Author: Grace Liu ‘23
What comes to mind when you hear Environmental Justice (EJ)? Do you picture images of clean water and green forests? Or do you imagine thriving communities with healthy residents? For me, the notion of EJ was always kind of fuzzy, but I was interested in learning more, so I helped facilitate a week-long wintersession workshop on the topic. Every day we met for a few hours to listen to presentations, discuss in small groups, or work on a group project.
By the end of the workshop, I was able to better grasp the complexity of environmental justice issues, and I wanted to share a few takeaways that I got from the experience.
- Environmental justice is a collective issue, which affects all people on a personal level, both directly and indirectly.
- While environmental organizations prioritize the natural environment, environmental justice organizations prioritize communities and intersect heavily with social justice movements. As a result, the two can sometimes be in conflict (e.g. carbon offset purchases displacing indigenous populations).
- For anyone who wants to get involved, it’s important not to impose solutions since EJ communities have historically been sidelined by “outside help”. The community’s voice must be heard and supported with external resources.
- Since most environmental issues are related to environmental justice, it is beneficial to view these issues through an EJ lens. Only in this way can we can consider the complexity of the systems we’ve built and how they affect communities.
For our project, my amazing small group (Jackie Lydon ‘24, Ayame Whitfield ‘21) and I made a tree that symbolized the EJ movement. The roots represent attitudes and motivations, the trunk represents methods and actions, and the leaves represent desired outcomes.
While I’ve barely scratched the surface of these important issues, I think I’ve gained a better understanding of the complexity that goes into environmental decision-making. If you would like to learn more about environmental justice, please check out the Princeton Indigenous Advocacy Coalition (non-indigenous students welcome) or New Jersey Student Climate Advocates (NJSCA).