Grants and Contributions:
Title:
Plastics and heavy metals in Nunatsiavut food ways and environments
Agreement Number:
992451
Agreement Value:
$449,989.00
Agreement Date:
May 1, 2022 - Apr 30, 2025
Description:
The Nunatsiavut Government leads one of the most comprehensive plastic pollution monitoring programs in the Arctic, including monitoring of water, ice, shorelines, and animals. This project builds on existing Inuit-led research in this area and uses capacity sharing (rather than capacity building) to work with new and returning partners to extend this work in two ways. First, monitoring will focus on birds caught for food for which there are no existing plastic ingestion baselines in the region (or the world). Secondly, we will link plastic pollution with heavy metal contamination since plastics are known to act as a vector for heavy metals. We will compare this new baseline data to colonial archival samples of birds collected from Nunatsiavut to investigate trends in heavy metals and their relationship to changes from climate change, the introduction of consumer plastics to the North, and other temporal points of significance. Additionally, we will identify sources of macro plastics on shorelines using new forensics based in collective community knowledge, and link these sources to micro plastics ingested by animals to provide input on meaningful intervention into plastic pollution control and mitigation from human activities. This research will be directed and validated by continuous community review and evaluation through land-based workshops aimed at recognizing that local knowledge holders are the main experts within that space and environment. Together, these activities will be used to inform plastic pollution, heavy metal contamination, and Inuit food way governance and mitigation by the Nunatsiavut Government.
Organization:
National Research Council Canada
Expected Results:
In the short term, anticipated outcomes will be strengthened collaborations across industry, academia, and government to support research excellence. In the medium term, anticipated outcomes will be the development of new and potentially disruptive technologies with collaborators. In the long term, find collaborative solutions to public policy challenges and create stronger innovation systems.
Location:
St. John's, Newfoundland & Labrador, CA A1C 5S7
Reference Number:
172-2021-2022-Q1-992451
Agreement Type:
Grant
Report Type:
Grants and Contributions
Recipient Business Number:
107690273
Recipient Type:
Academia
Recipient's Legal Name:
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Federal Riding Name:
St. John's East
Federal Riding Number:
10006
Program:
Collaborative Science, Technology and Innovation Program - Collaborative R&D Initiatives
Program Purpose:
Collaborate on multiparty research and development programs to catalyze transformative, high-risk, high-reward research with the potential for game-changing scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs in priority areas.
NAICS Code:
541710 - R&D in the physical, engineering and life sciences