For this task please thoughtfully reply to Robert and Diana (their names are by their write ups). For each peer review comment please address them by their name and be thoughtful and respectful to them in ur replies to their write ups. A paragraph for each peer reply ty.
Explain how you could use your selection as a ‘teaching moment’ or a way to connect to others about climate justice.
2). What does Climate Justice mean to you? How might climate change be the catalyst for social justice?
3). If you had the ability to create a policy to address climate injustice, what would it be?
By Robert: 1) The readings for the module this week were all meaningful for me but the concept of regenerative agriculture in chapter 8 of Eisenstein (2018) transported me back to my experience observing New-World and Old-World agricultural practices in Belize, Central America. Eisenstein describes the regenerative agricultural practice as holistic, one that endeavors to improve soil health and reverse climate change by expanding biodiversity, improving the water cycle, increasing organic matter in soil structure, and transferring carbon from the atmosphere back to the soil. The upside to this agricultural practice avoids the use of chemical pesticides and herbicides and advocates crop and livestock rotation, compositing, and no-till farming which increases the amount of arable topsoil. In the 1950s Mennonites established a colony in the rainforest of Blue Creek, Belize. They brought modern farming equipment and techniques from North America and commenced clear-cutting the rainforest for agriculture and ranching. Today the traditional Maya culture exists alongside the Mennonites and continues to utilize the swidden farming technique by rotation of milpa fields and no-till agriculture practices just as they have for the past 1700 years. The Mayan system may not be as productive in scale, but they have a better understanding of climate justice, soil, water, and the relationship that exists in natural ecosystems.
2) I interpret climate justice as both a term and a trend that acknowledges climate change can have differing social, economic, public health, and other adverse impacts on underprivileged populations. Not all climate impacts are created equal or distributed equally. For this reason, climate justice commences with recognizing these cultures and communities are differently affected by climate change.
3). Individuals with limited income, for example, may reside in subsidized housing, which often is situated in a flood plain. New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina would be a classic scenario. Their habitation may also have inadequate insulation, mold problems, or lack of air conditioning to effectively combat severe heat or cope with strong storms. Economically challenged people may not have the financial ability to afford flood or fire insurance, rebuild homes, or pay for extensive medical bills after a significant climatic weather event occurs. I previously worked on a few projects in Louisiana and Mississippi following Hurricane Katrina and witnessed the devastation to many of these urban areas. I would like to see better policies implemented by countries and governments to provide resources for adaptation so that people do not have to leave their homes due to human-induced climate change.
Eisenstein, C. 2018. Climate: A New Story. North Atlantic Books.
by Diana Ibarra
Number of replies: 0
1). Share one passage, quote, or idea from one of the required readings or videos that resonates with you. Explain how you could use your selection as a ‘teaching moment’ or a way to connect to others about climate justice.
I appreciated the reading and videos from this week and last week. A couple of things that stood out for me.
The short video with Philip Mote from OSU (last week) and the collaborative work his team does regionally and internationally. The detailed assessments are “like a pile of bricks” interconnected to tell the complete story or “build a building.” We all know that the complexity of climate science will require that there are multiple layers of bricks to fully understand climate change.
The second short video with the Isha Clarke was also quite inspirational. When I take students to the AGU Fall Meeting in the USA, we end up meeting and talking with students from public schools in the Bay Area. The Oakland, CA students have research projects and presentations that are completed on a shoestring budget and quite impactful. They have looked at the air quality throughout their public transport system, and water quality in the San Francisco Bay near their school. The studies they have done are longitudinal and data has been collected over several years.
2). What does Climate Justice mean to you? How might climate change be the catalyst for social justice?
Climate justice, and environmental justice are intertwined in social justice. I am hopefully that climate change can help to improve overall social justice by building awareness about vulnerable populations.
I worked a few years ago as a volunteer engineer for an NGO called International Care Ministries (ICM). ICM is an organization dedicated to helping the ultra-poor in the Philippines and they have recently started up a small operation in Africa. They asked for my advice about a couple of technologies that would help them with their pursuit of clean drinking water. In one case, I had one of my students do a research project for ICM about the overall effectiveness of a United Nations/Swiss procedure for disinfecting water using a method called SODIS. SODIS is essentially a way of filling the unsafe drinking water into clear plastic bottles and then placing these bottles in direct sunlight for several hours. The challenge is figuring out if the water has been in the sunlight for enough hours to actually kill the harmful bacteria and hopefully prevent diarrhea. There was a recommended device called a WADI that would help field officers to determine if the water was actually safe for drinking. We evaluated the WADI to see if it was a helpful tool in the field.
Having been involved and worked alongside ICM in the Philippines, it is apparent that climate change (ie. sea rise, increased typhoons, food insecurity) impacts the ultra-poor more than other segments of the population.
Terminology used when talking about the ultra-poor is bottom of the pyramid (BOTP). There are over four billion people in this classification around the world. This is a huge topic in and of itself and includes multiple ways at the grassroots level, governmental level and within regional organizations ( ie. Asian Development Bank) to try and build capacity for this segment of society. Addressing the needs of these people will go a long ways towards solving both climate change and social injustice.
3). If you had the ability to create a policy to address climate injustice, what would it be?
The absolute first point of any of these policies is: everybody has a seat at the table.
At the moment, we are working on our sustainability policies at school. Policy work is not easy and actually never completed. We are currently working on our waste management policy and procurement guidelines. We anticipate that this will take the rest of the academic year. We have broad representation from across the school including both primary and secondary school students. Included in these documents are the objectives of the policy, goals, and actionable items by team members. I sit on the waste management policy team at the moment and our first actionable item is to flowchart all waste streams.
We are also sponsoring a group of masters students from HKUST. Working on a policy statement for our energy usage is a capstone project for this team. This is an excellent learning opportunity for them and we look forward to their final report in April 2022.
I do believe that policies need to be at both the operational level of an organization and at the governmental level. In reality, if we don’t get the systems in place at the individual operational level, we will not meet the larger governmental goals for climate change. At the moment, we are trying to get our own house in order!
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