Fioret, Cameron

Cameron Fioret was a Virtual Visiting Research Fellow at UNU-CRIS who worked closely together with Nidhi Nagabhatla. Cameron is a Visiting Scholar in the University of Michigan's Water Center in the Graham Sustainability Institute, as well as a Policy Analyst at Environment Climate Change Canada. He completed his Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS-funded Ph.D. at the University of Guelph under the supervision of Dr. Monique Deveaux, Canada Research Chair in Ethics and Global Social Change. He has also been a Visiting Postgraduate Research Student at the University of Edinburgh.

Cameron’s research revolves around issues of ownership and property, commodification, and deliberative democratic governance of freshwater resources. At UNU-CRIS, his research asked five main applied philosophical, political, and policy questions concerning water: What role could community-led science and participatory science communication play in utilizing water as a tool for peace/stability? Do existing UN development agendas, including the Sustainable Development Goals, contribute much to water-driven peace and can they help to facilitate popular, community-led efforts to leverage water for peace and justice? What role do a pluralism of voices––discursive democracy––and democratic institutions play in concretizing water ethics and justice? How can domestic and international law support the causes of water ethics and justice? What is the epistemic relationship between discursive democracy and ecological reflexivity for ensuring water and, broadly, environmental justice? This research examines the possibility of our shared sustainable future, all while democracy is under threat in water governance and environmental politics at large.

Cameron has published in the journals Action Research; Alternate Routes; Ethics, Policy & Environment; Geoforum; and Informal Logic. His previous research experience at UNU-INWEH resulted in collaboratively published book chapters and policy briefs about water-driven human migration, the water-security nexus, as well as the relationship between SDG 6 and SDG 16. His doctoral dissertation, entitled “The Ethics of Water: From Commodification to Common Ownership,” is contracted to be published with Bloomsbury Publishing in 2023; further, the revision and completion of this manuscript is the primary focused of his time at UNU-CRIS.