Photo courtesy UNBC

By CKPG Today

Scholarship

UNBC PhD student receives prestigious federal scholarship

Jul 22, 2020 | 9:59 AM

PRINCE GEORGE — University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) PhD student Christiana Onabola has been awarded a federally-funded Vanier Scholarship for her research that focuses on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and how they are relevant to local populations and communities along the Nechako Watershed and Niger Delta in Nigeria in order to strengthen the goals’ tenet of leaving no one behind.

According to UNBC, up to 166 Vanier Graduate Scholarships are awarded to doctoral students across the country in health, natural sciences and/or engineering and social sciences.

Onabola’s scholarship is from the federal Canadian Institutes of Health Research and is valued at $50,000 per year for three years.

She says world leaders at the United Nations put together the 17 SDGs in 2015, which are a set of global goals to tackle economic, social and environmental challenges that are local and global in nature.

“There are, however, concerns about how these goals interact and what happens when, for instance, a goal related to health and the environment is traded off in order to meet another tailored towards economic development,” explains Onabola.

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“I am excited that this funding will, no iota of doubt, offer substantial supports and tremendous possibilities for my proposed two-country research project, which is expected to engage with specific SDGs stakeholders across scales.

“The funding will enhance my research productivity by being able to take on necessary technological supports and needed resources, participate in conferences, and, in the ultimate, potentially develop granular data tools at the scale of watersheds that can localize the SDGs and bring their metrics closer to reflecting social, environmental and health inequities in remote communities that often go unreflected, unreported and unmonitored.”