Tag Archives: climate justice

Planting the Seeds of Change in Education: Why Climate Crisis Activism through the Lens of Racial Justice is Critical to Creating and Sustaining a More Equitable Society

Transform Don’t Trash – NYC Environmental Justice Alliance: “On the ground and at the table” Photo credit Matt Davis

Abstract:  The climate crisis must now be addressed in an urgent, radical way, before the harm we do to our environment is irreversible; in 2020 we are presented with an opportunity of unprecedented scope to reset society on multiple, interlocking levels.  The pandemic and resulting societal disruption reveal in stark contrast inequities in economic opportunity, as well as access to healthcare and education, due to the continuing governmental legacy of racist policy that targets Black Americans.  In the de facto segregated New York City public school system, activism that links environmental and racial justice with the climate crisis, building on the momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement, is growing.  It is a necessary connection that will unify and strengthen our collective efforts–and unite Americans–to make critical progress on both critical fronts.  Racial justice and environmental justice are inextricably linked with the worsening climate crisis. On the local level, in New York City, we can empower current and future generations of learners through education. the racism that produced segregated housing in toxic environments and neighborhoods, and subsequently in largely segregated school districts, cannot be perpetuated as we emerge from quarantine.  As we unite to address police brutality against Black Americans, the urgent call to address underlying issues of climate justice that affect health and healthcare–and the climate crisis that enables pandemics to roar across the planet–must be the focus of our individual and governmental efforts.

Key Terms:  Racism, Environmental Justice, Climate Justice, Black Lives Matter, Climate Crisis

Learning where our food comes from and where our waste goes is all part of understanding the climate crisis and environmental justice.

Harvesting healthy food at Red Hook Farms

A sampling of curriculum content, particularly in the high school curriculum, though adaptable to younger students, follows.  They are envisioned to foster interdisciplinary engagement.  In schools, curriculum surrounding waste generation and processing—where does our garbage go?—recycling, composting, community gardens, greenspaces, and green market economies should be studied, inspiring future engineers, scientists, writers, artists, and architects. 

Civics/Government

  • Discussion of the question at the heart of the civil suit Juliana vs. The United States:  do the People have a constitutional right to a healthy environment?  https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/juliana-v-us
  • What duty of care do we owe one another in a society—on an individual level (such as mask-wearing) and on a national/global level? 
  • Study of the Green New Deal as it relates to NYC realities. 

https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/hres109/BILLS-116hres109ih.pdf

https://www.sunrisemovement.org/green-new-deal

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02012020/green-new-deal-future-2020-election-climate-change-sanders-ocasio-cortez

  • Discussion of the recently proposed companion Senate bill Environmental Justice for All Act by Senators Harris, Booker, and Duckworth:

https://www.harris.senate.gov/news/press-releases/harris-booker-duckworth-introduce-comprehensive-legislation-to-help-achieve-environmental-justice-for-all

One segment in the documentary included the slogan, “Green jobs, not jails,” a positive example of government-backed support for low-income homeowners to convert their homes to solar power, with people of color from the community participating in jobs training to install the panels.  Energy savings—and clean energy—allowed POC to purchase the panels, making them part of the clean energy movement.  

Environmental Science

  • The Harbor School

A field trip to Governors Island to explore the oyster project at the Harbor School and is an excellent example of positive, cool environmental science.  The oyster middens that used to line the Manhattan shores are testament to the once-teeming food source.  Oysters filter roughly thirty-five gallons of water a day and are quietly cleaning our harbor.  The shell recycling project (you can see it on Governors Island) exists because oyster larvae, called spats, need old oyster shells on which to attach to grow.  It is an inspired way to teach about ecosystems and water health, and a 10-minute ferry ride is a welcome breath of fresh air—when we can emerge.  https://untappedcities.com/2017/08/30/the-harbor-school-nycs-only-maritime-high-school-partners-with-billion-oyster-project-on-governors-island/

Red Hook Farms educational and volunteer programs inspire the next generation of leaders
  • Red Hook Farms is a truly inspiring effort surrounding farming, gardening, and education, involving public housing and NYC communities, not to be missed.
  • Red Hook Farms Composting Facility is “the largest community composting program in the United States run entirely on renewable resources.”

Composting is an elemental way to empower individuals to assert control over daily consumption and waste disposal.  Over 1/3 of NYC waste is compostable food waste; in landfills, it emits greenhouse gases and increases the trucking of waste.  [source https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/09/nyregion/nyc-compost-recycling.html]

History

  • Innumerable examples, through Jim Crow and Civil Rights struggles, to present,  beginning with this accessible and vital resource:  Reconstruction:  America After the Civil War, by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a 4-part PBS Documentary.  Part I is linked here:  https://www.pbs.org/video/reconstruction-part-1-hour-1-n0g1em/

Environmental Justice and Community engagement

Excellent and engaging curricula can be accessed through We Act, an organization that powerfully links the issues of climate justice to education and activism and provides templates for action.  We Act programming, such as Environmental Health and Justice Leadership Training (EHJLT), online learning mini-modules, and environmental and healthcare careers networking, are all part of this vibrant organization’s initiatives.

  • Climate Justice Agenda 2020

The Climate Justice Agenda 2020:  A Critical Decade for Climate, Equity, and Health published in April by the New York City Climate Alliance offers a fantastic roadmap for environmental issues facing NYC communities.  Its overarching goals are to reduce harmful greenhouse gases and localized emissions; advance a just transition towards an inclusive, regenerative economy; and cultivate healthy & resilient communities.  Educators can cull local topics most relevant to students in the neighborhoods in which their schools are housed.  Issues surrounding waste transfer stations, truck traffic, pollutants, storm water treatment, coastal resilience, and the sustaining of a green jobs economy are a few of the items on this comprehensive and exciting agenda.

The Language of Climate Justice

We need a better, more truthful and more accurate term for ‘climate change’.  ‘Climate change’ is too vague, with too much space for doubt and not enough of the dynamism the term needs to convey. We’re at a turning point, with perhaps less than a decade to prevent further climate collapse and hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths of people and the continued mass extinction of animal and plant species.  At this point, whatever we do will transform the planet. Communicating this is essential, both the problem we face and the solutions to it. Through writing and podcasting, language is the main tool I use for communicating my ideals, which are rooted in climate justice. Language is culture, too, and language influences how we think and vice versa.

I look at the research of Dilling and Moser for insight into where communication turns to action, and where it does not. Many thinkers have grappled with these issues, and I learn that the term ‘climate change’ has been deliberately used to obfuscate the danger implicit in it’s effects, and writers like George Monbiot, Rebecca Solnit and Eileen Crist want terms to reflect both the violence of some humans toward the planet and the beauty of this planet. Other scientists and scholars like Robin Kimmerer and Glenn Albrecht argue for new terms to be adopted instead of English words, either from Native languages or made up completely.

I believe many of the terms we use in climate discussions are lacking – I will investigate how language has deliberately been used to obfuscate this growing threat, and argue that a new, more emotive and more powerful lexicon is needed to convey the urgency of the nightmare we are facing. My focus is on the term ‘climate change’.

This graph, based on the comparison of atmospheric samples contained in ice cores and more recent direct measurements, provides evidence that atmospheric CO2 has increased since the Industrial Revolution. (Credit: Luthi, D., et al.. 2008; Etheridge, D.M., et al. 2010; Vostok ice core data/J.R. Petit et al.; NOAA Mauna Loa CO2 record.

NASA and The IPCC use the term ‘climate change’ because it is scientifically accurate, but I argue that is not enough. The writer Rebecca Solnit does not mince words. “Climate change is global-scale violence, against places and species as well as against human beings. Once we call it by name, we can start having a real conversation about our priorities and values. Because the revolt against brutality begins with a revolt against the language that hides that brutality.” This is a clear call to action for those of us in the words business; if climate change is violence, then we need to call it that.

Climate crises caused by industrialized nations have ruined homes and livelihoods across the Global South, but industrialized countries do not refer to themselves as displacers, it stays a noun. If we in the Global North admitted to causing displacement, we would surely have to compensate in the form of climate reparations or open borders. That is…unlikely. The passivity of a language that relies on nouns helps to disguise our behaviour, and to take agency away from the creatures and things we describe. I learned from reading Robin Kimmerer that there are other languages, namely her ancestral language Potowatomi, that are largely made up of verbs. This is ‘the grammar of animacy’ and is useful for those of us who want to repair our relationship with the planet. So we see that the English language is not always up to the task, and needs to borrow from other languages or new words.

I settle on ‘climate crises’ as my preferred term, as it implies the serious nature of the mess we are in, but also the opportunity to turn it around. I discover in this paper that it’s more than words we need to change, it’s actually our relationship with the planet and all of the creatures and even ‘things’ around us that we need to transform if we are to thrive here. Words are a good start though, as is silence when needed. 

Some resources

  1. Moser, Susanne C. and Dilling, Lisa. Communicating Climate Change: Closing the Science‐ Action Gap: The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society. Edited by John S. Dryzek, Richard B. Norgaard, and David Schlosberg. Oxford University Press, 2011

2. Crist, Eileen, “On the Poverty of Our Nomenclature”, Environmental Humanities, volume 3 (November 2013): 129-147. http://www.environmentandsociety.org/node/6904

3. Monbiot, George. Forget ‘the environment’, we need new words to convey life’s wonders. The Guardian Newspaper, August 9th 2017.

4. Albrecht, Glenn.  The Importance of Language: “the expansion of my language means the expansion of my world”. From Glennalbrecht.com June 22 2020

5. Kimmerer, Robin. Speaking of Nature: Orion Magazine, June 2017

 6. Klein, Naomi. “Call Climate Change What It Is: Violence” The Guardian, April 27th, 2014

7. What’s in a Name? Global Warming vs. Climate Change, NASA website August 16 2020

Oko Farms: Fish, Food and Friendship in Brooklyn

The Oko Farms Aquaponics Education Center located at 104 Moore Street, Brooklyn. It is the only outdoor aquaponics farm in New York City. The farm was established in 2013 and serves as a production, research and education farm. It’s an incredibly interesting and fun place to be, and they’re expanding to another site in Weeksville soon.

Their stated mission is twofold:

1.Practice and promote aquaponics as a sustainable farming method that mitigates the impact of climate change, and increases food security for New York City.

2. Spread the knowledge and skills required to practice aquaponics farming by educating children and adults of all racial and socio-economic backgrounds.

A little primer from The Aquaponic Source website in case you’re not sure what aquaponics is. I wasn’t until I visited Oko Farms!

Many definitions of aquaponics recognize the ‘ponics’ part of this word for hydroponics which is growing plants in water with a soil-less media. Literally speaking, Aquaponics is putting fish to work. It just so happens that the work those fish do (eating and producing waste), is the perfect fertilizer for growing plants. Aquaponics represents the relationship between water, aquatic life, bacteria, nutrient dynamics, and plants which grow together in waterways all over the world. Taking cues from nature, aquaponics harnesses the power of bio-integrating these individual components:  Exchanging the waste by-product from the fish as a food for the bacteria, to be converted into a perfect fertilizer for the plants, to return the water in a clean and safe form to the fish.

The Aquaponic Source

I visited Oko farms at the end of 2016 interview the founder and director, Yemi Amu, for a podcast I made called ‘Maeve in America: Immigration IRL.’ This was a podcast about immigrants, in our own voices. Yemi featured in “The Yemi Episode: Coming To America” where we discussed her immigration from Lagos, Nigeria to New York City as a teenager, her eating disorder, and her path to becoming one of the city’s leading aquaponics experts and a committed educator. Thinking on it now, I wonder if disordered eating intersects with climate injustice in that colonialism and capitalism contribute massively to both. In striving for some impossible idea of constant growth and perfection, we harm what already serves us well and keeps us alive: our bodies in the former, and the latter, the planet.

Of the Climate Action Lab videos we watched, one of the participants really stood out to me. Saara Nafici from Value Added Farms in Red Hook, Brooklyn spoke about that two site urban farm project as a “space of joy” for the young people that work there, what the Lab summarizes as  “providing a kind of collective psychic and spiritual sustenance in tandem with the healthy products grown and distributed by the farms themselves.”

Oko Farms echoes this message, that joy is an important part of their work, saying in a recent post about growing jute:
“It is a great opportunity to be able to grow food that sparks joy in people, connects them to home, and reflect our diverse food cultures.”


Oko Farms has had a vigorous response to the recent shifts in the Black Lives Matter movement, using their social media to support and expand on the BLM message. This includes educational posts about Juneteenth as well as fundraising and distributing funds to pertinent black organizations and individuals, like ‘Gardens Not Guns’ with the goal of getting money directly into the hands of BIPOC land stewards, healers, community gardens and mutual aid organizations.

This summer the farm is largely closed to visitors due to COVID-19, meaning no workshops or tours like they usually host, but they still harvest and sell food at local Brooklyn food markets.

The best place to follow them right now is Instagram.

https://www.instagram.com/okofarms/?hl=en

The World Bank and Climate Justice: Impossible Bedfellows?

Bankers! From Walt Disney’s ‘Mary Poppins’

When my feeble brain tries to picture ‘The World Bank’ it comes up with some shadowy men in bowler hats, obscured by clouds of cigar smoke in the back room of a locked building. I realize this comic book image means that I don’t quite know who runs this mysterious sounding global organization and why, so dug into it after taking in their website and their various publications on climate changes, namely “Turn Down the Heat”. Here are three questions and answers:  

  1. Who are ‘The World Bank’ and what purpose do they serve?

Founded in 1944 to rebuild the devastation wreaked by World War II,  they have two stated aims for the global economy by 2030: to end extreme poverty and to foster growth in the incomes of the bottom 40% for every country. ‘The World Bank’ is now the largest development institute in the world and “works with country governments, the private sector, civil society organizations, regional development banks, think tanks, and other international  institutions on issues ranging from climate change, conflict, and food security to education, agriculture, finance, and trade.” Their business model is to provide low-interest loans, zero to low-interest credits, and grants to developing countries. They have their own historic capital, their profits, and they can also borrow capital from their wealthy member states. The CFO Bertrand Badré has this to say:  “Don’t forget that the World Bank is a bank, not a UN agency. In order to be sustainable, a bank has to make a profit and work with a credible budget.”  

  • Could you give us a more critical understanding of ‘The World Bank’?

Absolutely. Criticisms abound, particularly of the excessive neo-liberal policies adopted by the organization. As anyone with a loan knows all too well, it has to be paid back. And when you’re one of the worlds’ poorest countries, this means sacrificing money that could be spent on infrastructure or education or healthcare to repayments. A report from the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt also points out that “…any debt relief remains conditional on the application of a wide range of neoliberal measures that negatively affect the living conditions of most of the people, violate human rights, and weaken the economies of the countries concerned by exposing them to international competition…” The organization is not a democratic one, with wealthy countries in the Global North making up its powerful majority. The U.S gets to dictate a lot, because it has a 16% share of the vote. David Malpass, the current president, is himself a failed banker and a Trump loyalist. And last but not least, an intervention from ‘The World Bank’ can often do more harm than good to the people it purports to help. That leads me to my final point.

  • What does the World Bank have to do with the climate crisis?

Honestly? A lot. This is their take.

“Climate change is a major risk to good development outcomes, and the Bank Group is committed to playing an important role in helping countries integrate climate action into their core development agendas.” From www.worldbank.org

However, while they are loaning and granting many billions of dollars to climate – forward initiatives globally, this focus on economic development over everything seems like a huge missed opportunity along the lines of what Bina and La Camera concluded in their analysis ‘Promise and Shortcomings of a Green Turn in recent policy responses to the Double Crisis’, namely that growth has become synonymous with modernity and success, while justice and well-being are way down the list. This goes for climate justice too: an economic approach is not enough, what is required is a paradigm shift. And as for the past, a wide-ranging investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists found huge problems with the bank’s projects. From 2004 to 2013 alone, they physically or economically displaced an estimated 3.4 million people, forcing them from their homes, taking their land or damaging their livelihoods. By financing dams in Brazil and coal-fired power plants in India, the bank damages and destroys the natural environment and the people living there, as well as racking up more carbon emitting and rapacious infrastructure that contributes to long-term climate chaos.