Climate is a human right for RRU grad

Learn more about the Master of Arts in Global Leadership.

For Royal Roads alum Lynn Weaver, the interconnectedness of peoples, communities and countries around the globe is a thread that runs through her academic and working lives.

A graduate of RRU’s Master of Arts in Global Leadership program, Weaver is an active community member, serving as a director on the Vancity board and as an executive committee member and advocacy officer with the Canadian Association for Refugee and Forced Migration Studies in addition to her work as a consultant doing research and supporting work on topics such as asylum issues in Europe.

Her current focus, while pursuing further studies in international human rights law at the University of London (UK), is climate migration.

‘We can see it coming’

While her previous work in the area of forced migration “tends to be very reactive and responsive — like, a war breaks out and there's a mass movement of people,” with climate migration, “We can see it coming,” Weaver says. “There are countries in the South Pacific, for example, that are literally measuring the sea level rise and they know that, in probably about 50 years, they’re going to have to relocate the whole community — and what does that mean and where are they going to go and so on?

“So, it's important from a policy perspective, given the gravity of the situation, to drive how to best manage adaptation or relocation with dignity, and how to get ahead of that in an effective way that best supports communities in navigating the challenges.”

This work, she notes, is built on a foundation of recognizing “our shared humanity, this sense of belonging to the whole world, the planet as one ecosystem. It's this idea that we're actually all very much interconnected.”

A smile given, a smile received

Weaver’s focus on interconnection started when she left her small, rural hometown in southern Alberta at 17 to work and study abroad in various countries.

In the Independent State of Samoa, she recalls, “I'm walking around scared of the world… not knowing what to expect or who I can trust or who I can't. I'm kind of scowling at everybody and they're scowling back. And then, one day, I just took the risk and I smiled at someone and they smiled back. And that simple moment illuminated how trust and belonging emerge through mutual recognition.”

That experience contributed to a worldview that includes “an expansive sense of justice and relational accountability and connection to a global community.”

Viewing global leadership through different lenses

Weaver’s interest in global community led her to the MAGL program at Royal Roads. The program’s cohort model particularly appealed to her for what she calls “lateral learning.” This occurred through the requirement for each student to complete weekly readings and write a post about them, and for all students to offer commentary on one another’s posts.

“Part of what made those so engaging was that we were all coming from so many different backgrounds and so many different lenses,” says Weaver, who while at RRU won the Royal Roads Founder’s Award, Eve’s Global Leadership Learner Award and the Royal Roads Entrance Award.

While her lens was focused on migration, “somebody else was writing about climate or writing about global health or… a million different global leadership issues. And, so, it was really interesting and fresh and engaging.”

Learn more about the Master of Arts in Global Leadership.

Image by Rachel Pick.