The Climate Justice Seminar
As a main component of our efforts, the Three Degrees Project had developed curriculum for a multidisciplinary graduate-level seminar in climate justice. Now entering its third year, the Climate Justice Seminar is a working model with the goal of leveraging the university as a resource for climate-vulnerable communities with limited resources that seek strategies for adapting to climate change. The seminar facilitates groups of students and faculty to work directly with communities impacted by the climate crisis and to use legal and policy tools to assist them with their climate adaptation goals. The Climate Justice Seminar is structured off of the Three Degrees Project’s five-part framework for climate justice, and aims to be replicable at other universities worldwide.
2012
In Winter Quarter 2012, the Climate Justice Seminar will be meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8:30–10:30 a.m. at the law school in Room 116. The Spring Quarter Climate Justice Seminar will not be offered in 2012.
The Climate Justice Seminar is open to 25 graduate and professional students from across the University of Washington by application (note: J.D. students need not apply). The course examines predicted climate futures in locations around the globe where climate change is likely to harm disadvantaged populations, with the goal of understanding the limitations and strengths of the international and domestic legal and political systems available to alleviate these impacts. The winter quarter will focus on global climate-related impacts to health, food and water, security, equity, and justice.
All applications must be e-mailed to climateseminarTF@gmail.com by 12:00 noon on Wednesday, November 16, 2011. If you have questions in the interim, please contact the seminar’s Teaching Fellow, Brandon Derman at climateseminarTF@gmail.com.
Reminder: J.D. students need not submit an application for the 2012 Climate Justice Seminar.
2011
Our 2011 seminar, based at the University of Washington School of Law, coordinated efforts of UW students from across 10 departments. The students authored a paper proposing federal statutory developments that would streamline the relocation process for Alaska Native Villages. The paper is titled “Initial Assessment of Lead Agency Candidates to Support Alaska Native Villages Requiring Relocation to Survive Climate Harms.”
2010
Our 2010 seminar, brought together graduate students and faculty from fifteen separate fields to work on climate justice issues affecting high-Andes communities in Ecuador experiencing rapid glacial melt.
Seminar students worked in multidisciplinary teams to analyze anticipated climate impacts on Ecuador’s health, food & water, security, equity, and justice. Students packaged their analysis in an alternative National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) format, signaling the need for NAPA plans to more systemically incorporate metrics of human rights and justice. (NAPAs provide a process for Least Developed Countries to assess and communicate adaptation priorities to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.)
For a sample chapter that includes downscaled climate information for Ecuador, see the chapter titled “Alternative NAPA: Food and Climate Considerations for Ecuador.”
Young llama herdsmen follow their flock high in the Andes. © Benjamin Drummond
The Seminar’s twenty-five graduate and professional students represented fifteen different UW departments, including the School for Marine Affairs, The Evans School for Public Policy, atmospheric sciences, occupational and health sciences, public health, engineering, urban planning, anthropology, philosophy, law, and geography. The teaching faculty and fellows hand picked the students from a well-qualified pool of strong applicants. The teaching faculty included David Battisti (atmospheric sciences), Stephen Gardiner (philosophy), and Gregory Hicks (law). Jeni Krencicki Barcelos and Jen Marlow (Three Degrees Directors) along with Brandon Derman (Ph.D. candidate in geography and Three Degrees Fellow) served as the Seminar’s three teaching fellows.
