A PhD candidate pursuing climate finance at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, 29-year-old Truzaar Dordi was included in the 2020 list of "Canadian Top 30 Under 30 Sustainability Leaders.” Corporate Knights’ "30 under 30” is an annual competitive national award recognizing young change-makers who demonstrate leadership on sustainability issues and in fostering a greener, more equitable future.
"The final 30 sustainability champs are an awe-inspiring group of indigenous leaders, social entrepreneurs, nonprofit founders, clean technology champions and beyond,” noted the fall 2020 issue of Corporate Knights, a media, research and financial information products company based in Toronto, when introducing the award winners. "This year, the 30 under 30 recipients were selected in part based on their contribution to advancing the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goals,” mentioned Dordi in his email responses to Parsiana.
Truzaar Dordi: promoting sustainable finance
Describing himself as "a transdisciplinary scholar examining the intersection between climate change and financial resilience,” Dordi referred to his research examining "Canadian pathways for a just, low-carbon transition through social and financial movements.” His research thus aims "to alter investment decisions, reallocate capital, and restrict economic activities that contribute to the climate crisis.” A global low-carbon energy transition is urgently needed to mitigate the worst social, ecological and financial impact of the climate crisis, he reiterated. "Future generations will look back at us like we look back at the industrial revolution. We have the potential to fundamentally reshape our world and our collective futures,” believes Dordi, urging the youth to align their career and their investments with their values.
Referring to UN’s 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) like poverty eradication, quality education, affordable and clean energy that should be globally attained in the next 10 years, Dordi emphasized in the January 2021 newsletter of the Ontario Zoroastrian Community Foundation, "Help make the SDGs mainstream! Find at least one thing on the list that you’re passionate about and bring it to your career. You spend half of your waking life at work; don’t leave your values at the door.”
Vice president, communications, of the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics, and recipient of the Energy Policy Research Fellowship from the Energy Council of Canada, Dordi co-founded the regional chapter of Sustainable Youth Canada and led a team to host two sustainability conferences on "What can YOUth Do?” connecting more than 300 community members and local organizations on environmental sustainability.
Through his bachelor’s degree, Dordi took a variety of courses in both economics and environmental management, and found himself "limited by both.” This prompted him to pursue sustainable finance which he views as one lens through which he could study the interconnection between economics and the environment, impressed with the words of American environmentalist Bill McKibben, "Money is the oxygen on which the fire of global warming burns.”
Having migrated to Toronto in 2001, Dordi was born in New Delhi and spent many of his formative years in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. His family includes father Burjis, a certified public accountant serving as director of finance at Weston Forest Products, mother Zarine who is the community development coordinator at Working Women Community Centre, and sister Tanya, a registered social worker at Kensington Health.
Having attended Sunday School conducted by the Zoroastrian Society of Ontario and participating in the Zoroastrian division of Scouts Canada, Truzaar attributes his "deep appreciation for the natural world to his Zoroastrian roots.” Alluding to the duality of good and evil, he acknowledged "the ambivalent role of capital markets in financing industries that contribute to climate instability as also solutions to the climate crisis… The protection and stewardship of nature and the environment is central to both Zoroastrian teachings and climate science. Though recent advancements have brought great prosperity, it has come at a cost to our natural world.”