Winter 2025 Newsletter

Catherine Donnelly Foundation Winter 2025 newsletter: Embracing climate justice to bring light to the darkness

Early 2025 has been an unsettling time for those working to build a better, more just and more sustainable world. Leaders willing to subvert democratic norms have demonstrated how our current economic and political systems can be manipulated. We’ve witnessed the extensive use of strategies aimed at disrupting consensus-building approaches and those grounded in evidence-based decision-making which offer solutions to benefit all, including historically underserved communities and the environment.

In early February, we approached Gareth Gransaull, Executive Director of re•generation to learn more about their work helping youth reimagine careers and the economy to better serve human and ecological well-being. He assessed our times and spoke of how we need to shift our mindset to bring about change. “What this age summarizes to me is the end of illusions. It’s the end of this idea that incremental, piecemeal solutions will be effective.” says Gransaull. “That means thinking deeply about the intersection between climate and inequality and war and how all those things need to be fought as part of the same social struggle. We can’t just see climate change as this separate issue.”

Gransaull is referring to the need for integrated, inclusive, system-changing approaches to problems. That’s why we are writing about climate justice in this latest newsletter. Climate justice is a concept and movement that recognizes communities are affected differently and unequally by climate change based on race, income, gender, age and other social identities. It also proposes that real change requires us to take into consideration and plan with a view to the experiences and solutions of these often ignored, under-resourced communities.

For example, in the Mi’kmaq and African Nova Scotian communities of Shelburne, the historic proximity of waste dumps, generating stations, and pulp and paper mills is linked to increased health risks, including respiratory illness and cancer. McMaster University Professor Dr. Ingrid Waldron and the CDF-funded ENRICH Project built relationships enabling local communities to research and address concerns about industrial toxins in their air, soil, and water and create Rural Water Watch and the South End Environmental Injustice Society (SEED). (Read about Shelburne and ENRICH here.)

At the Catherine Donnelly Foundation, we understand that social, economic, and environmental justice are intimately connected and integral to our collective wellbeing and survival. That’s why our funding objectives seek to foster a diverse and inclusive climate justice movement where communities and voices that are underserved lead the path forward to a climate-safe, resilient, caring, and socially just future.

In this newsletter, we highlight the work and voices of four of our partners to shed light on climate justice movements, their approaches and solutions. We also convened a group of philanthropic leaders who have championed centring climate justice in environment funding to offer insight into why foundations should integrate climate justice into their work and how foundations can start that process.

This may seem like a dark era, but we are endlessly inspired by the amazing work of our partners which tells us society is equipped with all the energy, ideas, and goodwill we need to thrive. Read about their achievements below.

Claire Barcik
Executive Director

 

Read our Winter 2025 Newsletter in its entirety here