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November 05, 2025
Water and Climate Justice: Advancing Intersectional Approaches
Join us for the next webinar in The Last Drop Water Researchers Speaker Series with panelists Aimée Craft (University of Ottawa), Linda Barrientos-Mendez (University of Denver), Deborah McGregor (Anishinabe, Whitefish River First Nation, Professor, University of Calgary), Anaís Roque (Ohio State University), and Sameer H. Shah (University of Washington).
Water and climate change are inextricably linked — extreme weather events are making water more scarce, more unpredictable, and more polluted. These impacts throughout the water cycle threaten all aspects of human relationships with water. Work at the intersection of water and climate justice is needed to understand how socio-cultural, political, and economic relationships at different scales serve to co-create and maintain injustices in diverse hydrosocial systems (i.e., transition to low-carbon futures using large-scale hydroelectricity generation requires assessment of water justice impacts).
Furthermore, critical assessment of the human drivers of water and climate crises can advance understandings of the ways that water- related climate risks and impacts are not strictly natural phenomena, rather they are produced by the interaction between socio-economic and political marginalization as well as physical changes in water dynamics. Overall, a combined water and climate justice lens adds nuance to ongoing and emergent water and climate crises, as they prompt us to ask who benefits, who loses out, in what ways, where, and why? At the same time, more work is needed to understand the points of intersection and divergence between water and climate injustices. This session brings together diverse scholars whose work addresses water and climate justice to explore the intersections and divergences between water and climate justices, including how these overlap with other patterns and experiences of marginality and injustice.
Registration required. To register, visit: https://umanitoba.zoom.us/meeting/register/0rzhln4-SQWrazhJCNNtxg
About the Speakers
Aimée Craft is an award-winning teacher and researcher, recognized internationally as a leader in the area of Indigenous laws, treaties and water. She holds a University Research Chair Nibi miinawaa aki inaakonigewin: Indigenous governance in relationship with land and water.
An Associate Professor at the Faculty of Common law, University of Ottawa and an Indigenous (Anishinaabe-Métis) lawyer from Treaty 1 territory in Manitoba, she is the former Director of Research at the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and the founding Director of Research at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. She practiced at the Public Interest Law Centre for over a decade and in 2016 she was voted one of the top 25 most influential lawyers in Canada. In 2021 she was awarded the prestigious Canadian Bar Association President’s Award.
Prof. Craft prioritizes Indigenous-lead and interdisciplinary research, including through visual arts and film, co-leads a series of major research grants on Decolonizing Water Governance and works with many Indigenous nations and communities on Indigenous relationships with and responsibilities to nibi (water). She plays an active role in international collaborations relating to transformative memory in colonial contexts and relating to the reclamation of Indigenous birthing practices as expressions of territorial sovereignty.
Linda Mendez-Barrientos is an Assistant Professor at the Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs at the University of Denver. In this role, she leads the Environmental Justice & Policy Research lab (ejpr), which is dedicated to understanding how inequality and power asymmetries shape institutional change processes and environmental justice. She is also the co-founder of s2e-Science to Empower, an environmental justice initiative that leverages data and innovative research to facilitate environmental accountability and human rights protection, and increase the participation of diverse and historically excluded voices in the decisions that define new sustainable trajectories.
Dr. Mendez-Barrientos research lies at the intersection of institutional change, public policy implementation, environmental justice, and natural resource governance, with a focus on water policy and management. Her work has been published in top interdisciplinary journals including Scientific Reports, Society & Natural Resources, Ecology & Society, Environmental Policy & Planning, Environmental Policy & Governance, and Environment and Planning E: Nature & Space, as well as leading water journals, including Nature Water, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water, Water Security, Water Policy, and the International Journal of Water Resources Development. She is also the recipient of a number of prestigious and competitive awards, including the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship (2016-2021), NSF Integrative Graduate Education & Research Traineeship (2015-2017), and European Commission Agris Mundus Scholarship (2008-2010).
Dr. Mendez-Barrientos earned her Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of California Davis, and holds a MSc. in Water Management from Wageningen University in the Netherlands, and a MSc. on Tropical Agrarian Systems from Montpellier SupAgro in France. Before academia, Dr. Mendez-Barrientos served as an environmental policy analyst for several years with the Environmental Defense Fund.
Deborah McGregor, Anishinabe, Whitefish River First Nation, Professor, University of Calgary. Dr. McGregor’s research has focused on Indigenous knowledge systems in diverse contexts including environmental and water governance, environmental and climate justice, health and Anishinaabe legal traditions. She remains actively involved in a variety of First Nation initiatives, continuing to serve as an advisor and engaging in community-based research and initiatives.
Dr. Anaís Delilah Roque Antonetty (she/her/ella) is an environmental social scientist and anthropologist who studies resource insecurity and health in the Anthropocene. Currently, her research agenda is interested in how households and communities experience, prepare for, and respond to food, energy, and water insecurity during “normal” times and in the wake of a hazard (e.g., geophysical, climatological) or disaster. Dr. Roque is also interested in the health outcomes of such experiences and the extent to which strategies to address insecurity across scales (e.g., household, community, policy) shape pathways to better or worse health and well-being. Trained as a mixed-methods scholar, Dr. Roque uses a range of methodologies in her research, including ethnographic research methods, participatory research methods (e.g., photovoice, participatory mapping, CBPR, action research), social networks, and surveys, among others.
Inspired by scholarship that embraces diverse epistemological approaches, Dr. Roque is part of several interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary teams that advance research at the intersections of environmental behaviors, community resilience, and social vulnerability. She conducts research in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Gulf Coast, and the U.S./Mexico Borderlands.
Dr. Sameer Shah (he/him) is a John C. Garcia Professor and Assistant Professor of Climate Adaptation in the School of Environmental & Forest Sciences (SEFS) at the University of Washington. He is also an Affiliate with the UW Center for Studies in Demography in Ecology, Center for Environmental Politics, and Clean Energy Institute. Dr. Shah holds expertise in the human dimensions of climate change vulnerability and adaptation. He aims to understand how systemic marginalization, and climate-related change and disasters interact to create and amplify uneven water, food, and energy insecurities for communities on the frontlines of climate change. In particular, his research develops theoretical, conceptual, and empirical analyses of the equity, justice, and sustainability outcomes of climate adaptation and disaster response at multiple scales.
Dr. Shah’s most current research is focused on the causal drivers and impacts associated with “climate maladaptation.” Through research in South/Southeast Asia, the contiguous U.S., and Puerto Rico, he and his collaborators seek to advance interventions that reduce the disproportionately larger climate risks experienced by marginalized groups, and to shape long-term policy strategies that transform the underlying systems that heighten these impacts. At SEFS, Dr. Shah directs the WATERS Research Collaborative (Water, Adaptation & Transformation: Equity, Resilience and Sustainability). He is also a co-founder of the SOLVER (Social Vulnerability and Resilience) Research Laboratory.
