PROGRESS Lab member, Michaela Sidloski, writes a blog post for the Smart Prosperity Institute on her current research
Can multi-level governance support Indigenous self-determination in climate change decision-making?: Canada’s governance structure has the potential to support the emergence of multi-level governance regimes that support Indigenous-led climate adaptation action
The blog post provides a summary of a working paper which is also available through the Smart Prosperity Institute’s website. Both works discuss the results of a critical literature review analyzing the potential for Canada’s governance structure to facilitate self-determined climate change decision-making in Indigenous communities. Multi-level governance regimes, many of which have emerged and operated in parallel with Canada’s settler-colonial governance system, have been shown to be capable of supporting both Indigenous self-determination and meaningful climate change decision-making at local scales. However, the Canadian federal government’s current approach to climate change planning lacks evidence of the institutional responsibility, flexibility, and contextualization necessary to maximize the benefits of this approach to environmental governance. The literature review recommends actions that should be taken at the federal level to better support multi-level governance for climate change decision-making in Canada.