Identifying strategies to achieve multiple sustainability goals: Towards improved air quality, climate action, and environmental justice
Speaker: Dr. Amanda Giang
Assistant Professor at UBC Mechanical Engineering and the Institute for Resources, Environment & Sustainability, Canada Research Chair in Environmental Modelling for Policy
When: October 8, 2024 | 1-2 pm
Location: CEME 1203 (6250 Applied Science Lane) or on Zoom (https://ubc.zoom.us/j/67435893245?pwd=8d5tncSvZYYmbL8QAziOTK5VVeEIi6.1 | Meeting ID: 674 3589 3245 | Passcode: 168812)
The Department Research Seminar series shares our faculty expertise on a variety of topics with the UBC community.
Abstract:
Around the world, communities are facing many linked sustainability challenges, including climate change, air pollution, and environmental injustice. However, in the design of technology and policy interventions, these challenges are frequently considered in isolation, leading to unintended trade-offs and missed opportunities for win-wins. How can we apply more holistic understandings of nature-society systems to identify and design strategies that advance air quality, climate action, and environmental justice at the same time? In this talk, I will discuss some illustrative examples of how engineering expertise can be combined with insights and methods from other disciplines to inform action from an integrated perspective. Examples include targeting emissions reductions and enforcement actions towards industrial facilities that are both high emitters and contribute to exposure disparities; technology policy dimensions of simultaneously addressing air quality and climate impacts of marine shipping; and enhancing the benefits of urban greenspace for ecosystem health and climate resilience. Finally, across these examples, I will explore how diversity in the quantitative and qualitative data sources and ways of knowing used to inform action can uncover different leverage points for change towards healthy, sustainable, and just communities.
Biography:
Dr. Amanda Giang is an Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Environmental Modelling for Policy at the Institute for Resources, Environment & Sustainability and Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Her research addresses environmental policy analysis challenges through an interdisciplinary lens, with a focus on developing better modeling tools and methods for assessing and addressing pollution and environmental injustice, and understanding the links between air quality, decarbonization, and equity to inform planning decisions. She serves on the Early Career Editorial Advisory Board Member for Environmental Science & Technology. She received a PhD and MS in Engineering Systems and Technology Policy at MIT, and a BASc in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto.