Our Projects
Events & Facilitation
Speaking Tours and Presentations
Our slideshow, “Three Degrees: Imagining a Warmer World,” helps citizens, students, and leaders understand the human impacts of climate change and the inadequate response of international (and domestic) legal and policy solutions to these impacts. Our slideshow educates audiences about the most recent developments in science, law, and policy that impact and promote climate justice worldwide. The slideshow is designed for diverse audiences, including high schools, undergraduate classrooms, law schools, graduate programs, prisons, legislatures, foreign governments, international conferences, and community gatherings. The Directors have presented the slideshow at national and international venues, some of which include Shanghai, China; Stanford Law School; the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center; Bergen, Norway; and the EPA. Three Degrees created the slideshow in partnership with one of Al Gore’s organizations, The Climate Project.
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In the Field
Climate Justice Projects
Three Degrees is investigating climate justice projects in climate vulnerable communities such as Cambodia, Native Alaska, and Ethiopia. Our Cambodia Project, for example, brought together scientists, lawyers, journalists, and NGOs to report on the impacts to Cambodia of proposed industrial development projects as well as climate change. The outcome, a 12-minute clip that tells a story about a proposed titanium mine in the protected Southern Cardamom forest, is just one way that Three Degrees is seeking to bring attention to climate vulnerable countries such as Cambodia.
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Climate Justice Seminar
The Climate Justice Seminar, based at the University of Washington, brings together graduate and professional students from over ten separate disciplines. Working in multidisciplinary teams, students assess adaptation strategies for climate vulnerable communities, examining the impacts of climate change to food and water, health, security, equity, and justice. The 2010 seminar students completed an Alternative National Adaptation Programme of Action (“NAPA”) for Ecuador focusing specifically on climate justice concerns. The Seminar’s ultimate goal is to work along with climate vulnerable communities to create and leverage climate justice responses applicable across local, national, and international levels. Beyond creating a new type of multidisciplinary and experiential curriculum for graduate students, the Seminar is a working prototype that can be adopted by other universities seeking to incorporate climate justice into their curricula. All aspects of the Climate Justice Seminar have been designed to be scalable and replicable.
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Simulation Summits
Facilitated Socratic Workshops on Predicted Futures
Successfully piloted by the University of Washington School of Law’s Three Degrees Conference, Simulation Summits™ gather thought leaders, government officials, and citizens together to seriously consider predicted climate futures and the human and social crises they may cause. Set in the home communities of impacted regions, the summits guide local participants through a fictitious disaster scenario (grounded in real climate models that will be produced and peer-reviewed in-house). Simulations Summits™ augment many of the project’s other programs and can be combined with slideshow presentations, integrated into climate justice curriculum, and used in isolation as a tool for strategic capacity-building within targeted communities.
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The Three Degrees Conference
Three Degrees furthers the work of the Director’s groundbreaking Three Degrees Conference on the Law of Climate Change and Human Rights, held May 27–29, 2009, at the University of Washington School of Law. The conference gathered an international cross-section of key stakeholders, including corporate CEOs, World Bank consultants, former heads of state, legal scholars, physicians, atmospheric scientists, ethicists, international relief workers, disaster management agents, Native peoples, and political strategists to examine the strengths of legal institutions to provide redress for the human rights impacts of climate change.