In 2016, the EJ/CJ Research Group at UCSB’s Orfalea Center for Global & International Studies founded itself on the recognition that:

Global warming, climate change, and environmental destruction are pressing global social problems nested inside a historical moment characterized by increasing economic insecurity, racial and gender formations of rising inequality and unequal access to all forms of well-being, failing political institutions, degradation of human rights and public discourse, and seemingly intractable, pernicious forms of structural, institutional violence that cut across and exacerbate each of these existential concerns.

Because we are all teachers as well as researchers, we recognize the need to create a new field of study: Environmental & Climate Justice Studies.

We are building this new field at the interdisciplinary intersection of the Humanities and Social Sciences with the 21st social problems of growing racial, gender and economic inequality and rapidly multiplying environmental crises, especially the unfolding climate crisis.

Toward this end, in the Summer of 2017 we hosted a panel titled “Creating a Field: Climate Justice Studies” at our own Nearly Carbon Neutral Conference: Activists, Artists, and Academics – Building Just Climate Futures Together.

In 2019 we also embark on an e-book project to be co-edited by John Foran and Sarah Ray (Environmental Studies, Humboldt State University) that will feature essays and interviews with a wide range of scholars who teach global climate justice.

On this page we assemble our growing tool box of teaching resources, including syllabi and descriptions of classes we teach and crucial sources for environmental and climate justice education.