Grant: Doctoral: Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships

"This research respectfully involves Indigenous communities" My research uses watersheds - their ranks, sizes, boundaries, latitudes and spaces - as units of analysis to track difficult-to-detect human and environmental health outcomes and challenges arising from interactions among the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A watershed nests diverse human and biodiversity ecosystems (markets, industries, firms, farmlands, farmers, schools, regulations, government institutions, operating policies, species populations, etc.). Like its diverse ecosystems, a watershed crosses local, regional, national or international boundaries. It has characteristics such as size, area, rank, boundary, location, latitude, and space that help us to better understand nested communities, populations and interactions within the ecosystems. These include: how they exist, where they live, how they interact with one another, including nature, extent and scale of these interactions, and how to plan and distribute resources to support planetary ecosystems. I consider that watersheds can impart these characteristics to the SDGs, which were put together to make our world healthier. My research will use case studies of selected watersheds in Canada and Nigeria. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial analysis methods, I will adopt watersheds as natural boundaries to obtain denominator data that will reflect human and environmental health challenges in communities that often go un-reflected, unreported and monitored. Using watershed boundaries to show a side-by-side overlay of clusters of cases of specific SDGs interactions will help determine the geographical extent and scale at which these clusters occur in relation to populations at risk; while displaying multiple, rather than restricted, views of the distribution of health outcomes. This will facilitate inclusive monitoring of health outcomes and reduce health inequities that often abound in the least and farthest communities.