UnderCurrents: Journal of Critical Environmental Studies (E-Journal - York University)
Not a member yet
393 research outputs found
Sort by
Hacking It; Laying New Pipe; & Clearing The Ground
No full textHACKING IT cast iron pipe sawed straight through, blisters rising from the small hacksaw rushing to meet its end, singing, with you with you with you with you...LAYING NEW PIPE Where turds bob up with clogs of toilet paper and Tampax, mint trees & flowers thrive, the line was cracked by roots. One hundred year old terra cotta pipe, a young Bay tree broke her way through. We lay ten foot lengths black plastic tube, glue the joints, cross the stream, on out... CLEARING THE GROUND Clearing the ground, Frantically working the gears, Grabbing handles, pulling levers, billows of dust... O MAN, dragged over the land Behind a machine!! Tearing freeways, cracking sidewalks, Universities, libraries...whole worlds Of consciousness plowed back to seed
End Times and Beginnings: A Retrospective and Relaunch
Full text linkIn the Beginning...In 1988, a group of intrepid graduate students in the Faculty of Environmental Studies, at York University in Toronto, Canada, conceived and launched UnderCurrents. The founders’ main objective was to provide a space for alternative, critical, and creative explorations of environmental issues, thinking, action, and scholarship. Although many of the theoretical and conceptual tools to enable such a project were only in embryonic form, the founding editors sought to destabilize the ontological and epistemological moorings of some stubbornly persistent signifiers, including “nature,” “wilderness,” and “environment.” Direct action environmentalism of previous decades, though visceral, corporeal, and essential, had proven insufficient in the heady days of Reagan’s culture wars. The founding editors understood this implicitly, and launched UnderCurrents as both a material and discursive salvo. This wasn’t their parents’ environmentalism....
Laying More Pipe
No full textWith pick and shovel, find the brokencast iron pipe, pry out old lead,knock off rusty joints.20’ of 4” 40-schedule ABS sawedand coupled with rubber collarswith stainless steel braces,joined to pipe at next streamcrossing, joined to terra cottapipe under tea house site, joined to three lengths ironpipe cut three poems ago.1 lb brick of dull lead meltedin a pan becomes silver liquidpoured into iron bell-collars.Black cement smeared over allconnections is a waterproof coating.Taps turned and draining,toilets flushed... Give it all back
My Nobel Prize
No full textThey stick the real Nobel Prize to my chest. The pin goes through my heart. Don’t worry: it’s made of a new material that I just invented. It is both wife and participle. Royal jelly and particle board. It is shadow and light rolled into one like chocolate, riot gear for the end of the world.In fact, I recently invented myself. I am entirely new. A new cloud, a new ant. Hook me up to the flat screen IV and let the 3D beam through my veins like weather. Change my channel. I sleep.I said, the mind is a lawnmower chewing up lawn. There was a dog in that yard. It was a problem but it is a problem no more. That’s why my heart got pinned with this prize. My mind-blades ran over something no one else noticed, but I don’t throw away the bags. I am all new.Newsflash: Nobel Prize pin insertion causes end of world. The end is very small. It’s far away. You would need a giant’s telescope or death-defying binoculars to see it. They thought we would all die. There are clouds over my tongue.An enormous whale or a bean from the edge of the universe, a universe that still doesn’t have a name because it keeps getting bigger. I invented bigger. And I forgot my newness because I invented it so fast I finished before I began. I said to the universe, You can’t kill me because only one of us is going to die because of some kind of spacetime thing which is very complicated and that only I can explain.Yes, you should thank me for receiving this prize with my only heart. My words are shadows in my hands. Now I open them and let the dove that was never there become something small and far away, far away as the end of the world. In conclusion, Mr. and Mrs. Committee, I’d like to begin by inventing someone else. All this new gets lonely
Health and Sustainability in the Canadian Food System: Advocacy and Opportunity for Civil Society
No full textHealth and Sustainability in the Canadian Food System: Advocacy and Opportunity for Civil Society.Edited by ROD MACRAE and ELISABETH ABERGEL. UBC Press, 2012. $95.00Reviewed by Crystal LamontThink about what you did today. What did you eat? Food is such an integral part of everyday life, but how often do you think about food as more than a means to stop that annoying grumble in your stomach? Health and Sustainability in the Canadian Food System: Advocacy and Opportunity for Civil Society takes a look into Canadian food systems and the ineffective and unresponsive policies of the Canadian government regarding food, as well as the agricultural challenges of today and tomorrow. The contributions to this edited volume strive to illustrate how effective and sustainable food policies can be achieved in the Canadian food system. This book explores different food problems and policies to advance the notion of civil society organizations (CSO’s) as powerful vehicles to invoke the sort of changes Canada requires in its food systems.Health and Sustainability in the Canadian Food System engages with issues surrounding food and agricultural policies in Canada using an interdisciplinary approach. This volume brings together scholars in geography, sociology, political science, and environmental studies, as well as authors who work in the field of food policy to explore the role of advocacy and CSO’s by drawing on these diverse perspectives and experiences.Many of the authors use case studies from other environmental struggles as a way to explore effective advocacy in working toward change in Canadian food policy. Overall, the reader comes to appreciate the role CSO’s can, and ought, to play in achieving a policy paradigm shift in Canadian food and agriculture.Contributors in the first section of the book investigate and challenge the current food and agriculture policy paradigms in Canada by questioning the very problematic ways that farming practices and the purpose of agriculture are discussed in dominant public narratives. Scholars Grace Skogstad and Alison Blay-Palmer argue that the current dominant view of farms is resource production. Commonly, farming and agricultural practices are conceptualized solely as means to provide food to people. As a result, policies tend to focus on maximum production strategies while failing to support sustainability measures or to facilitate environmental protection. Skogstad and Blay-Palmer both suggest how policies can be shaped to enable long-term and systematic changes that view farming within a larger context of public good and the multiple benefits farms provide to communities in addition to food. One illustration of a successful paradigm shift discussed in this section and used in contrast to Canada’s current food and agricultural model is the European Union’s multifunctionality paradigm. The principles of multifunctionality place agricultural activity in terms of its social functions, incorporating the production of food with land conservation, protection of biodiversity, sustainable management of natural resources, and the socio-economic viability of rural areas.The second part of the text explores various lessons that can, and have been, learned from the Canadian food system and the role of advocacy in this area. The case studies used as ways to illustrate the role of civil society organizations in Canadian food and agriculture policy in this section include examples of agricultural biotechnology, agricultural pesticide use, Canada’s Action Plan for Food Security, breastfeeding promotion campaigns targeted at mothers, obesity in children, and the new generation of farmers. In each of these examples, CSO’s and advocacy groups have worked either to pressure government to make changes in food and agriculture policy or have acted independent of government in attempts to achieve positive change. Although these are diverse issues, the lessons learned have resonance with current and emerging food and agricultural issues. Several of the case studies illustrate the gaps between government action and policies with CSO initiatives and goals, and the lack of integration and participation of civil society into any decision-making processes. Other authors in the volume view the role of CSO’s as crucial to achieving food policy changes that governments have not been willing to provide, such as food banks and health promotion in schools. Whether working in tandem with or in opposition to government policy, the role of civil society organizations in seeking sustainable food and agriculture policy is crucial.Indeed, the overall message presented by each author in this book is that, if unprompted, governments will not do what is necessary in order to promote health and sustainability in the Canadian food system. Therefore, there is immense pressure upon CSOs and advocacy groups to challenge the current paradigms and demand change. Incremental, short-term results need to be replaced by holistic, long-term, system-wide sustainable initiatives. This book is valuable to environmentalists, for although the contributions to this text concern food and agricultural policies, the same themes and challenges are persistent in any environmental struggle. Health and Sustainability in the Canadian Food System makes clear the link between meaningful policy change and civil society organizations, requiring that we all hear the grumble in our stomachs as a call to confront the ways that we are directly implicated in the Canadian food system and to consider what change we might affect with our participation in civil society organizing.~CRYSTAL LAMONT is a Masters Candidate in the Faculty of Envioronmental Studies at York University. Her research focuses on Canadian environmental policy, specifically natural resource and energy policy
Quark for Wyatt
No full texthunting for themselvesdeer and hadron know where they arebut as for hart and mesondeer and hadron don’t knowthe pumping heart is wearyhart and meson make it soso deer and hadron leave hart and mesonwell enough alonedeer and hadron can’t fill their weary mindwith hart and meson nor draw the meson from meson and hartwho flee the stippling forestdeer and hadron will not followthey don’t attempt itit would be like trying to holdhart and meson in a netmade of hart and meson onlydeer and hadron doubt they could do thisso deer and hadron imagine spending eonshunting hart and meson in vainit’d be like starting with fernsthen attempting to forge diamonds blindfoldedbesides what is written around your fair neckyou can’t read and in the endhart and meson cease to be what deer and hadron go wild to tamethough hart and meson, deer and hadron are the sam
Contributors
No full textOmer Aijazi is a PhD candidate in the Department of Educational Studies, University of British Columbia. His research examines place based, community led micro processes of social repair after natural disasters. His research destabilizes dominant narratives of humanitarian response and disaster recovery and offers an alternate dialogue based on structural change.Jessica Marion Barr is a Toronto artist, educator, and PhD candidate in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University. Her interdisciplinary practice includes installation, found-object assemblage, drawing, painting, collage, and poetry, focusing on forging links between visual art, elegy, ecology, ethics, and sustainability. "In October 2013, Jessica curated and exhibited work in Indicator, an independent project for Toronto's Nuit Blanche.Gary Barwin is a poet, fiction writer, composer, visual artist, and performer. His music and writing have been published, performed, and broadcast in Canada, the US, and elsewhere. He received a PhD in Music Composition from SUNY at Buffalo and holds three degrees from York University: a B.F.A. in music, a B.A. in English, and a B.Ed.O.J. Cade is a PhD candidate in science communication at the University of Otago, New Zealand. In her spare time she writes speculative fiction, and her short stories and poems can be found in places like Strange Horizons, Cosmos Magazine, and Abyss and Apex. Her first book, Trading Rosemary, was published in January of 2014 by Masque Books.Kayla Flinn is a recent graduate from the Masters in Environmental Studies program, with a Diploma in Environmental and Sustainable Education from York University. Originally from Nova Scotia, Kayla is both an artist and athlete, spending majority of her time either surfing or trying to reconnect people to nature/animals through art she produces.Frank Frances is a playwright, poet, music programmer, artistic director, community arts and social justice activist, former jazz club owner, and believer of dreams of a greater humanity. Frank majored in English, creative writing, post colonial literature and theory, drama and theatre, and is a graduate of York University.Sarah Nolan is a PhD candidate at the University of Nevada, Reno, where she studies twentieth and twenty-first century American poetry. Her dissertation considers developing conceptions of ecopoetics and how those ideas contribute to poetry that is not often recognized as environmental.Darren Patrick is an ecologically minded queer who lives in a city. He is also a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University in Toronto, Ontario.Portia Priegert is a writer and visual artist based in Kelowna, B.C. She completed her MFA in Creative Writing at UBC Okanagan in 2012, with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.Elana Santana is a recent graduate of the Masters in Environment Studies program at York University. Her research focuses on the intersections of feminist, queer, posthumanist studies and the environment. Her academic work informs her creative pursuits a great deal, particularly in her attempts to photograph the non-human world in all its agential glory. Conrad Scott is a PhD candidate in the University of Alberta’s Department of English and Film Studies. His project examines the interconnection between place, culture, and literature in a study of dystopia in contemporary North American eco-apocalyptic fiction.Joel Weishaus has published books, book reviews, essays, poems, art and literary critiques. He is presently Artist-in-Residence at Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpinteria, CA. Much of his work is archived on the Internet: http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/weishaus/index.htmMichael Young is presently the University and Schools advisor for Operation Wallacea Canada, a branch of a UK based biodiversity research organization. He is a recent graduate of the Masters in Environmental Studies program at York University (MES), where his culminating portfolio examined apocalyptic narratives and popular environmental discourse. He is presently in the process of developing an original television pilot, which he began writing as a part of his master’s portfolio
Haiti’s new Dictatorship: The Coup, the Earthquake and the UN Occupation
No full textHaiti’s new Dictatorship: The Coup, the Earthquake and the UN Occupation.By JUSTIN PODUR. Pluto Press, 2012. $29.95Reviewed by Natali DownerThe controversial book Haiti’s new Dictatorship: The Coup, the Earthquake and the UN Occupation is a significant contribution to current discussions around globalisation, political economy, development, post-colonialism, and human rights. Podur’s work provides welcome insight and a critical perspective on the struggle for sovereignty in modern day Haiti. The author takes the reader through Haiti’s political history, beginning with the slave revolution of 1804, which established Haiti as the world’s first independent black Republic. The historical account grounds the reader in Haiti’s reality—the ongoing battle for economic and political sovereignty within its borders. Since its independence, Podur argues, the successful slave revolt in Haiti has been an ontological challenge to those who would seek to impose colonialism; it is the challenge they posed in 1804 and today.Podur sections the book into historical eras, including the Duvalier dictatorship followed by Haiti’s popular movement and Jean-Bertrand Aristide, which act as signposts for his study. In Podur’s analysis of the second and pivotal coup against Aristide in 2004, he argues that the new dictatorship was imposed and solidified under the control of the U.S., Canada, France and later, the United Nations. Specifically, under the guise of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine (the new iteration of the “White Man’s Burden”,) western countries employed the old colonial pretext in order to “overthrow Haiti’s elected government and replace it with an internationally constructed dictatorship.” Drawing on Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s concept of dictatorship, as the use of violence and centralization of power, Podur adds “impunity” to the description as it characterizes how violations by the regime and its supporters go unpunished. Podur categorises the new international variety of dictatorship as a “laboratory experiment in a new kind of imperialism.”Podur discusses the contradictory role of the domestic and international media as contributing to the success of the coup. He argues that the media misrepresented the details surrounding the kidnapping and replacement of a democratically elected prime minister with the dictatorship of the United Nations. He describes the “media disinformation loop” as part of the coup infrastructure by shaping beliefs and actions. Podur’s work is an attempt to publicize an alternative to corrupt mainstream reporting.The media did not question the legitimacy of the coup regime or the United Nations’ Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). Podur argues that the occupation of Haiti by the MINUSTAH occurred under peculiar justifications. He reports that, “in Haiti an internationalized military solution is being offered for what even the UN admitted were problems of poverty and social crime that occur in many places.” He argues that violence and murder rates are higher in other countries, including the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Trinidad, and Jamaica. The mainstream rationale for UN occupation in Haiti has evaded inquiry.Podur’s analysis of the coup extends to the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the new dictatorship. In Haiti, Podur argues, NGOs perform tasks that belong in the hands of a functioning public service, accountable to the people. Instead, NGOs operate in the interests of their donor countries—“offering wealthy countries a morally responsible way of subcontracting the sovereignty of the nations they exploit.” Making NGOs “less non-governmental and more ‘over governmental’” and revealing the determinant role of external intervention in corrupting sovereignty.NGOs are responsible for the bulk of disaster response in Haiti. Podur’s analysis of the earthquake of 2010 reveals a stunning account of how well-meaning donors are part of a feedback loop that (in part) finances a corrupt system. This system of local elites, international enterprises, and NGOs acts with impunity as they create and reinforce vulnerabilities because funds are controlled by western technocrats and corporations (particularly in times of crisis). Rather than geographic factors, Podur argues that social factors are the major cause of Haiti’s horrific death toll following disasters. The decapitation of Haiti’s government and the subsequent program cuts demobilizes the public service while it enables the rise of the “republic of NGOs” and the UN Dictatorship. As Haiti lacks the sovereignty to orchestrate its own disaster response, the failure to rebuild after the earthquake marks the failure of the new dictatorship and not the people of Haiti.Podur illustrates the character of the new dictatorship allowing readers to understand the truly gruesome nature of the post-coup occupiers. Podur’s report leaves the reader spinning from accounts of murder and corruption; page after page the reader experiences Haiti’s grim reality in the new imperialist regime. While the lists of events in the book become disorienting to read, they serve to demonstrate the brutality of actions performed by western nations, the Haitian elite, and armed factions.In this book Podur argues that Haiti is engaged in a historical struggle for democracy against external control. Podur’s work on Haiti reveals how a multilateral violation of sovereignty is organized and carried out, and exposes the “new face of dictatorship in the twenty-first century global order.” However, the larger project of this book suggests a call to action. Podur recounts the illegitimacy of the occupation and its atrocities so that widespread recognition can be achieved and policies changed. Podur challenges us to consider what it truly means to help Haiti, to face the consequences of our “do-good” attempts at aid and instead aim to assist Haitians to reclaim national sovereignty.Work CitedTrouillot, Michel-Rolph. Haiti, State Against Nation: The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990. Print.~NATALI DOWNER is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. Her research explores the contradictions of capitalism as expressed in the twin crisis of peak oil and climate change
(Mis)reading Revelations: Apocalyptic Visions and Environmental Crisis & Augury: Elegy
No full text(Mis)reading Revelations: Apocalyptic Visions and Environmental Crisis Michael Young The Falling Birds of Beebe, ArkansasIn punishing contrast to the soaring and singing bird as a symbol of freedom, the quiet or injured bird might be a perfect symbol for environmental crisis. Dead and dying birds have long been associated with warnings of danger, having been used since the early twentieth century to predict air contamination in coal mines. Often understood to be a good indicator of ecological decline, birds have also been central to depictions of environmental apocalypse, most notably in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962). Images of oil-soaked, dying birds punctuated the visual media after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, despite the best efforts of BP and local and federal officials to prevent photographers from documenting the carnage (see “Critters of the Gulf Oil Spill” and Peters). Later that year, Lars Von Trier showed images of dead birds slowly falling across the sky in the opening fantasia of his apocalypse film, Melancholia. Then, sometime around the stroke of midnight on New Year’s morning, 2011, scores of red-winged blackbirds began mysteriously falling out of the sky over Beebe, Arkansas, a small town in the American Bible Belt. ....Augury: ElegyJessica Marion Barr Just before midnight on New Year’s Eve 2011, in Beebe, Arkansas, 4,000 or so blackbirds fell out of the sky, dead. Around the same time, several hundred grackles, redwing blackbirds, robins, and starlings dropped dead in Murray, Kentucky. A few days later, 500 dead blackbirds, brown-headed cowbirds, grackles, and starlings were found on a highway in Pointe Coupee, Louisiana, while 200 dead American coots appeared on a bridge in Big Cypress Creek, Texas. On January 4, in Falköping, Sweden, 100 jackdaws were found dead in the street. And then on January 5, some 8,000 dead turtle doves rained down on the town of Faenza in Italy. Later that year, on October 23, 6,000 dead birds washed up on the southeastern shore of Ontario’s Georgian Bay, and then, remarkably, Beebe was again showered with the bodies of 5,000 blackbirds on New Year’s Eve 2012.It seems a little apocalyptic.One might well ask whether this series of mass deaths is a microcosm of humanity’s increasingly toxic impact on the non-human world. But we are not just poisoning an isolated wilderness “out there.” We are poisoning our ecosystems—our sources of food, water, and air; our only home. The warnings are everywhere, if we choose to see and heed them. Because those were a lot of canaries, and we’re all in this coalmine together.....AUGURY: ELEGY. Jessica Marion Barr
Celebrity Humanitarianism: The Ideology of Global Charity
No full textCelebrity Humanitarianism: The Ideology of Global Charity.By ILAN KAPOOR. Routledge, 2013. $44.95Reviewed by Sonja Killoran-McKibbinThe back cover promised a “hyper-critical porpoise with a purpose,” and though I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, I was not disappointed by this book. In Celebrity Humanitarianism: The Ideology of Global Charity, Ilan Kapoor cleverly and humorously attacks the celebrity charity peddlers, the “coffee-pusher philanthropists,” and the NGO superstars who dominate our conception of international aid. Using a Žižekian framework to carry out a refreshing ideology critique, Kapoor prods the assumptions implicit within celebrity humanitarianism to reveal its ideological basis and the underlying interests such actions serve. While Kapoor focuses on only a handful of notorious celebrity humanitarians, he insists that the individual celebrities in his book are merely some of the more colourful examples of a broader trend. Most importantly, Kapoor avoids the trite and banal and refuses to return to the all too easy suggestion that something is better than nothing. Instead, Kapoor’s text skilfully addresses the role of celebrity charities by systematically deconstructing the manner in which they justify and support the very inequities that they purport to challenge.By asking “Do they know that it’s Christmas?” almost thirty years ago, Band Aid set off the growing role of celebrities as an authoritative voice on global poverty. Yet the issue is under-discussed and rarely critiqued, making Kapoor’s cutting and insightful analysis long overdue. The book begins by exploring the hyper-celebrities who claim to speak for, witness, or represent poverty. Using Bono, Bob Geldof, Madonna, and Angelina Jolie as examples, Kapoor demonstrates how such celebrity charity work is used for individual profit and to mask the root causes of inequality. By offering the opportunity to do good through consumerism, such work feeds into the capitalism’s elusive promise of jouissance—or the eternal promise of enjoyment. Celebrity humanitarianism showcases the excessive lifestyles of celebrities, supporting their individual brand but also glorifying and marketing their excessive lifestyles as the ultimate promise of capitalism. Celebrities in this way are used to embody a justification of the current economic system at the same time as they claim to work to change it. Support for the decadence of the rich glorifies the inequality on which capitalism is based and obfuscates the very conditions that create poverty. Moreover, these stars act as witnesses and authorities on the poverty of the third world and situate third world subjects as victims, perpetuating the issues of inclusion and exclusion within such actions.Next to come under Kapoor’s gaze are the private foundations established and maintained by billionaires, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and George Soros’ Open Society Institute. Calling such endeavours “decaf capitalism,” Kapoor argues that they allow people to continue with business as usual and that “it is charity that helps decaffeinate capitalism. It masks and purifies corporate ills, acting as a countermeasure to socioeconomic exploitation.” Foundations highlight the benevolence of corporate moguls and effectively hide the mechanisms through which they obtain such wealth. These acts keep people engaged and complicit with the corporate order and effectively depoliticize systems of inequality while undermining public mechanisms to improve social conditions and situating private initiatives as appropriate solutions.Finally, the book addresses those non-governmental organizations that have situated themselves as types of celebrities in their own right. From Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to Oxfam, such charities not only seek celebrity endorsements but have also developed their own personae and brand. Kapoor suggests that such charities, in many ways, represent an element of commodity fetishism in our late capitalist culture—distancing ourselves from elements of poverty while at the same time providing us with an outlet for our anxieties about global injustice. By constructing a “permanent emergency regime” these charities thrive on the spectacle of disaster and demand immediate action. They cultivate an anti-theoretical activism by suggesting that crisis makes immediate action essential—and unquestionably benign — leaving no time for analysis and portraying such reflection as inactive and necessarily detrimental. In this fashion such organizations encourage us to allow them to do the work for us, effectively delegating our beliefs to commodities. The absence of theorizing and the urgency of action effectively glosses over the manner in which the forms of new humanitarianism that such charities engage in are neoimperial endeavours. The complicity of NGOs in “humanitarian war” is made invisible by the parade of spectacularized emergencies.While Kapoor points to some of the ways the celebrity charity regime might be transformed, he is also quite clear that these reformist proposals are limited. They result in nothing more than a compromise with the system and do not address the depoliticizing tendencies of such international action. Drawing again on Žižek, Kapoor calls for an uncompromising politics that demands revolutionary change. While I welcome Kapoor’s call for a revolutionary overthrow of the current global order and his rejection of sanctioned resistance, I must admit that I was left feeling somewhat unsatisfied by his insistence on revolutionary inaction. What of confronting antagonisms through unsanctioned resistance? While Kapoor advocates the imagining of new political possibilities that are distinct from inaction, as they ultimately must be followed by the material work for their creation, Kapoor deals with a lot in his last few pages, and perhaps that is part of the problem. While he urges the reader to see the opportunities in the contradictions it is difficult not to wish for more than a few pages to bring together his revolutionary proposal. Nonetheless, this could also be seen as Kapoor not letting his readers off the hook for their own complicity by pushing them to consider these tendencies beyond the bound pages. Overall Kapoor has crafted an engaging and entertaining text that deftly employs an all too familiar and visible phenomenon to bring to light the ideology embedded within it.~SONJA KILLORAN-MCKIBBIN is a PhD Candidate in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. Her work explores the intersections of international aid and extractive industries