York University to train next generation of climate ambassadors

Originally published by Yfile (16 May 2025).

Edited by Ashley Goodfellow Craig

York University will offer funding from the highly competitive Canadian Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Scholarships (QES) program to students and researchers from York, as well as partner universities in Costa Rica, Ghana and the Philippines to tackle issues at the intersection of climate change and human population displacement.

The highly competitive QES program was established in 2012 and is managed through a partnership between Universities Canada, the Rideau Hall Foundation and Canadian post-secondary institutions. To date, more than 2,600 scholars from Canada and around the world have received the award.

York’s project, titled the Canada-Global South Interdisciplinary Initiative on Climate Change & Displacement: Cases of Costa Rica, Ghana and the Philippines, will direct scholarships valued at up to $10,000 to send 12 York students overseas and welcome 10 international scholars to York over the next three years.

Professor Ali Asgary, director of CIFAL and executive director of the Advanced Disaster, Emergency and Rapid Response Simulation Lab, is academic lead for the QES project and says he is hopeful the program will inspire students to continue working in a field that needs fresh ideas and dedication.

“York students will have the opportunity to visit places where they can make connections with what they are studying firsthand and get to know the challenges and complexities of these situations. They will be able to network with policymakers and researchers in other countries, and because the focus is interdisciplinary, they will get to know researchers in both climate change and population displacement.”

Additionally, scholars visiting York will provide invaluable insights to the University community on how they address these challenges in their countries, which can help inform how Canadians tackle climate change at home.

With these goals in mind, Asgary and York’s former assistant vice-president Global Engagement and Partnerships Vinitha Gengatharan, whose team is supporting the QES project, sought expert partners to bring the diverse expertise and perspectives required for this multi-continental project. At York, the new project brings together faculty leaders from York Emergency Mitigation, Engagement, Response and Governance Institute (Y-MERGE), York’s Las Nubes campus in Costa Rica, the Centre for Refugee Studies, the Faculty of Environmental & Urban Change and the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research.

International partners were chosen from countries specifically impacted by climate change and displacement, and include the University of Costa Rica, University of Ghana, the University of Cape Coast (Ghana), the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration and the University of the Philippines.

United Nations Institute for Training and Research’s (UNITAR), CIFAL, the Global Water Academy and Learning for a Sustainable Future, a Toronto-based NGO, are also among the external collaborators.

Amir Asif, vice-president, research and innovation, says the new scholarly exchange reflects York’s continued focus on advancing partnerships for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). York’s global partners on this project carry out compelling climate and human displacement-related  research which complements the University’s strengths and Canada’s climate diplomacy initiatives.

“We hope that through the QES, we will provide youth from Canada and around the world with unique opportunities to gain new perspectives from beyond their labs,” he says, adding that addressing climate justice is essential to reduce growing social inequities. “Future generations will need to have more empathy and stronger cross-cultural understanding. This is important to make difficult compromises and design effective climate policies that garner global consensus. It’s easy to talk about inequities without understanding what inequity looks like, in a different cultural and geographical context.”

In this project, York students attending the University of Cape Coast will have the opportunity to learn from the legacy of the transatlantic slavery at Cape Coast Castle, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and witness how the industrialized West continues to have an impact on the lives of coastal communities in Africa by contributing to rising sea levels.

Asgary notes the project will help move the global goals forward. “This is hugely important for our future. Climate change has introduced a lot of forced or semi-forced displacement and may worsen in years to come," he says.

With files from Suzanne Bowness

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