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Joël Thibert
2010 Trudeau Scholar
joel.thibert@trudeaufoundation.net
Current Research
Ph.D. Public Affairs, Princeton University
Making the region work for sustainability: investigating the relationship between metropolitan governance and environmental protection in North AmericaBiography
Joël Thibert's academic and professional trajectory has not been exactly rectilinear. He has always been interested in the relationship between humans and the world they inhabit, and this first drew him toward chemistry and biology, but he quickly became interested in the social and environmental sciences as well as in environmental education and, most recently, in urban planning and urban policy. In short, he had dedicated himself entirely to the study of homo sapiens sapiens in the setting he invented and created for himself all of a piece: the city.
After completing undergraduate studies at McGill University which took him to the Indigenous reserve of Kuna Yula in Panama, he set up an environmental education program for a high school in Bogota, Colombia, where he taught for a year. He then returned to Montreal to do graduate work in urban planning and, for his research project, studied the ethical issues related to the use of geographic information systems in urban planning.
During his master's program and in the months following, he took part in several research projects, including one on the private rooming house sector in Montreal (for the City of Montreal), one on inclusion and social housing practice in Canada (for the now-defunct Canadian Policy Research Networks), one on the environmental impact of our food choices (in collaboration with Professor Madhav Badami), and one of the implementation of Smart Growth policies in Canada (for Smart Growth BC).
Following all that, he decided it was important to gain a better understanding of the city-building process - a much theorized but little understood phenomenon. So he joined the Quartier international de Montréal team, directed by one of the greatest city-builders to have been active in the last three decades, Clément Demers. For three years he took part in the Montreal "Quartier des spectacles" urban revitalization project and was responsible for coordinating the implementation of a new three-fraction waste collection system.
This short but intense experience with the team led by Clément Demers convinced him that the problem facing Montreal and many other Canadian cities is not one of vision but one of governance. This ignited his interest in studying what makes some cities better than other at protecting the environment.
Since the beginning of his university career, Joël Thibert has been awarded a Weston Loran scholarship, a Greville-Smith scholarship from McGill University, a Terry Fox Humanitarian Award, a Forces Avenir award for a tutoring program that he co-founded in 2002 as well as Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.Project Description
Making the region work for sustainability: investigating the relationship between metropolitan governance and environmental protection in North America
More than ever, cities have become a "part" of the environment and it is becoming clear that they are as much a part of the solution to the impending ecological crisis as they are a part of the problem. In the absence of coordinated actions by state actors, local communities are called upon to develop their own sustainable development agenda. Yet many North American cities have neither the tools nor the necessary powers to "manage" their own environment, and urban development continues to happen with little regard to the survival of animal and plant species that live among us. That being said, other cities on the same continent have succeeded in implementing ambitious environmental policies. Joël Thibert's project will use a multi-case study covering the United States and Canada to identify the political and governance conditions that enable local governments to integrate environmental objectives more effectively into their development plans.Trudeau Foundation Themes
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