Margaret O’Connell
Education: Ph.D. ’23, Northwestern University
Cornell Faculty Mentor: Michael Charles, Cornell CALS / Biological and Environmental Engineering
External Adviser: Kelly Applegate, Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Department of Natural Resources
Themes: Reducing Climate Risks, Advancing One Health
Realizing a Just Transition through Ojibwe Gikendaasowin and the Food-Energy-Water-Health Nexus
There is an urgent need to decarbonize energy and transportation sectors to mitigate the climate crisis. Many decarbonization strategies such as rapid expansion of photovoltaics and electric vehicles rely on mining operations to supply critical minerals such as copper, lithium, and nickel, posing serious environmental and social concerns. With critical minerals disproportionately located on or near Indigenous lands, there is a risk that an improperly managed green energy transition will mirror the extractive harms of current carbon-based systems. Navigating these tradeoffs requires frameworks that bridge knowledge systems, employing Western scientific methods informed by Indigenous Knowledge to elucidate the connections between global climate and local ecological systems. Our proposed project builds on a multi-year collaboration with Misi-zaaga’iganiing (the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe) to develop a Food, Energy, Water, and Health (FEW-H) Nexus framework that translates national-level climate and mining data into local food, health, environmental, and ecological impacts. Incorporating U.S. energy and mineral projections into a combination of systems-thinking approaches (specifically, downscaled integrated assessment modeling, life cycle assessment, and ecological network analysis), we will co-create a methodology that is both applicable across diverse community contexts and tunable to the specific cultural and ecological context of Misi-zaaga’iganiing. Co-designing our methods with Misi-zaaga’iganiing ensures that the FEW-H Nexus is understood through Ojibwe place-based knowledge formed from human-ecological relationships fostered since time immemorial. Ultimately, our proposed project will demonstrate a more holistic approach to sustainability evaluation, empowering community decision making with culturally-relevant, data-driven insights into the socio-ecological relationships underlying the FEW-H Nexus.