S/1. Navigating Loss and Damage: creating space for ecological grief in the participatory climate adaptation planning process , Quinn Howard, candidat à la MAP, Université de Guelph / Bourse : 2000 $
The Canadian climate landscape is changing. Warming at nearly twice the global rate, annual average temperature across the Canadian landmass has increased by roughly 1.7° C, causing widespread and cascading impacts on both natural and human systems. With effects of warming expected to intensify over time, the forces of climate change will lead to significant loss, damage and disruption over the next 20 years, particularly in northern latitudes and coastal communities. These losses will not be neutral experiences and have emotional consequences for communities where they occur.
In Canada the negotiation of these losses will happen most tangibly through the adaptation planning and design processes, placing landscape professionals directly in the face of this work and its entangled emotions. This research responds directly to this emerging paradigm by integrating concepts from the ecological grief literature into the climate adaptation planning process. Using document analysis and a focused literature review, two bodies of literature - adaptation planning and ecological grief - are analyzed. Then, using a soft systems methodology and VUE conceptual modeling software a rich picture of the grief-centric adaptation planning process is developed. This picture is then further developed into a toolkit for practitioners, beginning the work of integrating ecological grief into the adaptation planning process. Beyond this, this thesis raises the need to begin a new dialogue in the practice of landscape architecture: How do we design for disappearance and loss in the face of climate change? And can the experience of loss, mediated through art, memorial and landscape, shape new relationships with the natural world?