Community-Engaged Research and The Climate Crisis: Key Insights and Best Practices

Climate crisis is already unfolding across BC: heat domes, wildfires, and floods have had devastating impacts on communities throughout the province, both urban and rural. These impacts – like other social and environmental injustices – are unevenly distributed, often exacerbating existing harms to Indigenous peoples, communities of colour, and the underhoused or socially vulnerable. Community-engaged research offers powerful methods for understanding these impacts, increasing the capacity of under-resourced communities to plan for and live through them, and amplifying the stories and visions of change coming from those living through the climate crisis. 

Community Engaged-Research and the Climate Crisis: Key Insights and Best Practices documents the collective knowledge that was generated and shared at the Symposium on Community Engaged Research in the Climate Crisis held on October 20th, 2022. The symposium (co-hosted by CERi and UBC Centre for Climate Justice) brought together community organizers, youth leaders, Elders, media makers/storytellers, researchers, and other practitioners of climate justice to share practices, stories, and lessons for responsive and community-engaged climate research. 

The report summarizes ideas and best practices related to three themes: Indigenous sovereignty, storytelling and youth-driven research and engagement for climate justice. The recommendations shared in this report will inform the research agendas of CERi and the UBC Centre for Climate Justice, identifying future areas of focus, best practices of research, and new potential partnerships.