- Location
- Zoom & 155 College St., Room 412
- Series/Type
- Alumni Event, DLSPH Event, Faculty/Staff Event, Student Event
- Format
- Hybrid
- Dates
- September 18, 2025 from 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Links
Presented by Collaborative Centre for Climate, Health & Sustainable Care …
Thursday, September 18th, 2025 (hybrid, in-person & online)
In-person*: 11:30am-1:00pm EST, with lunch provided from 11:30am-12:00pm
Location: 155 College Street, Room 412
Online: 12:00-1:00pm EST
Location: Zoom, with link provided upon registration
The Collaborative Centre for Climate, Health & Sustainable Care is launching a new event series entitled: Critical Conversations. Our first Critical Conversation will be on The Aral Sea and Ecocide, hosted by Dr. Ross Upshur.
The Aral Sea, once the fourth largest inland body of water in the world, has progressively receded with immense ecological consequences. The disappearance of the Aral Sea was described by Science Magazine as “perhaps the most notorious ecological catastrophe of human making.” But does this catastrophe constitute ecocide? In this seminar, Dr. Upshur will explore the evolving concept of ecocide as the “fifth crime against peace” and assess whether a prominent definition of ecocide would include the Aral Sea disaster. As well, it will be critically examined whether ecocide should be conceived exclusively as a criminal act.
About the Critical Conversations series:
Much academic work on climate change, planetary health and sustainable care aims at improvement of existing practices or systems, to reduce ecological harms or manage the health and well-being implications of climate change and ecological decline. This series will provide an academic space to question the assumptions about what changes are necessary or possible, how current practices are held in place, and how learners, educators, researchers, and practitioners should respond to the changing climate. We are creating this series to facilitate a space for new and critical ideas to develop and be tested.
These aren’t easy conversations. We won’t be certain, and we probably won’t agree, but we need to get started because these conversations are critical and timely, and facilitating this type of dialogue and inquiry should be central to the role academia plays in society.
About the speaker:
Dr. Ross Upshur is currently the Dalla Lana Chair in Clinical Public Health and Head of the Division of Clinical Public Health at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. At the University of Toronto, he is a Professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Department of Family and Community Medicine in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Associate Director of the Collaborative Centre for Climate, Health and Sustainable Care, Affiliate Member of the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, Member of the Joint Centre for Bioethics. He serves as Co-chair of the WHO Ethics and Governance Working Group, and is Special Advisor to the Ethics Review Board of Doctors Without Borders. Research interests span multiple domains at the intersection of ethics, epistemology, clinical medicine and public health with applications to climate change, pandemics and artificial intelligence. He is an elected Fellow of the Hastings Center and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.
