Conservation Burial Reserves: Let Death Beget Life

Transforming the death care industry to enhance nature conservation and sustainability

Our wishes for our bodies after death represent an intimate culmination of our hopes and values during life, and yet current norms for deathcare may be strikingly out-of-synch with people’s hopes and values. ‘Normal’ North American deathcare practices cost thousands of dollars; exacerbate habitat loss, pollution, and global climate change; and rail against the inevitable return of our bodies to nature.

Simultaneously, there is a prominent rise of intentional efforts to connect with nature. The disconnect may stem partly from a widespread misperception of norms called “pluralistic ignorance”, due to a second norm by which people avoid talking about death.

The Let Death Beget Life project aims to explore environmentally friendly ways to protect biodiversity through conservation burial reserves and other green death care practices. It examines people’s choices for end-of-life decisions and how they can be more eco-friendly while coupling them with protected biodiversity areas. We will also address the memorialization of individuals and nature within these spaces.

Objectives

Obj. A

We aim to understand how Canadians currently think and feel about death and deathcare by conducting a national survey.

Using two-step structural modeling, we will explore how norms, values, attitudes, and perceptions are connected, and the possibility of relational values mediating the influence of personal and social norms. 

Obj. B

Building on the results of Objective A, we aim to find effective ways to promote green deathcare practices by providing information, emphasizing social norms, and reinforcing personal values.

In two experiments, building on each other, we will test different approaches to bring about positive change.  

Obj. C

We will explore how group discussions about death, deathcare, and related actions influence personal and social beliefs.

We will then introduce death care possibilities and monitor effects through interviews, before-and-after surveys, and an online platform with a new “action community.”

We will see if these interventions inspire people to take steps or lead to further changes in how they approach deathcare reform. 

Resources

Watch the webinar on “Let Death Beget Life: Transforming the death care industry to enhance nature conservation and sustainability

Research Team

Contributing Faculty Member: Prof. Sonya Jakubec (Mount Royal University)

Students

Partners

By engaging a wide range of relevant partners through the action community, and leveraging existing partnerships through CoSphere (a broader community oriented towards social-ecological transformation), we will go beyond characterizing a system on the brink of transformative change.


Land Acknowledgment: We acknowledge that the land on which we are based is the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil- Waututh), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Stó:lō Nations. This land, now known as University of British Columbia’s Point Grey Vancouver Campus, has always been a place of learning for these nations, who for millennia have passed on their culture, history, and traditions from one generation to the next on this site.

Funding Partners: UBC STAIR Grant, SSHRC Insights Grant
Government and Community Partners: John Leadston, Ontario Parks