War ender

THE VARSITY

Vol. CXLIII, No. 7 21 Sussex Avenue, Suite 306 Toronto, ON M5S 1J6 (416) 946-7600

thevarsity.ca thevarsitynewspaper @TheVarsity the.varsity the.varsity The Varsity

Jadine Ngan Editor-in-Chief

Makena Mwenda

Creative Director

MASTHEAD

editor@thevarsity.ca

creative@thevarsity.ca

Nawa Tahir

managingexternal@thevarsity.ca

Managing Editor, External Sarah Artemia Kronenfeld managinginternal@thevarsity.ca Managing Editor, Internal

Angad Deol

Managing Online Editor

Talha Anwar Chaudhry

Senior Copy Editor online@thevarsity.ca

copy@thevarsity.ca

Khadija Alam

News Editor news@thevarsity.ca

Shernise Mohammed-Ali comment@thevarsity.ca Comment Editor

Janhavi Agarwal

Business & Labour Editor biz@thevarsity.ca

Alexa DiFrancesco

Features Editor features@thevarsity.ca

Marta Anielska

Arts & Culture Editor arts@thevarsity.ca

Sahir Dhalla

Science Editor science@thevarsity.ca

Mekhi Quarshie

Sports Editor

Caroline Bellamy

Design Editor

Andrea Zhao Design Editor

Vurjeet Madan

Photo Editor sports@thevarsity.ca

design@thevarsity.ca

design@thevarsity.ca

photos@thevarsity.ca

Jessica Lam

Illustration Editor illustration@thevarsity.ca

Maya Morriswala

Video Editor video@thevarsity.ca

Aaron Hong

Front End Web Developer

Andrew Hong

Back End Web Developer

Safiya Patel

Deputy Senior Copy Editor

Lexey Burns

Deputy News Editor

Jessie Schwalb

Assistant News Editor aaronh@thevarsity.ca

andrewh@thevarsity.ca

deputysce@thevarsity.ca

deputynews@thevarsity.ca

assistantnews@thevarsity.ca

Vacant

UTM Bureau Chief utm@thevarsity.ca

Alyanna Denise Chua

UTSC Bureau Chief utsc@thevarsity.ca

Emma Livingstone

Graduate Bureau Chief grad@thevarsity.ca

Ajeetha Vithiyananthan

Associate Senior Copy Editor

Alana Boisvert, Selia Sanchez, Tony Xun

Associate News Editors

Isabella Liu, Eleanor Park

Associate Comment Editors

Alice Boyle, Maeve Ellis

Associate Features Editors

Madeline Szabo

Associate A&C Editor

Vacant

Associate Science Editor

Alya Fancy

Social Media Manager

Kunal Dadlani

Associate Sports Editor

Georgia Kelly, Andrew Ki

Associate B&L Editors

Arthur Hamdani, Johanna Zhang, Spencer Lu

Associate Design Editors

Cheryl Nong, Biew Biew Sakulwannadee

Associate Illo Editor

Zeynep Poyanli, Nicholas Tam, Augustine Wong

Associate Photo Editor

Vacant

Associate Video Editor

Lead Copy Editors

Linda Chen, Jevan Konyar, Kyla Cassandra Cortez, Lucas Saito, Momena Sheikh, Nandini Shrotriya, Kiri Stockwood, Lina Tupak-Karim, Valerie Yao

Copy Editors

Kamilla Bekbossynova, Gene Case, Ikjot Grewal, Tiana Milacic, Milena Pappalardo, Grace Xu, Sally Yang, Junella Zhang

Designer Niki Tang

Cover

Makena Mwenda

BUSINESS OFFICE

Parmis Mehdiyar

Business Manager business@thevarsity.ca

Ishir Wadhwa

Business Associate ishirw@thevarsity.ca

Rania Sadik

Advertising Executive raniasadik@thevarsity.ca

Abdulmunem Aboud Tartir atartir@thevarsity.ca Advertising Executive

The Varsity is the University of Toronto’s largest student newspaper, publishing since 1880. It is printed by Master Web Inc. on recycled newsprint stock. Content © 2021 by The Varsity. All rights reserved. Any editorial inquiries and/or letters should be directed to the sections associated with them; emails listed above. The Varsity reserves the right to edit all submissions. Inquiries regarding ad sales can be made to ads@thevarsity. ca. ISSN: 0042-2789

Letter from the Editors: Introducing The Varsity’s Volume 143 Climate Issue

Renewing our pledge to cover the climate crisis

Jadine Ngan, Sarah Artemia Kronenfeld, and Nawa Tahir

Varsity Editorial Management

Welcome to The Varsity’s Climate Issue!

On October 27, two days after this issue hits stands, the University of Toronto Asset Management Corporation is scheduled to complete its divestment from direct holdings in fossil fuels. The university committed to this step one year ago.

Ahead of The Varsity’s follow-up on the university’s divestment progress, which we hope to release soon, our editors have brought together a wide array of stories on the climate crisis from different corners of U of T. This effort is part of an ongoing coverage commitment at The Varsity.

The Varsity has been reporting on the climate crisis since at least 1957, when we published a professor’s statement that the “Polar Sea” could become ice-free in a lifetime due to global warming from carbon emissions. But coverage was sparse for decades. Only in the last few years has The Varsity consistently made covering the climate crisis one of its key focuses.

In September 2019, ahead of a UN Climate Action Summit in New York City, our Volume 140 masthead joined over 250 other media organizations in a worldwide initiative called “Covering Climate Now.” The initiative, coordinated by the Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation, involved publishing a week’s worth of content on climate change, in order to highlight the severity of the crisis while exploring possible solutions. In an editorial pledging our commitment, The Varsity’s editorial board at the time wrote, “we hope that the Covering Climate Now initiative will inspire our editors and contributors this year, and for years to come.”

It has. Since that commitment, The Varsity’s writers and editors have heightened their attention to the climate crisis. We’ve tracked the divestment movement at U of T, including the university’s recent commitment to divest, while reporting on similar demands for divestment from federated colleges. We’ve published several op-eds and open letters, some of which call upon students to mobilize for Indigenous land rights or demand that the university take more ambitious action. Our reporters and photojournalists covered several iterations of the Global Climate Strike in Toronto, as well as last winter’s Wet’suwet’en solidarity protest. In 2020, our editorial board spoke out in support of the Wet’suwet’en land defenders.

We don’t want to lose that momentum. After all, experts consider the climate crisis the greatest threat our world has ever faced. The release of this climate special issue marks an affirmation of our 2019 commitment: we pledge to continue treating the climate crisis with the urgency and focus it deserves. We also pledge to sustain critical discussions about the university’s response to the crisis, and keep our institutions accountable for their role in the search for climate solutions.

We hope you’ll hold us to that.

A protestor holds up a sign referring to Pakistan floods at the September Climate Strike in Toronto.

NAWA TAHIR/THEVARSITY

Pakistani students call for U of T recognition following fatal floods

Climate minister confirms one third of country is underwater

Nawa Tahir

Managing Editor — External

Content warning: This article discusses death, casualties, and other impacts of catastrophic floods in Pakistan.

As of October 14, over 1,700 people have died from the catastrophic floods in Pakistan. In August, Pakistan’s Climate Minister Sherry Rehman reported that one-third of the country was underwater. Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that around 21 million Pakistanis are in “desperate need” of help.

As these catastrophic floods continue to impact millions in Pakistan, The Varsity talked to U of T students whose families have been impacted by these floods. They stressed that U of T professors and administration need to acknowledge the floods and recognize their impact on Pakistani students’ mental health and well-being.

Background

The areas most badly affected by the floods are in the provinces of Sindh and Balochistan. HIstorically, these areas were underfunded by the federal and provincial governments.

Pakistan received three times the normal amount of rainfall in August for monsoon season. According to World Weather Attribution researchers, “climate change likely increased extreme monsoon rainfall” in Pakistan. The massive increase in rainfall came after an uncharacteristically hot summer for Pakistan. Jacobabad, a city in Sindh, was declared the hottest city on Earth this summer, with temperatures exceeding the survivable range.

Factors like inadequate infrastructure and river management systems, high poverty rates, gender disparities, and ongoing political and economic instability further exacerbated the impacts of the flooding. For instance, a summer heatwave that melted Shisper Glacier contributed to the collapse of a bridge in Swat, a popular tourist destination in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. For many, the floods destroyed their only source of income, increasing the disaster’s impact. gender studies, is from the Pakistani province of Sindh. Her relatives reside in Dadu, a city in inner Sindh.

Panhwar told The Varsity that her aunt, a survivor of stage four breast cancer, hasn’t been able to access treatment. She needs to travel to Karachi since cancer treatment is not available in her city, but she can’t travel from Dadu to Karachi because roads remain underwater.

Talking about the scale of destruction in Sindh, Panhwar said, “We’ve never seen something like this.”

Panhwar also stressed the importance of evacuation alarm systems, which could have saved lives by notifying people when they needed to evacuate. She told The Varsity that in Dadu, only the rich neighbourhoods were informed about the need for evacuation; most people didn’t know that their lives were in danger until the floodwater reached their villages and homes.

Panhwar also mentioned ways in which patriarchy plays into the dynamics of humanitarian aid for affected people. She said that it is unlikely to find a woman in line at a relief camp, because if a woman asks for aid at any such camps, “the first question they will be asked is ‘where’s your husband or your father or your brother? Why are you here? Where are they?’”

Sarah Rana, an undergraduate student in contemporary Asian studies and vice-president, equity of the University of Toronto Students’ Union, also has family in Pakistan. Rana’s relatives live in Jhelum, a city in the province of Punjab that is situated on a riverbank. Rana said that her family was asked to evacuate because of the rising water levels.

Some of Rana’s other relatives live in Swat. She said that Swat was “basically destroyed” by the floods, and her relatives’ small business — their only source of livelihood — didn’t survive.

Economic and political context

When the floods hit Pakistan, the country was already grappling with political and economic turmoil. Former Prime Minister Imran Khan was ousted in April, and the country’s economic situation has continued to deteriorate since then. In April, the Pakistani rupee exchange rate was 182 rupees to one USD. Soon after, the value of the rupee decreased, with the exchange rate rising to 240 rupees per USD. As of October 23, one USD equals 219 rupees. In June, The Times of India reported that Pakistan was on the brink of bankruptcy, with “no immediate positive outlook.”

Since then, floods have destroyed a significant proportion of the country’s cash crops, including around 45 per cent of the country’s cotton. As an agricultural country, Pakistan relies on cotton and rice exports as its main source of income. With the economic catastrophe exacerbated, it’s unclear if Pakistan can invest the huge amounts of money needed to restore infrastructure and people’s livelihoods in the affected regions.

Why was the flood so catastrophic?

In an interview with The Varsity, Romila Verma, a sessional lecturer in the Department of Geography & Planning at U of T, explained why Pakistan has been so adversely impacted by the floods.

Verma mentioned that, at the time of the Partition of the Indian Subcontinent in 1947, the British divided the Indus river between India and Pakistan, with the riverhead starting from India. The country where the riverhead starts gets to decide the water flow, which has been the source of major contention between Pakistan and India over the decades. Despite the Indus Waters Treaty signed between India and Pakistan, which allocates three rivers to Pakistan and three to India and gives each country certain rights over the other’s rivers, the Pakistani river system needs robust management to avoid severe droughts and flooding.

Additionally, Verma said that Pakistan’s geographical location at the foothills of the Himalayas makes it prone to large flows of water. Pakistan is also home to the highest number of glaciers in the world, which have started melting as a result of global warming. She stressed that the country needs robust management systems to deal with these large volumes of water, but Pakistan has not developed such systems so far.

Pakistan has seen large-scale floods before as well. In 2010, massive flooding caused the death of over 1,700 people and displaced over 20 million. As Verma told The Varsity, the country hasn’t improved its flood management systems since then.

“If you don’t learn from history, as they say, you’re condemned to repeat it,” she said. of recognition of the Pakistan floods by the U of T administration and Western media. “I felt really helpless,” she told The Varsity.

Emphasizing the need for professors and university administration to recognize the impact of floods in Pakistan, Rana said, “there are a lot of students [at] U of T who are literally watching their home get destroyed.”

In an email to The Varsity, a U of T spokesperson wrote, “We recognize that members of the University of Toronto community may be affected by these traumatic and tragic events and other global events, and offer a range of resources and supports for students, faculty, staff and librarians.” They listed a number of resources around campus for mental health and academic support.

Rana said that professors need to be mindful of students whose families may be impacted by floods and show leniency regarding deadlines. She further added that those affected in Pakistan need financial aid and that people in Canada should donate as much as they can.

Panhwar also stressed the importance of global attention toward the situation in Pakistan. She compared the floods to war, saying, “there needs to be a lot more buzz around what’s happening in Pakistan… On a humanitarian level, it’s no less than a war.”

If you or someone you know is affected by the ongoing situation in Pakistan, you can contact:

• Across Boundaries — a support service for racialized people that offers support in various languages including Urdu and Punjabi — at (416) 787-3007, • Bean Bag Chat through their mobile application for service in Toronto, • Distress Centres of Greater Toronto at (416) 408-4357, • Gerstein Crisis Centre’s 24 hour-crisis line at (416) 929-5200, • Good2Talk at (866) 925-5454 — available 24/7, • Here 24/7 at (844) 437-3247, • Naseeha Mental Health — confidential helpline for young Muslims — at (866) 627-3342, or • U of T My Student Support Program — available 24/7 — at (844) 451-9700. See mentalhealth.utoronto.ca for more resources.

UTSU AGM BINGO

The University of Toronto Students’ Union is holding its Annual General Meeting (AGM) this Wednesday, October 26 a 6:00 pm. Join The Varsity in filling out our AGM bingo card while the event is going on! We’ll also be live tweeting the event @VarsityNewsUofT. Send us your completed bingo card and we’ll retweet you! The first to tweet a correctly completed bingo card @TheVarsity or @VarsityNewsUofT will receive a $20 gift card to Second Cup.

The breakdown: Carbon and divestment plans at U of T

Spadina-Sussex Student Residence to become lowest-carbon downtown residence

Lexey Burns

Deputy News Editor

On October 27, 2021, U of T President Meric Gertler announced that the university will fully divest from fossil fuels by 2030. The plan, initially, was to stop investing directly into fossil fuel companies by October 2022 and halt indirect investments by 2030.

The announcement followed U of T’s initial rejection of divestment in 2016. At the time, Gertler proposed a “firm-by-firm” approach with a more flexible attitude towards divestment, explaining that fossil fuel companies “only account for one-quarter of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions, with the balance produced by other sectors such as transportation, housing and manufacturing.”

According to a U of T spokesperson, the University of Toronto Asset Management Corporation’s (UTAM) success in reducing the carbon footprint of long-term investment portfolios influenced the university’s decision to divest. UTAM is an organization that was created in 2000 to keep the university an “accountable, professionally staffed investment management organization.”

“The divestment commitment will see UTAM completely divested from direct investments in fossil fuel companies by Oct. 27, 2022,” the spokesperson explained.

UTAM’s most recent annual report, published in 2020, listed a number of responsible investing milestones that the corporation achieved throughout the year and during 2021. These milestones included joining the University Network for Investor Engagement — which helps Canadian universities connect with the global investor movement, quickening the shift to more climate-positive recommendations — and signing the 2021 Global Investor Statement to Governments on the Climate Crisis. The Global Investor Statement was signed by 587 investors representing over $46 trillion USD in assets and urges a global “race-to-the-top” on climate policy, pressuring governments to become involved in climate policy or risk being disregarded for future investing.

According to the UTAM website, the 2020 report “[includes] many significant developments that took place in 2021 that will inform our responsible investing practice now, and for the next decade and beyond.” The 2021 milestones included the October divestment announcement and data for that year. is also allocating 10 per cent of the endowment portfolio to sustainable and low-carbon investments by 2025, representing an initial commitment of $400 million,” the U of T spokesperson wrote to The Varsity.

The UTAM report explained that U of T’s absolute emissions of “carbon dioxide equivalent,” a unit used to measure all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, has dropped 21.1 per cent from 2017. Additionally, the report noted that U of T’s carbon footprint had dropped 40.1 per cent since 2017.

According to UTAM’s 2020 Annual Report, U of T was the first university in the world to join the UN-convened Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance (NZAOA), a member-led initiative of institutional investors who have promised to shift their investment portfolios to accomplish net-zero GHG emissions by 2050. Net-zero refers to the process of absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to completely neutralize the amount of GHG created by humans.

NZAOA encourages institutions like U of T to create and achieve targets every five years while progressing toward net-zero.

Low Carbon plan

In 2019, U of T announced its Low-Carbon Action Plan. In this five-year plan, the university stated that they hope to reduce emissions to 85,223 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents by 2024, a projected decrease of 27.1 per cent compared to 2018 levels.

According to the plan, U of T will undertake several initiatives to eliminate an average of 44,567 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents a year by 2024. These include the 2019 GHG Campus Retrofits Program, increasing solar energy, distribution improvements, building optimization, lighting retrofits, and capturing GHGs using trees on urban U of T properties.

In the Low-Carbon Action Plan, U of T highlighted their ranking among Canada’s Greenest Employers. This is the ninth time the university has been included in the standings. The university was included because of “the study and application of new sustainable building design, including the new Green Roof Innovation Testing Laboratory.”

Tri-campus geoexchange programs

Another initiative U of T took on to reach their emission goals is geoexchange. According to the university, the current construction outside of King’s College Circle will result in a geothermal exchange, which is predicted to reduce annual GHG by 15,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents by 2024, according to the university spokesperson.

This would make the King’s College Circle geothermal exchange the single largest contributor to U of T’s annual emission-reduction target of 44,567 tonnes.

Another proposed geoexchange program for UTSG is a “revitalization” of the Robert Street Field. The new program, which is projected to reduce GHG emissions at the Spadina-Sussex Student Residence due to open in 2024, would make Spadina-Sussex “the lowest carbon residence on the St. George campus.”

In 2019, UTSC completed a geoexchange system connected to the Andrews Building. The university also plans to implement geoexchange systems for UTM’s new science building, which is set to be finished in 2023.

What’s next?

In 2018, the Victoria University Students’ Administrative Council’s (VUSAC) sustainability commission sent a letter to then-Victoria College President William Robins criticizing the college’s administration for what the VUSAC termed a “lack of action” on environmental sustainability.

Prior to the 2022 Climate Strike, VUSAC and Climate Justice UofT organized a rally pushing U of T’s federated colleges — Victoria, Trinity, and St. Michael’s Colleges — to divest from fossil fuels. The rally also demanded more transparency from the university about its involvement in fossil fuel-sponsored research and called on U of T to incorporate sustainability frameworks into its academic programs.

The U of T federated colleges have investment portfolios distinct from the wider university. As such, U of T’s decision to divest from fossil fuels doesn’t extend to Victoria, Trinity, and St. Michael’s.

Currently, U of T’s three federated colleges have not announced plans to divest from fossil fuels or reduce carbon emissions. Despite this, all three are incorporated into U of T’s purchased utilities and building square metres data in the Low-Carbon Action Plan.

In an 2021 email to The Varsity, Leap U of T, a student-led activist group working toward climate justice and fossil fuel divestment at U of T, critiqued the university’s divestment commitment. A spokesperson for the group highlighted that the announcement does not apply to U of T’s pension plan, as well as that there is no mention of the social and political implications of divestment that is connected to land disputes or colonial violence.

“This only further contributes to the evidence that UofT was in little to no way morally incentivized to divest, but rather that divestment was a financially motivated decision that was also convenient for restoring the University’s reputation, having been mired in a variety of scandals over the past year,” Leap U of T claimed.

According to the U of T spokesperson, UTAM is expected to release another Responsible Investing Report in the coming weeks. This report will include updates on U of T’s progress since the university announced its divestment plan a year ago.

In an email to The Varsity, a university spokesperson confirmed that “the divestment commitment will see UTAM completely divested from direct investments in fossil fuel companies by Oct. 27, 2022.” This follows their promise released on October 27, 2021, to fully divest its endowment portfolio from holdings in fossil fuel companies within 12 months.