In a summer of wildfire smoke and global heat waves, climate change is a hot issue. Literally.
And while climate change is a global phenomenon, its impacts can be especially significant in Black communities: Issues like extreme heat in unsafe housing, pollution, lack of green space and an unmanageable increase in the cost of living all disproportionately affect neighbourhoods that tend to be both economically disadvantaged and historically underserved by public investment.
“Black communities tend to be more vulnerable and exposed to climate change impacts and devastation because of several, economic and political factors, such as poverty, the neighbourhoods they live in, the type of housing they have and the fact that they’re not often engaged in conversations on climate change with policymakers,” explains Ingrid Waldron, the HOPE Chair in Peace and Health and a professor in the Global Peace and Social Justice program at McMaster University.
In both her capacity as a professor and as the director of the non-profit ENRICH Project (a project on the MakeWay shared platform), Waldron has been working with Black communities on climate resilience since 2023.
That work has recently taken on new visibility, thanks to funding from the McConnell Foundation and a partnership with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Canada’s largest mental health teaching hospital.
Building Black Climate Resilience is a web portal that distills results from workshops Waldron held with Black communities in Central Toronto, Scarborough, Brampton, Mississauga, and Hamilton into both a narrative policy brief and a community resource.
The portal, which was conceptualized by climate justice advocate Alicia Richens of Climateverse and designed by Richard Barrett of HyperGraphik Design, includes fictionalized representations of real stories gathered during the workshops, lists of what Black communities need to thrive in a changing climate, as well as materials for policymakers – all based on Waldron’s workshops with Black community members over the last four years.
Those workshops included a widely diverse population – newcomers, established Canadians, those with roots in various parts of Africa and those from the Black diaspora – and identified common challenges that the website is designed to address.
“The central theme that you see replicated in these interviews is that the capacity to do certain things is not universal: You see shared frustration in the fact that the participants cannot achieve a particular thing they want,” says Hosea Patrick, a research associate in the office of the associate dean of equity, diversity, inclusion and indigeneity in the Faculty of Science at McMaster, and a participant in several of Waldron’s workshops.
“You see a lack of information, too – people feel that they don’t know who to talk to. The good part of the portal is that it is accessible, and it’s relatable. Black folk can look at the portal, see the characters depicted and say, OK – this is about me.”
That relatability is ideal for engaging communities in ways that are meaningful and effective – especially those that have historically been excluded from academic research and may have reason to mistrust institutions, explains Sean Kidd, a senior scientist at CAMH and co-director of the Institute for Mental Health Policy Research. He’s also the founder of the Poverty, Health Equity and Climate Change Initiative, a project that brings together global and national efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change on vulnerable populations.
Now, that includes Waldron’s ENRICH Project and its new portal.
“We knew about Dr. Waldron’s work in environmental racism, and the incredible data and engagement they had through the ENRICH Project. We’re thrilled to be supporting the knowledge mobilization part of that work: something that’s truly community-led and driven,” explains Kidd, who is also a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto.
“This is a participatory action project that has a particular focus on policymaker engagement and policy-relevant information, but consolidated into a very public-friendly format. The idea is that it’s a tool that Black communities and leaders who are engaged with them can use to move their agenda forward.”
Along with accessible, relatable text and graphics, the site also includes a 40-minute documentary directed by Rayne Grand and executive produced by Waldron called A Matter of Justice: Climate Change in Black Communities in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, featuring interviews with workshop participants and other community members – bringing faces to stories and concepts.
And that’s largely the point, says Waldron.
“This portal is about amplifying Black voices through a creative, community-centred approach to knowledge sharing – moving beyond technical reports and policy briefs to share their lived experience in a very different way,” she says.
“Ultimately, this has to lead to policy change and involving vulnerable and marginalized communities in policy-making. You can’t move the dial on climate change without policy – so we’re mobilizing knowledge in creative ways to influence policy and action.”