One of the first major centers for climate justice in the world, Three Degrees harnesses the power of the academy and the law to promote fair and equitable adaptation strategies in regions most vulnerable to climate impacts.
What We Do
Our Work
Three Degrees works to design future institutions capable of addressing the human impacts of climate change and to assist climate-impacted communities in seeking compensation for climate harms.
Our Framework
Our five-part framework for climate justice makes the case that climate change threatens basic rights to health, food and water, security, equity, and justice. As a potential model for future climate justice institutions, our framework aims to integrate thinking across disciplines and bridge traditionally separate issue areas. Three Degrees seeks to build a replicable model for climate justice institutions in universities, communities, and organizations across the world.
Our Process
We bring experts from across the academy together with members of impacted communities to cast a series of predicted climate futures, building a solid record for legal and political action. As lawyers, our work for climate justice is necessarily informed by the collective expertise of climate scientists and community stakeholders.
Our Theory of Change
Borrowing from both environmental and human rights law, Three Degrees builds the record for compensable climate harm by analyzing the cumulative human impacts that converge to threaten human life and well being.
We use independent and applied research to do this in three ways:
1. We connect impacted communities with our powerful network of scientists, lawyers, NGOs, and policy makers, helping them build the valuable partnerships that will further their cause.
2. We also coach communities on ways to bring funding priorities before the proper institutional audiences, so that they may secure immediate funding to support their adaptation needs.
3. And when questions arise that do not yet have answers, we create them at our multidisciplinary think tank at the University of Washington, where scholars, scientists, and professionals come together to advance the field of climate justice. Our think tank is devoted to crafting new solutions and sparking intellectual dialogue that builds off of the discoveries we make as part of our community-based investigations.
