Month: January 2025

British Columbia’s Elementary School Education and Indigenous Equality in Canada

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Abstract

As an elementary practitioner in Surrey, BC, I contemplate the role of K-7 education, which can no longer stand aside in dispassionate voyeurism without further compromising its moral integrity. The voyeuristic modality of BC’s current K-7 system utilizes Indigenous trauma as a resource that it freely mines for self-centered theorization by teachers and students, with no sense of reciprocity. If K-7 education wants to preserve its credibility as an agent of democracy and humanism, it needs to adopt an intellectual activism, which seeks direct engagement with Indigenous peoples with the aim of establishing equity, rather than refining them into abstract curriculum. Canada’s history of racism toward Indigenous peoples contrasts sharply with the common myth of national identity. Because of its spectator modality, BC’s new K-7 curriculum falls short of addressing Indigenous social injustices. However, a responsive intellectual activism can be grounded in Freire’s (1970) theory of critical pedagogy. This meshes nicely with a Vygotskian (CHAT) pedagogical approach (Vygotsky, 1986), which seeks to transform the passive act of knowledge consumption into a powerful agent of social collectivism for meaningful social change. Approached in these ways, K-7 education no longer functions as self-centered intellectual voyeurism but emerges in morally transformative activities of praxis, which can transform the teacher, the students, and the relevant spaces, both social and physical.

CMIP6 Ocean and Atmospheric Climate Change Projections in the Seaflower Biosphere Reserve—Caribbean Sea—by the End of the Twenty-First Century

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Abstract

Seventeen climate models from CMIP6 were examined to assess the expected behavior of seven atmospheric/ocean variables in the Caribbean Basin and the Seaflower Biosphere Reserve (SBR) during the twenty-first century, under two socioeconomic scenarios (SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5). Additionally, an ensemble is made with the five models with the best oceanic resolution in the Caribbean Sea. Precipitation shows significant negative trends in most of the projected periods, while air and sea surface temperature, surface salinity and mean sterodynamic sea level (SDSL) have significant positive trends. Air temperature in SBR will probably increase by 2 °C compared to the preindustrial period after 2050 (SSP5-8.5) or 2060 (SSP2-4.5). The warming trend in the region could extend the hurricane season and/or increase hurricane frequency, affect ecosystems like coral reefs and mangroves, and intensify ocean stratification. For the same period, SDSL is expected to rise in SBR between ~24.2 and 39.9 cm. If all contributing factors are included, an increase of up to ~95 cm (SSP5-8.5) could be expected by the end of the twenty-first century. This sea level rise would modify the ecological balance and enhance flooding, affecting tourism and risking the disappearance of the low-elevation islands.

SIMPLE-G Model Specification: Mathematical Equations in a Multiscale Market Equilibrium Model

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Abstract

This chapter introduces the mathematical representations for multisystem and multiscale sustainability analyses focusing on supply and demand in food and agricultural markets at different scales. Within a computable multiscale modeling framework like SIMPLE-G, the supply and demand equations are derived based on production, trade, or food consumption theories. For each of the five successively more complex models, agricultural inputs are either environmental resources (e.g., land and water) or manufactured and human inputs (e.g., fertilizer and labor). The degree of complexity in SIMPLE-G models depends on the details about agricultural inputs, the assumptions about market connections and input mobility, the choice of functional forms, and the spatial heterogeneity required by the research question.