Climate and Environmental Justice Conference 2023
Discussion & Reflection Questions
The conference provides many opportunities for instructors and students to design assignments linked to particular sessions, including extra credit reflections, class or online discussions, short papers and presentations, artistic responses, and more.
Many of the following questions could be appropriate to multiple disciplines, so please scan the questions for any fields related to yours. See the conference program for days and times of all panels mentioned below.
Thanks to Jacqueline Thai, Cameron Erbst, Daelan Denenberg, and Leandra Couto – and the professors and students they consulted – for helping to develop these questions as a class project in COMM 157 - Environmental Communication.
Anthropology and History
How could campuses more fully include Indigenous perspectives on historic and ongoing environmental justice issues, including universities’ relationships to the Indigenous peoples on whose traditional homelands many campuses sit? Why is representing Indigenous voices important for understanding our past and present? Panel 1 at 9:15am and Panel 4 at 2pm on Apr 27 are especially relevant to these questions, as well as some presentations at the Poster Session at 5:30pm on Apr 27.
Communication
What communication strategies are panelists using to recruit people to participate in research, disseminate research findings to community members, and/or use research findings to influence public policy or institutional practices? Can you think of additional communication strategies that could be used to accomplish these tasks? Panels 1-6 on Apr 27-28 are especially relevant to these questions. How did speakers appeal to logos, ethos, and pathos in their speeches at the conference? Any panel, workshop, or keynote address on Apr 27-28 is relevant to this question, as well as some presentations at the Poster Session at 5:30pm on Apr 27.
Economics, Political Science, and Law
What were the major environmental issues discussed, and how are they shaped by dynamics of land ownership and dispossession, the influence of national and global economies, and/or by relevant law, public policy, and regulation? Any panel, workshop, or keynote address on Apr 27-28 could be relevant to these questions; the CEQA workshop on Apr 28 at 1:45pm is especially relevant, as well as some presentations at the Poster Session at 5:30pm on Apr 27.
Education and Child Studies
How are children and youth specifically affected by environmental justice issues? How are youth organizing to learn about and influence these issues, and why is it important that their voices are heard? Panel 3 on Apr 27 is especially relevant to these questions. How are faculty and students collaborating with community organizations to address environmental justice issues through community-engaged research and learning? What are the opportunities and challenges of project-based learning about environmental justice, and how could educators and students engage in more of it to transform learning and communities? Panel 4 at 2pm and Panel 5 at 3:45pm on Apr 27, and especially Panel 6 at 9am and Panel 7 at 10:30am on Apr 28 are relevant to these questions, as well as some presentations at the Poster Session at 5:30pm on Apr 27.
Environmental Studies & Sciences
How do environmental justice advocates and scholars define the environment and environmentalism differently than traditional or mainstream environmental movements do? Did panelists seem to embrace a view of environmental justice that is more anthropocentric (people above nature) or ecocentric (people are part of nature)? Any panel, workshop, or keynote address on Apr 27-28 is relevant to this question, as well as some presentations at the Poster Session at 5:30pm on Apr 27.. How is GIS mapping being used to enhance policy tools, especially at the local and state levels? Related workshops on Apr 28 at 1:45pm are especially relevant to this question. What are the most important ways in which universities could enact Pope Francis’ call to practice integral ecology in all we do? Panel 6 at 9am, Panel 7 at 10:30am, and related workshops at 1:45pm on Apr 28 are especially relevant to these questions, as well as some presentations at the Poster Session at 5:30pm on Apr 27.
Engineering
What are the barriers to accessing clean, safe water in Central Valley and Central American communities? How could engineers help people to research and design sustainable water systems in these communities? Panel 4 on Apr 27 at 2pm and some of the workshops on Apr 28 at 1:45pm are most relevant to these questions, as well as some presentations at the Poster Session at 5:30pm on Apr 27.
English, Literary and Cultural Studies, Art, Music, Theater and Dance
Choose a work of literature, film, art, music, theater or dance on an environmental or social justice theme that you already know well (or that you are studying this quarter). Imagine that one or more of the panelists recreated this work to focus on environmental justice themes. How would it be different and why? Any panel, workshop, or keynote address on Apr 27-28 could be relevant to these questions, as well as some presentations at the Poster Session at 5:30pm on Apr 27.
Ethnic Studies and Women’s & Gender Studies
Why do our life chances vary by class, gender, and ethnicity? How do environmental justice issues illustrate broader patterns and dynamics of racism in the U.S.? How are these patterns experienced similarly and differently in Indigenous, Black, and Latinx communities? How do they intersect with issues of class, gender, disability, and more? How could environmental justice be integrated into universities’ plans to improve diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging? Panels 1-6 on Apr 27-28 are especially relevant to these questions, as well as some presentations at the Poster Session at 5:30pm on Apr 27.
Religious Studies, Theology
How do the panelists’ views of humans’ relationship to nature and of social justice compare and contrast with the views of a faith tradition with which you are familiar? For example, how do the speakers’ views align with or differ from Pope Francis’ social teachings about the duty to address the “cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” in his encyclical, Laudato Si’? Any panel, workshop, or keynote address on Apr 27-28 could be relevant to these questions, as well as some presentations at the Poster Session at 5:30pm on Apr 27.. What are the most important ways in which universities could enact Pope Francis’ call to practice integral ecology in all we do? Panel 6 at 9am, Panel 7 at 10:30am, and related workshops at 1:45pm on Apr 28 are especially relevant to these questions, as well as some presentations at the Poster Session at 5:30pm on Apr 27.
Sociology
How did panelists seem to define and understand the community or communities they discussed? What were the most important goals and strategies for organizing, advocacy, or services for this community mentioned by panelists? Did any of these goals or strategies seem especially important or surprising to you? Any panel, keynote address, or workshop could be relevant to this question, as well as some presentations at the Poster Session at 5:30pm on Apr 27.. What did the panel reveal about the role of institutions in society, especially whether they work in the interests of the powerful and against the powerless, or perform more equitable functions for the common good? Panels 1-4 on Apr 27 are especially relevant to these questions, as well as some presentations at the Poster Session at 5:30pm on Apr 27.