Sixteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

This interactive workshop focuses on an undergraduate first year seminar course on the intersections and interconnections of climate and social justice as a possible model for more engaged and interdisciplinary approaches to urgent global issues. After providing an overview of the course, the majority of the workshop centers on conversations on the four mains units: connection, awareness, response, and sustainability, and how this narrative arc, coupled with hands-on inquiries and practices, can bridge academic learning and impactful community engagement. Here is the full course description: How are climate and environmental justice issues inseparable from social justice issues? As weather systems and climate patterns change, as the Arctic melts and sea waters rise, we are faced with unprecedented challenges to our social, political, and economic structures with historically oppressed populations, people of color, marginalized and economically-disadvantaged communities and nations being the most vulnerable. What examples from past and present can provide models or directions for building a sustainable future? What work is currently being done now? How can we get beyond a sense of hopelessness or despair and actively engage to work effectively for positive change based in a deep understanding of human and animal rights–right here and right now? How can we engage with others across political and cultural divides to work collectively for our common good? Through films, selected readings, guest speakers, interviews, engaged inquiry projects and local community activism, this multidisciplinary course focuses on the social and environmental possibilities inherent in the ethics of interconnection.