The Reconciling Racial Justice and Climate Resilience Project is a University of Toronto School of Cities Urban Challenge Grant funded project. The project brings together the Community Climate Resilience Lab, University of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health, *X(Ryerson) University Sociology Department, the Network for the Advancement of Black Communities and the Center for Connected Communities in a unique partnership. From January 2022 to February 2023 project partners will co-create and lead an action research process that will support the creation of Toronto’s first Racial Justice Climate Resilience (RJCR) Framework. The RJCR framework will serve as a foundation for long-term collaboration and integrated multi-sectoral action across Toronto.
The Climate crisis will continue to disproportionately impact historically disenfranchised communities, exacerbating existing systemic inequities while undoing many decades of progressive action. The COVID-19 pandemic and its disproportionate impacts on lower income Black and racialized residents across Toronto, foreshadows the ways that the climate crisis will exacerbate existing injustices, devastate communities, and further entrench inequity in our City. We urgently need to advance community-centered climate resilience efforts that will address the disproportionate impact of climate crisis on historically disenfranchised communities and neighbourhoods across Toronto.
The ReconcilingRacial Justice and Climate Resilience (RRJCR) project responds to this challenge by bringing together not-for profit leaders, grassroots leaders, academics, and policy makers in the creation of Toronto’s first Racial Justice Climate Resilience (RJCR) Framework. As a project team we want to explore the following questions:
