U of R researcher turns an equity lens on the power grid.
Through her research, University of Regina social scientist Dr. Amber Fletcher has come to appreciate that a one-size-fits-all approach does not work when it comes to meeting the needs of communities impacted by climate disasters. As part of a project looking at the experiences of Saskatchewan communities affected by wildfires and floods, she saw that the emergency response provided by authorities—while well-intentioned—was not attentive to cultural differences.
“We heard from Elders from a wildfire-affected community who were taken to evacuation centres in cities where they had no personal connections,” says Fletcher, who is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Studies and academic director of the U of R’s Community Engagement and Research Centre.
“Being in these big facilities, far from home, with food they were not used to—they said the whole experience for them felt like Residential School all over again. The mental health impacts that go along with that lack of attention to culture during emergency response are so significant.” This research emerged in the PhD dissertation of Dr. Heidi Walker, one of Fletcher’s graduate students.
“I've studied power in the sense of social inequality for a long time, but this is actually about literal power loss and the connectivity issues that happen in the context of those disasters.”
Developing strategies to address the ways that some individuals and communities are disproportionately impacted when power grids are shut down by wildfires, heatwaves, drought, and flooding will be a key element of a new $8.75 million, Canada-U.S. project co-led by the Universities of Calgary and Utah. The mission of the U.S.-Canada Center on Climate-Resilient Western Interconnected Grid is to bolster the resilience of the Western Interconnected Grid in the face of natural disasters that are happening more often, with greater intensity, and lasting longer. Fletcher has been tapped to co-lead the community engagement pillar of the five-year project, which is being funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
Social scientist Dr. Amber Fletcher is part of an $8.75 million international project called the U.S.-Canada Center on Climate-Resilient Western Interconnected Grid, where she will look at how people are disproportionately affected by disasters caused by power loss. (Photo by Trevor Hopkin)
The Western Interconnected Grid is one of two major power grids in North America. It serves the roughly 80 million people living in the 4.6 million square kilometres bounded by the northern edge of British Columbia to the border of Baja, Mexico, and from the California coast to the Rockies. That grid also powers one of largest regional economic engines in the world, according to project organizers.
“I've looked at how communities and individuals are affected by wildfires, flooding, and drought, but taking a power angle is definitely new,” says Fletcher. “I've studied power in the sense of social inequality for a long time, but this is actually about literal power loss and the connectivity issues that happen in the context of those disasters.”
There’s also a major engineering component to the new project: how do you make the energy infrastructure sturdier to avoid these unequal impacts? As part of the international initiative, she’ll be working closely with a handful of communities in Saskatchewan that experienced power outages due to natural disasters, to learn about their experience and get their advice on how communities and individuals can better cope with future outages.
“Amber is able to guide researchers, in a very practical way, to think about how people are affected differently by climate hazards.”
“In some of my past projects, I’ve seen that power outages can happen very suddenly,” says Fletcher. “People can't charge their devices, which of course affects emergency communication. Now I have the opportunity to work with a few communities in more depth, to fully explore what that means and how that affects people's experience. Sometimes it's not equitable. There are certain folks who are disproportionately affected by these disasters, and I'm interested to know how power and connectivity play into that.”
The right social scientist for the job
Fletcher is one of only a handful of social scientists named to the Western Interconnected Grid project, which is heavily stocked with experts in electrical and software engineering, remote sensing, forestry, computer science, economics, and atmospheric and fire sciences. However, her research background—focused as it has been on how people’s gender and social status can influence how they experience the impacts of climate change—positions her to play an important role with the new centre. She says one of her goals as a researcher is always to make those connections between large-scale, climactic events like floods or drought and people’s lived experience.
The Social Dimensions of Climate Hazards project Fletcher co-leads examines people’s lived experience of climate hazards in four different parts of Saskatchewan, including Hafford, Radisson, and Borden (central-west); the La Ronge tri-community, including Lac La Ronge Indian Band (north); Maple Creek and area (southwest); and Ochapowace First Nation (southeast). The team has found that individuals’ gender, socioeconomic class, culture, age, and location shapes how they experience flooding and wildfires. In addition to what they learned about the mental-health impacts of evacuation centres on affected Indigenous communities, Fletcher and colleagues found that in agricultural communities, like Maple Creek, farm work is shaped by gendered roles, and therefore gender leads to different mental-health impacts from natural disasters.
“She brings feminist scholarship into the mainstream in a way that helps people understand why it’s important,” says Dr. Maureen Reed, a professor in the School of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Saskatchewan, who co-led the project with Fletcher. “Amber is able to guide researchers, in a very practical way, to think about how people are affected differently by climate hazards. Historically, a lot of feminist scholars have been calling people out, but Amber has a way of being able to call people into conversations, which is really important.”
Dr. Maureen Reed is a professor in the School of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Saskatchewan. She co-led the Social Dimensions of Climate Hazards project with Fletcher. (Photo by Zachary Melnick)
depression, and other kinds of mental illness.” Fletcher wants to bring this gender lens to the Western Interconnected Grid project.
Reed says her colleague’s relational skills are a critical complement to the natural sciences expertise that’s been assembled in the Grid project. “You need both—engineers, who are natural problem solvers, and social scientists, who have deep experience engaging with individuals and communities. When you’re thinking about these structural changes, such as increasing the resiliency of power grids, you need to be able to bring the technology and the people together.” Fletcher is also strong on diplomacy, says Reed, so she’s able to make her point without putting others on the defensive.
Another project Fletcher is co-leading is the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council-funded Community-Campus Responses to Crisis project. It explores how community-engagement teams at post-secondary institutions can best support community-driven efforts to address the social impacts of climate change. Four universities are running case studies with local community partners.
Co-led by Fletcher and Dr. Laurie Clune from the Faculty of Nursing, the U of R project is looking at how people who are homeless or precariously housed are affected by temperature extremes. For example, is there sufficient access to warming and cooling centres, and is that access equitable?
“We know from the domestic violence research that for people who use evacuation centres and cooling centres, especially if it's in a small community, there's always a chance that they could run into their abuser at one of those centres,” says Fletcher.
Dr. Magda Goemans is manager of Community-Campus Engage Canada, a national network and community of practice supporting individuals and groups involved in community-campus research and learning partnerships. The Community-Campus Responses to Crisis project is the third initiative she’s collaborated on with Fletcher since meeting her three years ago.
“There are many people around the world trying to solve climate change problems,” says Goemans. “The unique strength that Amber brings is getting us to think about how populations are going to respond to potential solutions. She really brings that complex human perspective into the ongoing challenge we face in dealing with climate change. We’re learning more and more that it’s not just about developing solutions, but about creating the conditions where people will respond and agree with those solutions. Having that social science research perspective deeply invested in these climate issues is so important.”
Dr. Magda Goemans manages Community-Campus Engage Canada and has collaborated with Fletcher on three projects since meeting her three years ago. (Photo submitted by Magda Goemans)
Reed says Fletcher has a gift for building trust with communities. “She is from a small town in Saskatchewan, so she understands what farmers are going through, in a very practical way,” says Reed. “She’s able to do her research with what I call ‘sympathetic skepticism.’ Sympathy and understanding have their place in research, but she also brings the critical eye of an academic who’s able to look at the broader picture.”
In addition to engaging with communities, the Western Interconnected Grid project will also include a student advisory committee that will oversee university students leading some components of the project. Fletcher is excited about that. She loves teaching and views student mentorship as an important aspect of her job as a researcher. “They are our next generation of researchers.” Fletcher’s novel approach to student engagement was recently honoured with a prestigious Lieutenant Governor’s Post-Secondary Teaching Award.
Dr. Amber Fletcher with her graduate research assistants, (l to r) Erin Hillis, Gabriela Beltran, and Abraham Bugre. (Photo by Trevor Hopkin)
Emergency responses need an equity lens
When a major disaster strikes a community, existing inequities shape how people are affected and what kinds of resources they have access to in the aftermath. Emergency response measures, Fletcher says, can and should take these differences and inequities into account, instead of treating communities as if everyone is affected the same by a disaster.
“It's about looking at, for example, who might be unable to evacuate their home because of a disability, or who might need extra financial support because their disaster payment won’t come in for months and they have nowhere to live, so they're essentially homeless. Things like gender, like ability or disability, socioeconomic class—these things make a huge difference in people's experiences. The more tailored a response can be, the more attentive a response can be to those kinds of differences, the more likely that everyone will do better in the end.”
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