organized and introduced by Michelle Atkinson, Sustainability Projects and Engagement Coordinator for the MScSM program, as part of the fourth annual UTM Sustainability Week, held this year from March 13 to March 17.

The events over the week were jointly coordinated by UTM’s Sustainability Office, the Institute for Management and Innovation’s MScSM program, and UTM’s Student Union (UTMSU). The intention behind the week is to reinforce the need to make necessary changes in the way we live and treat the planet, and to foster collaborations and a more sustainable community on the UTM campus. 

Graphic for Sustainability Week that is dedicated in 2023 to Professor Barbara Murck and Program Coordinator for MScSM Rose Mary Craig

This year’s Sustainability Week also carried a more profound and personal meaning: it commemorated the recent loss of two beloved members of the UTM community: Professor Barbara Murck, from GGE and cross-appointed to MScSM, and Rose Mary Craig, Program Coordinator for MScSM; they passed away in October 2022 and January 2023, respectively.

“We dedicate this year’s Sustainability Week to these two fierce advocates of both love and sustainability,” said Kant.

“The events taking place this week are held in their memory and we are thinking of them, how they impacted so many of us at UTM with their commitment and leadership in promoting the concept of love and sustainability on this campus and beyond.”


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