PsySSA Division - Climate, Environment and Psychology’s Post

UC-UJ Climate Justice World Café: An International and Interdisciplinary Conversation Thursday, October 24th  10:00am – 11:00am EST (4:00pm – 5:00pm SAST) Virtual Webinar – A link will be sent to your email after registration Register here: https://lnkd.in/dtQ_qxKf A climate justice perspective recognizes that climate risks and vulnerabilities, as well as the benefits and burdens of climate actions, are anything but equally distributed, and that climate shocks often exacerbate existing inequalities. Advancing climate justice means attending to the specific needs and interests of disproportionately affected groups and working alongside impacted communities to reverse these trends. Scholars across disciplines have a role to play in advancing climate justice — in educational, community, societal, and policy contexts. This World Café brings together scholars from the University of Cincinnati and the University of Johannesburg to discuss their perspectives, current work, and critical questions on the climate crisis. Panelists represent diverse, interdisciplinary backgrounds, including anthropology, psychology, poetry, education, political science, and science and technology studies. We hope you will join us for this critical discussion on one of the most pressing global challenges facing humanity today. Moderated by PEWS Faculty Affiliate and Sustainability Director, Carlie Trott. https://lnkd.in/df5fZamM

Excited to share that UCC's Dr Kian Mintz-Woo and colleagues have published a new article in Nature Climate Change, defending a philosophical climate justice framework (https://lnkd.in/ekrtPDAg). This work provides a robust foundation for debate, research, and discussion on climate justice. 📖 Read the paper here: https://lnkd.in/e5fFUDHs UCC Environmental Research Institute UCC College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences UCC Research Nature Portfolio #climatejustice #philosophy #Nature #climatechange

Have you heard of Climate Science Breakthrough? Sustainability is a complicated science and lets be honest science can sometimes be a bit boring... 😴 But we cannot afford to be dis-interested in the most important issue of our time, maybe the most significant challenge humanity has and ever will face! Well thats where Climate Science Breakthrough comes in. They are making fun to watch easy to understand videos where comedians turn the science into relatable language. To be honest we think its hilarious and a much more fun way to engage with our complicated environmental problems. They've teamed up with some of the leading climate and environmental scientists including: Bill McGuire, Joanna Haigh, Dr Frederike Otto, and Mark Maslin. As well as some of our favourite comedians: Jonathan Pie, Kiri Pritchard-McLean, Nish Kumar, and Jo Brand. The combination is perfection. This is our favourite video: https://lnkd.in/dyzjtm5q See the rest here: https://lnkd.in/e6g5yh3V #ClimateScience #Comedy #Science

Prior to pursuing a masters of science, it had probably been over a decade (!!!) since I last participated in a poster session. I was skeptical of returning to this format, but the session put on by Brian Griffiths, Rebecca Helm, Maria Agustina Z., Kerrie Carfagno PhD, MBA and countless others from Georgetown University McDonough School of Business and The Earth Commons, Georgetown University proved to me that posters have more to them than I thought. The bottom line up front: Next time you want to create opportunities for dialogue across a community with a diversity of roles and activities, consider a poster session! This could be a particularly useful way to share learnings and foster new connections in siloed environments. If you’re interested, here’s a photo of my amazing peers, Ricardo Pereira Teixeira and Sasha Klein (and I) after sharing our exploration of Indigenous land management practices, climate resilience, and three examples for where use of modern technological and socio-political tools have helped make space for traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). Poster TLDR: the road ahead supporting Indigenous communities in their rightful access to ancestral lands and practices is a LONG one. While relationships between TEK and climate resilience are highly nuanced, we CAN use modern tools and frameworks to make this possible (we, as human beings, just need to make it happen). Photo courtesy of @theearthcommons by @maluveltze.

🌍 We are thrilled to announce the launch of our new journal, Dialogues on Climate Change, a new open peer review journal: https://ow.ly/7yVc50TqE3F. Edited by Dr. Rob Bellamy, the journal will foster critical thinking on all climate change topics and encourage debates among scholars from the social and behavioural sciences, natural sciences, and humanities to drive actionable insights and solutions for a sustainable future. 🌱 Discover more about the journal and how it's contributing to the climate change dialogue: https://ow.ly/rgrB50TqE3E #ClimateChange #SustainableFuture

Gearing up to co-teach a new course at Columbia | SIPA in Fall 2024 with fellow Professor John Mutter of Earth and Environmental Sciences entitled "#ClimateChange, #Rights and #Development." This follows my general quest (in life) to build bridges, this time, where climate science and human rights and development frameworks are in direct conversation. We'll look at the fundamental behaviours of the Earth's climate systems (what is energy balance, what are El Nino cycles, how to predict climate disruptions) with the fundamentals of human rights (definitions, instruments, institutions) how global norms apply, why climate justice, and what is the purpose of climate change litigation, what are some of the proposed solutions from carbon rights, greening economies and carbon tax to artificial islands and resulting rights implications including notions of statehood and nationhood. Finally we'll look at the impact on food and health sectors and the important, often forgotten, social dimension of climate change particularly how to build psychological resilience for what lies ahead. Personally, I'm excited.

When governments and nonprofits speak about climate action, they usually punctuate their presentations with a familiar collage of rapid transit systems, solar panels, wind turbines and heat pumps. But other options – nature-based solutions – have been around for a long time and are now getting the attention they deserve. Nature-based solutions involve protecting and restoring forests, wetlands and shorelines, planting trees in urban areas and/or engineering bioswales, rain gardens and green roofs. The federal government’s nature-based climate solutions advisory committee writes: “Indigenous holistic worldviews of the connectedness and reciprocity of people, communities, atmosphere, and ecosystems should be considered as a foundation to any [Natural Climate Solutions Fund] programs. Nature-based solutions provide meaningful and necessary opportunities to centre Indigenous knowledge and rights, and to advance innovative co-governance approaches.” Shifting beyond communities and addressing ecosystem health and resilience within the broader watersheds, territories and landscapes where we reside, new worldviews and nature-based solutions have the potential to build meaningful co-governance arrangements with First Nations.

I'm excited to share my latest article, “Intersectional Climate Action: The Role of Community-Based Organizations in Urban Climate Justice”: https://lnkd.in/gMFWBH2D In a world where climate change impacts communities in vastly different ways, it's critical to explore how local, community-based solutions can drive equitable and inclusive climate action in cities. This paper delves into the heart of climate justice and intersectionality, focusing on San Francisco's community-based organizations (CBOs) and their pivotal role in climate action. Through in-depth qualitative analysis, we uncover the transformative potential of CBOs in achieving intersectional climate justice by: 1 - Recognizing and addressing historical and compounded vulnerabilities 2 - Embracing people-centric and place-based planning and action 3 - Building alliances and coalitions for collective, participatory climate governance Check it out and let me know what you think! #ClimateAction #ClimateJustice #CommunityLeadership #SanFrancisco #Intersectionality

Our book Utopian and Dystopian Explorations of Pandemics and Ecological Breakdown: Entangled Futurities (Routledge Environmental Humanities Series July 2024) is fully open access thanks to generous funding from University College London: https://lnkd.in/ez2fKhDm University of Warwick IAS, University of Warwick EUTOPIA University of Oxford Harvard University This edited collection, which is situated within the environmental humanities and environmental social sciences, brings together utopian and dystopian representations of pandemics from across literature, the arts, and social movements. Featuring analyses of literary works, TV and film, theater, politics, and activism, the chapters in this volume home in on critical topics such as posthumanism, multispecies futures, agency, political ecology, environmental justice, and Indigenous and settler-colonial environmental relations. The book asks: how do pandemics and ecological breakdown show us the ways that humans are deeply interconnected with the more-than-human world? And what might we learn from exploring those entanglements, both within creative works and in lived reality? Brazilian, Indian, Polish, and Dutch texts feature alongside classic literary works like Defoe’s A Journal of a Plague Year (1722) and Matheson’s I Am Legend (1954), as well as broader takes on movements like global youth climate activism. These investigations are united by their thematic interests in the future of human and nonhuman relationships in the shadow of climate emergency and increasing pandemic risk, as well as in the glimmers of utopian hope they exhibit for the creation of more just futures. This exploration of how pandemics illuminate the entangled materialities and shared vulnerabilities of all living things is an engaging and timely analysis that will appeal to environmentally minded researchers, academics, and students across various disciplines within the humanities and social sciences.

Calling all environmental studies educators! 🌿 Dive into our "Racism as a Public Health Crisis" cluster to bring a deeper understanding of environmental issues into your classroom. These resources explore the intersection of race and the environment. Topics and standards alignment in this cluster: - Earth & Human Activity as part of Earth and Space Science (MS and HS, NGSS) - Human Impact on the environment (NGSS, AP Biology) - Climate change or global warming - Environmental impacts on public health 📚 Explore environment related resources from the cluster: Who Does Pollution Affect the Most? https://ow.ly/gVjM50SsKmZ Who Is Most Affected by Climate Change? https://ow.ly/qaR650SsKmX How Racism Magnified the Effects of Hurricane Katrina https://ow.ly/9rNm50SsKmY Integrate these free resources to help students develop critical thinking skills and understand the scientific and social perspectives on environmental justice and health disparities. #EnvironmentalStudies #RDEISE #Education #LabXchange #Diversity #Equity #Inclusion #EnvironmentalJustice #CriticalThinking