Welcome to F is for Faculty. In each episode, we’ll introduce you to what a UBC faculty member is doing to advance sustainability and climate action through research and teaching.
This week, we met Dr. Jiaying Zhao, Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at UBC, Canada Research Chair in Behavioural Sustainability, and a faculty affiliate of the Center for Effective Global Action at the University of California Berkeley.
Whether you enjoy your podcasts on a lunchtime walk, pushing reps at the gym, lining up for the 99, early morning gardening or late-night listening, we’ve got you covered with new sustainability and climate action learning from UBC’s amazing faculty. We hope you enjoy.
Feedback, comments, questions, suggestions? Fire away! Get in touch at usi.communications@ubc.ca
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Interview transcript (you read me?)
Oliver Lane - Sustainability Hub
Hello and welcome to the podcast series F is for faculty. My name is Oliver Lane - Sustainability Hub and I'm part of the team at the University of British Columbia’s Sustainability Hub. The Sustainability Hub’s mission is to inspire people to act upon the planet's most urgent challenges through UBCs academic and operational sustainability leadership. This podcast has the goal of sharing with the UBC community and beyond the important work that UBC faculty members are carrying out in their teaching and research in the fields of sustainability and climate change. I'm here today with Dr. Jiaying Zhao, Associate Professor at UBC in the Department of Psychology and the Institute of Resources, Environment and Sustainability. And who is also Canada Research Chair in Behavioural Sustainability. Dr. Zhao is also a faculty affiliate of the Center for Effective Global Action at the University of California Berkeley. Welcome, Jiaying, thank you for joining me for this conversation.
Dr. Jiaying Zhao
Thank you for having me, Oliver.
Oliver Lane - Sustainability Hub
And thank you for being available, especially in such a busy time, the campus is alive again! The school year just started a couple of weeks ago, it's exciting, very energizing to be on campus after especially after two years of mostly remote learning. How does it feel to you to be back on campus this September as a faculty member?
Dr. Jiaying Zhao
Alive! I'm really glad to be back in person to see my students in person and my colleagues. It's really exciting.
Oliver Lane - Sustainability Hub
Great to hear. And so your area of expertise, or at least one of them, is behavioral sustainability. How do you define this concept to your students, or people who are unfamiliar with it.
Dr. Jiaying Zhao
It's a new concept that combines behavioral science, psychology, and sustainability science. So in my lab, we work on behavioral change using psychological behavioral interventions to address sustainability challenges, like climate change. So this is how I define behavioral sustainability.
Oliver Lane - Sustainability Hub
Right? And how did you become interested in this topic, and if you had to trace back your journey to becoming a scholar in this, were there any critical points or experiences that took you in this direction?
Dr. Jiaying Zhao
I mean, I started working in this field in 2008, and that's when I started my PhD. My very first project was about poverty. So this is financial sustainability, I helped people make financial decisions, you know, that are consequential to their lives. So that was a lot of my PhD work, then when I moved to UBC from my job, environmental crises concerned me a lot. In particular, pollution, plastic pollution, water pollution, and climate change. I Remember, there was a vivid moment when I woke up one morning and the sky was orange. I spent quite a bit of time checking my eyesight. I thought there was something wrong with my eyes. But it turned out to be just smoke from the wildfires. It was extremely alarming. And, I just felt compelled to do something about it.
Oliver Lane - Sustainability Hub
Yes, I remember those years. And they keep coming back. And, as we know, they very likely will be getting worse. So Jiaying, you came to the UBC department of Psychology. I remember you mentioned to me, you started teaching the environmental psychology class. And I'm not 100% Sure. I think this was the first time that the department was offering this course. Is that correct?
Dr. Jiaying Zhao
No, the department had that course. I would say years ago. Then when I got here, I started teaching the course. But I revamped the course. And change the focus from you know, the traditional environmental psychology which is mostly about, I think, built and natural environments, and changed that focus to sustainability issues. So yeah, it’s an existing class historically in the psychology department, but I just, I picked it up when I got here.
Oliver Lane - Sustainability Hub
And I just checked. When it's being offered, it says January 2023. And it's sold out. 150 students signed up already.
Dr. Jiaying Zhao
Yeah, the course, I think it was 160 at some point, it is now it's a fourth-year level course it used to be third-year level, but now a fourth-year one and up to 150 or 160. That's the cap. But this is a very demanding course. Basically, what students do is they form into teams, and then each team will conduct a research project on sustainability. This is a course in collaboration with the seeds program, as you know, and with a lot of stakeholders on campus. So this is how I've been running the course so far.
Oliver Lane - Sustainability Hub, Sustainability Hub
Fantastic. And are students coming from psychology mostly or do you get students from other disciplines, other faculties?
Dr. Jiaying Zhao
Mostly psychology, a few of them every year come from environmental science, geography, and other departments on campus. The reason is, since this is such a research-heavy course, we do need several prerequisites, like, Intro to Psychology, and Research Methods. So those are typically taken by psychology students.
Oliver Lane - Sustainability Hub
And over the years, since you've been teaching this, has climate change taken a more central role in terms of the projects and the content that you provide?
Dr. Jiaying Zhao
Absolutely, I think climate change is probably a half, or a third to a half of the course content.
I think the shifting priorities are due to the increasing demand for climate action. And the fact that now we have a climate action plan. And Santa Ono announced a climate emergency. And we have a lot, a lot of other initiatives going on on campus that can benefit from student and faculty research expertise. So just over the last couple years, climate change has been a really big component in the course.
Oliver Lane - Sustainability Hub
Okay. I know you're not teaching the course right now, this fall term, but so far this September, given the two years that we've gone through of COVID, and all the impacts that that's had, plus this last summer plagued with wildfires and droughts in Europe and China and North America, and the floods in South Asia. Do you think there's maybe a deeper awareness of our vulnerability as a species, now? Do you sense that on campus?
Dr. Jiaying Zhao
Oh, yes. Most of our undergraduate students experience climate anxiety, and depression to some extent. We did a large-scale campus survey and we got over 90% of our students saying they are concerned or very concerned about climate change. So I think the students are very motivated to do something about it. They are increasingly aware of the devastation of climate change. Being in Vancouver, I thought we were in a shielded area. It's no longer the case, we had a tornado on campus last year, I think it was the last year or maybe two years ago. It was November, last year when I was driving through campus just about half an hour after the tornado hit. I didn't think Vancouver would experience anything like that. I couldn't believe it. And now we're seeing extreme weather, this summer was hot, it was just consistently hot. The past winter was extraordinarily cold because of the Arctic outflow. The weather is going to be more extreme going forward. And we really need to think about how to adapt to it, how to protect ourselves, and how to mitigate, climate devastations in the future.
Oliver Lane - Sustainability Hub
So you mentioned that students are showing a lot of concern, and feel anxious and distressed. How do you work with that? In class…how do you provide support to students? And how do you answer those tough questions?
Dr. Jiaying Zhao
I like to draw the focus to action. Because that's in my mind, one of the ways to cope. I try to provide a toolbox of actions that students can take in their lives, at work and school. Like joining a climate rally, the strike that's happening today. I think that's a channel to make your voice heard. It won't make immediate changes, but it's likely to help change policies and systems over the long, long term. This is a chance for us to express our civic rights and civic voices to call for system-level changes. So, yes, I encourage people to do that. I attended a strike a couple of months ago in downtown, and this afternoon, when I finish my meetings, I will try to go as well, I live just a few blocks away from the art gallery. So yes, I think there are things that we can do in this global crisis. It's not that we're helpless, hopeless, basically people that have to suffer from this. There's something we can do.
Oliver Lane - Sustainability Hub
And there's something to say about coming together, to have our collective voices heard as well, right? We, a lot of us go through periods of isolation when thinking about this, the climate emergency in particular.
Dr. Jiaying Zhao
Yes, absolutely, I think a lot of people tend to just worry, and they experience or process these negative emotions on their own, which is not very helpful. And the pandemic didn't make it easy. The pandemic made pretty much everything much worse. The social isolation was extremely counterproductive. So I think that if we can get together and talk about how we are feeling, the stress we’re going through, that helps. But another thing that helps us actually is to take action and do something about it, I think that that will put us in a better position.
Oliver Lane - Sustainability Hub
And talking about the pandemic, and those years of isolation. There were a few behavior changes that were observed in people's daily lives that contributed to reducing emissions. Working or studying remotely, getting more active in terms of transportation, some food choices, that kind of thing, more local travel… But now we're back to, a hopefully, post pandemic time. Do you think any of those behaviors have a chance to stick? Or are we going back to starting from scratch?
Dr. Jiaying Zhao
I hope some of them stick! I think a large part of it is the social pressure and the policy change. Right? So before, we were required to work from home, now we're required to work from campus, well, not everybody, I think students are required to come back to school, faculty less so. So we are required to teach in person and a lot of staff are required to be on campus for, you know, a significant portion of the week. I think there are both good and bad. And there are conferences, for instance, a lot of my carbon emissions come from flights, you know, I attend conferences and workshops, give talks to present my research around the world. During the last two years, it was all remote. And now, when we started this year, a lot of the conferences don't even have a remote option. Now, they require you to attend in person. So I think those policies, you know, we have to be very careful when we change those policies, I liked that we are in person again, I think that can really benefit our well-being. The sense of belonging and the sense of social connection is extremely important for our well-being. But there's also a cost of flying and time and money and carbon emissions. So we'll have to think about those as well. It's a delicate balance. But I certainly hope that some of those behaviours like working from home, to present remotely at conferences, in Asia or in Europe, I hope some of those will stay.
Oliver Lane - Sustainability Hub
I hope so too. And it is a delicate conversation to have, especially around the travel to conferences and travel for staff and faculty. I know that’s part of the Climate Action Plan 2030 that you mentioned. For UBC there is a big chunk of work to be done around travel emissions and that's a conversation that I'm sure it's already happening, but that will take a bigger role in the coming year or two, I would imagine. So we'll see how far we can go with that. You also mentioned the Climate Emergency that was declared by UBC in 2019. As you know, after that climate emergency declaration, a task force came together and produced a report with a series of recommendations after consultation with the UBC community. Where do you think UBC is at now on that? And where should the community and the institution be focusing their efforts to move climate action forward?
Dr. Jiaying Zhao
I think UBC is ahead of most universities in the world in terms of sustainability goals, which is great. And I think the 2030, I think it’s a 2030 Net Zero target? That's, ambitious. And I'm really happy to see that. Now, I think that in terms of what we can do, we have to look at where our emissions come from. Is it from buildings? Is it from travel? Is it from waste? Food? Energy? So I think we have to start from that. And then think about how we can cut emissions. So buildings, for instance, can we renovate and retrofit the heating system, and the cooling system to make them less carbon-intensive? If it's transportation, can we encourage people to drive less, provide more EV charging stations, etcetera? And encourage more active transport. I don't have that data. UBC has that data. I think that's where we should start.
Oliver Lane - Sustainability Hub
Okay. And so maybe taking a step back, not UBC specific, but maybe thinking about higher education institutions in general. What do you think is their role in, in a global and local sense, in supporting the fight against climate change?
Dr. Jiaying Zhao
I think post-secondary education institutions play several roles. One is lead by example, if the campus can be net zero, then that sets an example for students to see, and for staff or visitors to see this is how we can make net zero happen. And again, it's education institutions, so we educate the next generation to be net zero to be carbon friendly. The knowledge mobilization and capacity building. This is what UBC and other institutions can do. And I think the third point is, it can serve as a voice to call upon our governments, our local, provincial and federal governments to act. So it's almost like an advocacy role as well.
Oliver Lane - Sustainability Hub
Okay, and so and then there's the component of, as you said, education and teaching. In your experience over the years teaching these courses and, and these topics, and seeing how things have evolved and how students are more affected and impacted by climate change, but also, it seems, more open to being part of the solution and getting active, do you have any suggestions for other faculty members about what to do in class, how to approach these topics? What resources to use? Many faculty members, from what we hear, from across disciplines are wanting to incorporate climate change and sustainability content in their courses, and don't necessarily know where to start or what the most effective way to start is.
Dr. Jiaying Zhao
There are things we can do in our daily lives, that cut emissions, our travel choices, and our food choices. For instance, instead of driving alone, you could bike you could take the bus, you can take SkyTrain, you can carpool, to cut, cut down your own emissions. So these are the kind of personal actions you can take. In terms of, let's say, broader system-level actions, I think there are things you know, like contacting elected officials. That's really effective. There's a BC provincial election happening in October in a couple of weeks. We need to make our voice heard, which candidate are you going to vote for? Based on their climate platforms? That's another opportunity to make a difference.
In terms of teaching, it depends on the course, it depends on your course content. For me, it's very obvious because my course is naturally about environmental sustainability. So I have a lot I talk about: the personal, the civic system level actions people can take, and I used to make that an exam question. So students should remember and know what they can do. It really depends on the course you teach, and how you can make climate relevant to your course. But I think, we should, think about actions at different levels in our daily life, at work at the institutional level school, and also at the system level, civic actions. So maybe, maybe think of it, in these three different levels.
Oliver Lane - Sustainability Hub
So maybe you are suggesting that the focus should be on solutions. Approach it from an angle of solutions and link that to the content.
Dr. Jiaying Zhao
Solutions are a huge knowledge gap. People are worried about climate change, but they don't know what they should do instead.
Oliver Lane - Sustainability Hub
And what has the highest impact…
Dr. Jiaying Zhao
Yes, the most impactful. Yeah, exactly. Now, you know, people have misconceptions, we actually published a study a couple of years ago on exactly this, people will think, recycling is good for the climate… not so mu…recycling is good for reducing pollution, but not so much for cutting back on emissions, in has a very small role. Changing light bulbs to LED, again, is not very impactful. Our understanding of what's impactful and what’s not is not very accurate. So, you know, the most impactful ones are travel, so driving and flying, food choices, how much meat or plant-based foods you're consuming. And home energy, but in BC, 90 to 95% of our electricity is already renewable. So we don't have to worry too much about that. So I think that getting the high-impact solutions and actions out there, that's, that's the first step.
Oliver Lane - Sustainability Hub
I can't help but ask this question. You bring up travel, flying in particular and driving as a high emissions activity. During COVID we saw how emissions from transportation dropped significantly. Now they're picking up again, and actually this summer, it's in the news, how much people are travelling, they’ve even coined the term revenge travel. So we're back at it just because we didn't have any travel options, or minimal travel options over two years. How does that reflect on our understanding of the crisis and where the highest-impact activities are?
Dr. Jiaying Zhao
I didn't travel at all this summer. I did not fly. I did not drive. I only drove one or two miles around my house to do groceries. Only for local, very local activities. I think, the revenge travel is interesting because people feel like they were kept in their home for too long. Now they need to travel more, sometimes relentlessly. But I think we should think about the personal health risks as well as climate risks with travel. A lot of friends who travelled this summer got COVID after travel. I mean, I know at least 10 people who returned from the trip and got COVID after. So are you willing? They're double-vaxed and double-boosted. They still got COVID. So there are costs to us, not just to the climate, of travel. At the policy level I don't think it's a good idea to mandate in-person conferences or in-person meetings. I do think we should make an effort to come to meetings in person once in a while, you know, to come to campus one day or two days a week. I think that's something that at least I personally can commit to. But I don't think mandating every day back to campus or having only in-person meetings is a good idea.
Oliver Lane - Sustainability Hub
I definitely agree that that's an area where there's a big opportunity in reducing emissions from travel. I think asking people not to travel to visit family or friends is a harder ask.
Dr. Jiaying Zhao
Yeah, I think Family Travel, vacations, seeing friends, that's all very important. I haven't seen my family for three years. I wish I could go back and see my parents, but it just the quarantine is really brutal. I think there is travel that's necessary. So don't cut those. But there’s travel that’s optional. And it’s those optional travel that I think we need to think about.
Oliver Lane - Sustainability Hub
Okay, agreed. So, I know there's a lot of negative news around and maybe the travel thing is, I don't know, maybe positive, maybe negative. Are there any recent and inspiring solutions that you've heard of, anything that you've witnessed that gives you hope? It's important to pay attention to these positive things that we run into. Or that we learn about. Because mostly it is negative news that we're hearing, does anything come to mind that’s hopeful?
Dr. Jiaying Zhao
Well, I'm hopeful of a couple of things that Canada is doing. I think that our policies are ambitious. So by 2040 or 2050, I think we have to cut back on emissions by at least 45%. Sorry, that's, that's in the next 10 years. By 2050. We have we are set to go net zero. I think that's the that's the policy, I need to double-check that. That gives me hope. Now, the less hopeful part is how we get there. I think the targets are great. But how we exactly get there as a nation is less clear. But I think the government is slowly setting up those policies, such as nature-based solutions. I think they are a great idea, you know, protecting our biodiversity our ecosystems, for both climate adaptation and mitigation. That's, that's a very promising direction.
Oliver Lane - Sustainability Hub
And you are involved with PARCA, which is the Program for Applied Research on Climate Action in Canada. And from what I know, it's looking to apply behavioral science insights and methods to the work they do. And I know you have a role there. Can you tell us a bit more about that role and what the goal is and how this operates?
Dr. Jiaying Zhao
Yeah, so my role is to serve as an adviser to the committee that's planning climate science research, policy at the national level. They are working on a number of projects using behavioural science to encourage climate action in the public. I don't know how much I can disclose those. But I'm very glad to see those projects taking off. I'm also very happy and I feel privileged to be a part of it, to advise those initiatives.
Oliver Lane - Sustainability Hub
And when we say behavioural science here, are we talking about individual behaviour changes? Or is it more collective scale?
Dr. Jiaying Zhao
It's individual behaviour change at the collective at the masses level. So it's not just one small community. It's geared toward Canadians, all Canadians. But the behaviour change is individual.
Oliver Lane - Sustainability Hub
So maybe a last question, to leave on a positive, optimistic note. You're working basically to promote public action on climate change. What's your vision for the future for a climate resilient and active society? How do you picture this? What does that look like in, let's say, 2050?
Dr. Jiaying Zhao
Well, my vision is that we don’t have to talk about climate change anymore. It’s no longer a threat. Everything in society and the world, our policies, are climate-friendly by default. The world is already climate-friendly and climate change is no longer a threat or a crisis that we have to talk about. That’s my hope, and I hope we can get there sooner than 2050, we should get there as fast as we can.
Oliver Lane - Sustainability Hub
That’s a beautiful vision. I hope you are right; I hope we can get there earlier than expected. We have to.
Thank you for sharing your time and your knowledge and your passion for your work with us, it was a pleasure to have this conversation with you. I’m sure many people will find this interesting and very inspiring, especially UBC community members who might have taken a class with you or might be thinking about taking one, or maybe didn’t know about this class and will be signing up next time it opens. So thank you Jiaying and we’ll be in touch.
Dr. Jiaying Zhao,
OK, thank you Oliver.
See more resources related to the conversation at UBC:
- Course: Environmental Psychology, PSYC 421 2022
- Climate Change Courses
- Sustainability Courses
- News: UBC researchers are helping communities prepare for the effects of climate change
For more episodes, you can do the like subscribe and share thing. And don't forget to check out our website at sustain.ubc.ca for more information about teaching, learning and research on sustainability at UBC.