Rising climate-change star wins Trudeau scholarship
Nic Rivers, 604.683.1452; njrivers@sfu.ca
Almost ignored amidst the media coverage was the third author, engineer and researcher Nic Rivers, one of Jaccard’s grad students in SFU’s School of Resource and Environmental Management.
But the 31-year-old Vancouverite can take sole billing for his latest accomplishment. Rivers has won a $150,000 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation scholarship, Canada’s richest social sciences and humanities doctoral prize, for his work in assessing the effectiveness of alternative strategies to counter climate change.
The award includes $35,000 per year over three years to support his PhD studies and $15,000 annually for research-related travel expenses.
“I’ve been working with Mark for about five years, to some degree in his shadow – and justifiably so,” says Rivers. “So this is really neat to be recognized on my own.”
Rivers, who works at the nexus of public policy, economics and science, has been involved in Canada's climate-change debate at all levels, providing advice to local, provincial, and federal governments on climate policy. He has also advised industry, utilities and non-government organizations on strategies to proactively engage in forthcoming climate-policy debates.
For his PhD, Rivers is planning three short papers rather than one longer thesis. The first will compare the impacts of climate legislation on both high- and low-income Canadians.
The second will examine the trade impacts of climate policy on Canadian importers and exporters to help ensure that they don’t lose market share to countries that don’t have a climate policy.
And the third will look at the impact of previous climate-change polices, something governments are loath to do, to see what has and hasn’t worked in the past.
Rivers is one of only 15 students to win a Trudeau scholarship this year and the fourth SFU student to win since the award was created in 2002 to honour the late former prime minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau.