Environmental/Climate Justice

Philanthropic investment at the nexus of the climate and immigrant justice movements would help build a healthy and collaborative ecosystem across movements. Moreover, it is both a moral and strategic priority. This kind of philanthropic investment can enable forward planning of safe pathways for people who lose their homes; protections and opportunities for workers and communities who are striving to build resilience; and the power to win and implement urgent, equitable, and effective responses to climate challenges. This report urges philanthropists to pursue three strategies.

Support for climate justice and recognition of climate disparities vary widely across global warming’s “Six Americas”. More climate-conscious Americans are both much more likely to recognize existing climate disparities and much more likely to support the goals of climate justice than Americans who are less concerned about global warming. However, even among the segments who are most attuned to the issue of climate change, most are not hearing about “climate justice” as a concept. The Alarmed and Concerned segments (who make up 56% of the U.S.

This resource is a trusted source for current research and thinking on how psychological factors drive the climate crisis, how the worsening crisis affects us psychologically, and what we can do about it. You can browse Ecopsychepedia entries by one of our nine themes: Denial, Climate Emotions, Equality and Justice, the Power of Culture, Nature as Healer, Relationships, Resilience and Regeneration, Mental Health Impacts, and Success Stories.

The 21st century has been marked by a series of overlapping crises that accentuate gender inequalities. These include the climate emergency and biodiversity loss to soaring debt levels, escalating inflation rates, and deepening inequality and poverty—all with severe consequences for the rights of women, girls and gender-diverse people. Women and gender-diverse people face disproportionate consequences of neoliberalism and its manifestations in austerity, debt, and an unequal trade regime.

Climate pollution from heavy industry has long been deemed "hard-to-abate". That's far from the truth—technological solutions are at hand, and a smart policy agenda can drive industrial decarbonization to put us on track for key climate targets. To get it done, this resource argues that we need to put industry at the center of climate policy and advocacy. For too long, the climate community has left the industrial sector at the bottom of its to-do list.

To realize a just transition, this article argues that we need more organizing projects that connect political goals and the economic self-determination of local communities. To do that, climate groups should learn from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) of the 1960s.

Language teachers have a key role in ensuring that students not only engage with the climate crisis but with climate justice too. Developing students’ understanding of these cause-and-effect connections that affect people around the world is just one of the aspects to focus on the language classroom to raise awareness of climate justice. To engage students and teach them the importance of cross-disciplinary collaborations, consider teaming up with other teachers for projects and involve students in decision making as much as possible.