Attendees at a two-day conference grapple with the obstacles and opportunities ahead for environmental justice scholars.
Recordings of music created with Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican instruments and a table displaying handcrafted Indigenous art pieces set the stage for a two-day conference on environmental justice. | Madison Pobis
Responding to global environmental change requires a more just and equitable approach to understanding the relationship between social and ecological systems, according to attendees of a recent conference at Stanford University on The Duality of Environmental Justice.
“We tend to think about the disproportionate impact of the harmful aspects of the environment — pollution, contamination, climate change, mining, and so on. I want to emphasize that the wonderful benefits from nature and the services that it provides — healthy food, clean water, clean air, recreation, spiritual life, and so on — are also subjected to this disproportionate impact,” said Rodolfo Dirzo, the associate dean for Integrative Initiatives in Environmental Justice at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and faculty organizer of the conference. This is the second year the conference has been offered and co-hosted by the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Speakers presented 36 talks on March 18 and 19, outlining historical frameworks, challenging implicit assumptions, probing scholarly terminology, sharing findings and best practices, and grappling with the obstacles and opportunities ahead for environmental justice scholars.
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