Political Science PhD student Simon Beaudoin explores how global cooperation can help address climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.
Climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution are global challenges that no country can solve alone. Yet efforts to address them are often fragmented across governments, institutions, and international agreements.
Simon Beaudoin studies how countries, institutions, and communities can work together more effectively on environmental challenges. A PhD student in the UBC Department of Political Science, his research takes him from UN biodiversity negotiations to Pacific Island communities on the frontlines of climate change, searching for reforms that are both effective and just.
He explores how local and Indigenous knowledge can inform international decision-making, and how stronger cooperation can bridge the gaps between climate, biodiversity, and pollution policy.
What are you researching?
My research examines the relationship between governance and ecological systems and explores practical solutions to transboundary environmental issues. I focus on three challenges: climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution — what the United Nations Environment Programme calls the “triple planetary crisis.” By integrating insights from the social and natural sciences, I aim to identify more effective, inclusive, and cooperative responses to climate and environmental change.
My doctoral fieldwork takes place in international environmental negotiations and in Pacific Island States, which are on the frontlines of climate change and environmental degradation while also leading global advocacy efforts related to climate, biodiversity, and pollution.
For example, in Raja Ampat, an archipelago in Indonesia, I documented the work of Child Aid Papua, a non-profit boarding school focused on ocean literacy and sustainability. Located in one of the least educated regions in the world, the school hosts young people from the neighbouring islands and provides them with practical skills to become agents of change in their communities.
The Child Aid Papua school campus in Raja Ampat, West Papua, Indonesia. The school is part of a community-led initiative that combines education with environmental conservation.
Why have you chosen to devote your research to environmental issues?
The impacts of climate change reverberate across societies, species, ecosystems, and generations. It is not only an environmental issue, but also a political, social, and ethical one that raises important questions of justice, sustainability, and peace.
What particularly motivates me is the recognition that addressing shared environmental challenges can strengthen collective action and solidarity across borders. I am also thinking of future generations, who I hope will have the immense pleasure of living on a healthy, resilient, and beautiful planet.
“I hope my research encourages more integrated, long-term, inclusive, and cooperative responses that recognize the fundamental interconnections between societies and the ecosystems they depend on.”
You recently published a book on global biodiversity governance. What is the book about, and why does this issue matter for people and the planet?
Biodiversity underpins many aspects of everyday life, including food systems, clean water, and climate stability. My book, co-authored with Laura Fequino and Annie Chaloux, examines how global biodiversity governance has evolved over time, how political and economic decisions affect ecosystems and species, and how environmental change increasingly affects human health, economies and communities. It also highlights opportunities for global biodiversity recovery and stronger international cooperation.
Simon Beaudoin (third from left) at the Nagenahiru Foundation's environmental learning centre in Ambalangoda, Sri Lanka.
Simon Beaudoin with Mentawai community members harvesting a sago palm in the Mentawai Islands, West Sumatra, Indonesia.
Lokal Lab’s Ihayas Farm in Siargao, Philippines. Designed as a model for regenerative agriculture, the farm shows how nature-based farming techniques can create affordable, profitable, and resilient food systems that can be replicated in other communities.
What’s one thing you’d like people to take away from your work?
Environmental issues cannot be addressed in isolation. Environmental, political, economic, and social systems are deeply interconnected, and decisions made in one area often have far-reaching consequences in another. I hope my research encourages more integrated, long-term, inclusive, and cooperative responses that recognize the fundamental interconnections between societies and the ecosystems they depend on.
Simon Beaudoin is a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Scholar, Killam Scholar, SSHRC Doctoral Fellow, and Fulbright Scholar (Stanford University, 2025). He is also the cofounder of Possible, a non-profit dedicated to social and ecological regeneration through education, research, and storytelling.
