Marc Fawcett-Atkinson
Journalist | Vancouver |
English
French
About Marc Fawcett-Atkinson
Marc Fawcett-Atkinson is a reporter and writer covering food systems, climate, disinformation, and plastics and the environment for Canada’s National Observer.
His ongoing investigations of the plastic industry in Canada won him a Webster Award's nomination in environmental reporting in 2021. He was also a nominee for a Canadian Association of Journalists's award for his reporting on disinformation.
Marc has previously written for High Country News, the Literary Review of Canada, and other publications on topics exploring relationships between people and their social and physical environments.
He holds an M.A. in journalism from the University of British Columbia and a B.A. in Human Ecology from the College of the Atlantic.
Where are Canada's moose?
Moose populations are declining in many provinces, with the exception of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton. Wildlife researchers and First Nations say logging, sport hunting and climate change are to blame.
Toxic chemicals ‘a big, big problem,’ chemists warn, as countries try to strike plastic pollution deal
When Zhanyun Wang was a kid, his mother told him to avoid the sweet-smelling gases that sometimes drifted across his neighbourhood near Shanghai from nearby plastic factories. Anything that smelled "really nice," the now-researcher at the University of Zurich explained, was "probably very toxic."
She left home over toxic pollution. An update to Canada’s main environmental law might help her return
Melissa Daniels is from Fort Chipewyan, an 850-person roadless hamlet in northern Alberta. It's the land her people have lived on for time immemorial, and the place her relatives and friends call home. Yet, despite her love for her home community, she doesn't live there. The settlement is directly downstream from the tarsands, which has contaminated the hamlet and nearby forests with chemicals.
Lowest-paid workers don’t make enough for even ‘bare bones’ living
In Victoria, the province’s most expensive city, two adults working to support two children would need to make at least $24.29 an hour to afford rent, groceries and other key expenses, according to a new analysis by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Cocaine and other chemicals made floods a toxic cocktail
The floodwaters covering the former Semá:th X̱ó:tsa, or Sumas Lake — now called Sumas Prairie — contained 379 chemical components and bacteria, researchers found. Two-thirds were created by humans, including several that aren't found in nature.
Fighting climate change for the sake of french fries
For Daniel Metheringham, fighting climate change is as much about securing an "assured supply" of french fries as it is about preventing global calamity.
‘As worrying as Big Oil’ — Big Meat fighting to keep beef on the menu at COP27
Lobbyists for Canada's meat and dairy industries are showing up with unprecedented visibility at the COP27 climate conference now underway in Egypt. The industries have at least one representative on the official Canadian delegation, a position that gives easy access to negotiators and closed-door meetings.
Inside the food fight brewing at COP27
A new item is on the menu for the thousands of people gathering this month at COP27, the United Nations' annual climate conference: food.
More than just a potato field: Farmers face off with developers for Canada’s precious farmland
The struggle to keep farmland off limits for developers is a nationwide problem. Unlike the U.S. and many other countries, Canada doesn't have a national plan to protect farmland.
Yukon First Nations are leading the way when it comes to school food
For the past several months, well over a thousand Indigenous children in Yukon schools have had access to something many Canadian students do not — an affordable daily lunch at school.