Nursing (on) a Sick Planet: Critical Consciousness and Action in a Time of Planetary Decline
The Canadian Journal of Critical Nursing Discourse is pleased to announce a special issue exploring Nursing’s role in sustainability and planetary health. As one of the largest and most trusted professional workforces in Canada, nurses can have significant influence in climate change discourse and action. It has long been within the nurses’ professional mandate to address issues concerning environmental health and today, that mandate extends to sustainability, climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. Through critical consciousness raising, action and system transformation, Nurses and nursing can and must work to affect meaningful and sustained change.
Firm Deadline: July 1st, 2021
Guest Editors
June Kaminski, RN, PhD (c) Faculty & Curriculum Coordinator, Faculty of Health, Kwantlen Polytechnic University
Wanda Martin RN, PhD Associate Professor, College of Nursing, University of Saskatchewan
Intended Focus of this Special Issue
It has been more than a decade since the Canadian Nurses Association (2009) put out a position statement calling on nurses to recognize and take action on the health risks of climate change and since has called on nurses to advocate, research, engage, and promote environmental health as a key element to ethical practice (CNA, 2017). The nursing profession is experiencing a paradigm shift towards a larger environmental context, as nurses witness the ever- increasing destructive land use, pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions that ignore gross inequities in environmental burdens and brings us closer to catastrophic consequences (Kurth, 2017). It is essential that the public collectively and more specifically, nurses as health leaders, critically explore the nature of these global challenging problems and find the courage and capacity to lead society to a healthy future. This special issue invites nurses to dive into the complexities of the ecological determinants of health and consider essential concepts such as environmental justice; activism and advocacy; sustainability; power and privilege; and ecological, and systems-based approaches as they relate to nursing. We invite transformative insights and discussions related to how nurses can advance understanding of the ecological determinants of health and, more broadly, how we engage with our planet. Inclusion of Indigenous perspectives and knowledge are encouraged and warmly welcomed.
Potential topics, approaches and lenses
- Adaptation/ Deep Adaptation
- Climate Justice
- Connections between local, national, and global environmental health
- Ecofeminism and nursing
- Ecoliteracy for/by nurses
- Ecological determinants of health
- Environmental justice
- Critical Environmental Education in nursing
- Environment as a shifting paradigm in nursing
- Food Sovereignty
- Human Rights to water, food, and a healthy environment
- Indigenous Knowledges/wisdom and many ways of knowing
- Indigenous health nursing and planetary well-being
- Just Transitions
- Nursing advocacy and activism
- Nursing roles in environmental health
- One Planet Living
- Political ecology
- Power and politics
- (Re) Connecting with the natural world
- Sustainability literacy and competencies
- System transformation
- Systems and ecological approaches to health
- Toxin regulation and exposure
Guidelines for Authors:
Submissions are to be nurse-authored or if submitted by a team, the lead author must be a nurse. Manuscripts should have a clear relevance to nursing. Additionally, Witness requires adherence to our authorship criteria, found at https://witness.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/default/AuthReq
Prospective authors must also familiarize themselves with the author guidelines set out in the journal found here: https://witness.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/default/about/submissions . Undergraduate Student submissions are welcomed, and such submissions are to be supported/mentored by a nursing faculty member, and indicated in the cover letter signed by both the UG student and the faculty member.
Note: All required materials must be submitted through the journal’s online portal at www.yorku.ca/witness, following the journal’s and the council on publication ethics’ guidelines including those associated with authorship, conflict of interest etc. Please ensure author teams review our webpage. Lastly, prospective authors must register with the journal in order to submit their work.
For any questions regarding the journal or this call for papers including a desire to discuss a proposed submission not included in the introductory list of possible topics and foci, please don’t hesitate to contact the editor, Dr. Cheryl van Daalen-Smith at witness@yorku.ca . The deadline is firm.
References
Canadian Nurses Association. (2009). Climate change and health: A position statement. Retrieved from https://www.cna-aiic.ca/∽/media/cna/page-content/pdf-en/ps100_climate_change_e.pdf
Canadian Nurses Association. (2017). Nurses and environmental health. Retrieved from https://www.cna-aiic.ca/~/media/cna/page-content/pdf-en/nurses-and-environmental-health-position-statement.pdf
Kurth, A. E. (2017). Planetary Health and the Role of Nursing: A Call to Action. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 49(6), 598-605. https://doi.org/10.1111/jnu.12343
