Climbing, climate and co-creating knowledge in the world’s high places

Dr. Graham McDowell is a mountaineer turned climate change researcher who has built a career at the intersection of environmental justice, mountain and Arctic environments, and community-engaged scholarship. He is director of science and knowledge at the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y), an adjunct professor at UBC’s Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability (IRES). A two-time contributing author to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,  Dr. McDowell is also a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, a National Steering Committee for the UN International Year of Glacier Preservation, and led the award-winning Canadian Mountain Assessment.

In this conversation, Dr. McDowell reflects on his time at UBC, how his love of cold places shaped his international career on climate change in mountain and polar regions, and his efforts to advance respectful knowledge co-creation with Indigenous Peoples in Canada and beyond.

Q: You were a PhD student at IRES. What drew you there?

Graham: I was really drawn to the way IRES focuses on problem-oriented research that is academically rigorous but ultimately meant to matter beyond the walls of the university. I wanted to do work that wasn’t only impactful from a scholarly perspective, but that could also inform positive change in the world beyond the academy. IRES was perfectly matched to this ambition.

What also stood out was the interdisciplinarity. You had geographers, political scientists, ecologists, engineers, economists—all coming at prominent global and regional issues from different angles. That kind of intellectual mix was exciting and helped me think more broadly about how to tackle complex climate challenges.

The broader ecosystem at UBC was important, too. I was part of the public scholars initiative, which shaped how I think about science communication and the responsibility to share research in accessible, impactful ways. I also appreciated how Indigenous scholars and perspectives were increasingly being centred at the university.

Q: You’ve conducted community-engaged research in the Himalayas, the Peruvian Andes, the Rockies, Greenland, and the Canadian Arctic. What feels similar—and different—across such diverse places?

Graham: The common thread is my fascination with cold places—snow, ice, glaciers—and the people whose lives are deeply intertwined with those rapidly changing environments. Mountain regions and the Arctic are especially sensitive to climate warming. They’re home to many communities living at the frontlines of climate change—often Indigenous Peoples whose lives are closely tied to local environments. Whether I’m in a high mountain village in Nepal or on sea ice with Inuit hunters on Baffin Island, I’m interested in how climate change is reshaping ecosystems and livelihoods, and how broader social, economic, and political conditions influence who is most affected.

Across all these contexts, a few principles are constant. You have to approach communities with humility, openness, and a genuine willingness to be there as a learner. You’re not just “collecting data”—you’re building relationships and doing research that aims to respond to local questions, concerns and priorities.

In the context of my work, I’ve also found that you need the right skills to not be a liability. Working with Inuit hunters, for example, you can’t slow down the group because you can’t manage the terrain or weather. My background in climbing and mountaineering helped a lot—I knew how to stay warm, move efficiently through complex terrain, and work safely in harsh conditions. Capacities such as these are often invisible in academic outputs like peer-reviewed articles, but they can be essential for doing effective field research.

Q: How is climate change reshaping the planet’s cold places?

Graham: In mountain regions, we’re seeing rapid glacier recession with major implications for water, hazards, ecosystems and communities. As glaciers shrink, they change the timing and volume of water flowing from high mountain catchments, affecting water availability downstream, impacting sediment loads, and altering flood risk. These changes are being documented scientifically and observed very clearly by communities. Permafrost thaw is another major concern in some high mountain areas, leading to slope instability and damage to infrastructure. And as temperatures rise, species are shifting their ranges upslope or northward, with community members reporting plants, insects, and animals in places they haven’t seen before.

Similar changes are unfolding across the Arctic. Sea ice is forming later, melting earlier, and becoming thinner and less predictable. Snow cover is changing and weather patterns are less reliable.

Working with Inuit hunters, I witnessed these changes expressed in very concrete ways, including through place names. One toponym in our study area roughly translated to “Where you cross the sea ice in October”—yet when we visited in October it was open water. That kind of change is deeply unsettling because it disrupts not just travel routes, but knowledge systems built over generations. 

Climate-related changes are transforming what it means to live in the world’s cold places. Fortunately, communities living in these environments are also some of the most adaptable groups on the planet.

Q: What is the focus of your work with the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative?

Graham: When Y2Y hired me, I joked, “I’m not a biologist. I’m not a grizzly bear person. Why do you want me?” What they saw, I think, was someone who could build a climate research program that connects directly to their conservation mission, and who has experience working across scientific, local and Indigenous knowledge systems.

Recently, we’ve been working to understand the climate-regulating benefits the vast Y2Y mountain landscape actually provides. Our research shows that the Yellowstone-to-Yukon region stores roughly 13 per cent of the natural terrestrial carbon in Canada and the United States while covering only about 7 per cent of their land area. In other words, it’s almost twice as effective at storing carbon as the average landscape in the two countries. We also estimate that around 40 per cent of that carbon, if disturbed, would not be recoverable on timescales that matter for society. If you dig up a peatland or cut down old growth forests, it can take hundreds to thousands of years to draw that carbon back down. These findings strengthen the case for large-landscape conservation—not only for biodiversity and cultural values, but also for stabilizing the climate.

We’re also trying to advance understanding of what nature-positive adaptation could look like in the Y2Y region by learning from communities that are responding to climate change in ways that reduce risk for people while also protecting ecological integrity.

Q: How did the Canadian Mountain Assessment become a turning point in your work on mountains and knowledge co-creation?

Graham: The idea for the Canadian Mountain Assessment (CMA) grew out of years of working with Indigenous communities and knowledge holders in mountain and Arctic regions, as well as my experience contributing to science-driven assessments like the IPCC.

Right after my PhD, I founded and then led the CMA because I felt that, as a country, we didn’t have a clear picture of what was happening in our mountain systems—socially, ecologically, or climatically. I wanted to create something that treated western academic and Indigenous knowledges on equal terms, which had really never been done in a major assessment initiative.

The project brought together over 80 contributors from across Canada, roughly a third of whom were Indigenous. Each chapter was co-led by an Indigenous and non-Indigenous author. One of the key messages from Indigenous elders involved in the project was that the full meaning and power of oral knowledges can’t be captured in text. So we convened a series of learning circles, bringing Indigenous knowledge holders from different mountain regions together and video-recording those conversations—with consent and under Indigenous guidance. Instead of paraphrasing or translating their words into prose, CMA authors we able to embedd QR codes throughout the book that link directly to those videos.

The CMA consolidates a tremendous body of evidence and knowledge. We were humbled when the book won the Alberta Scholarly and Academic Book of the Year in 2024, and we hope that this kind of recognition will encourage other efforts to co-create knowledge.

Q: What’s your advice for people who want a career in environmental research?

Graham: First, pay close attention to what is uniquely you and lean into it. Many of us could apply our skills to a wide range of topics, but the work that really sustains you—and often has the most impact—sits where your skills, values and genuine interests overlap. For me that meant work at the intersection of social and environmental justice, leaning into skills I had developed as a mountaineer, and building research expertise related to climate change in cold regions. That was my niche—think deeply about what constitutes yours.

Second, remember that you are one person. Early in my career, I carried around this sense that I was personally responsible for “fixing” the climate crisis. That’s an impossible burden, and it left me feeling perpetually insufficient and stressed. Letting go of that—recognizing that I can only do my part, alongside many others—was incredibly liberating and actually made my work better.

So find the space where your skills and passions align with what the world needs, and show up there fully. Do your work as well as you can. Be a good collaborator and colleague. And trust that contributing your piece of the larger puzzle isn’t only enough—it’s how real change happens.