Fostering community-driven research and learning for social and environmental justice

News

On October 4th, Pope Francis released Laudate Deum (summary / full text), an update to his groundbreaking 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’, calling on governments, institutions, and individuals to accelerate their efforts to address the intensifying climate crisis. Francis emphasized the urgency of the crisis by noting that “our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point.”  Addressing government and corporate leaders, Francis asked, “What would induce anyone, at this stage, to hold on to power, only to be remembered for their inability to take action when it was necessary and urgent to do so?” Francis called for countering official inaction with a  “multilateralism ‘from below’ and not simply one determined by the elites of power [because] unless citizens control political power – national, regional and municipal – it will not be possible to control damage to the environment.”  Because grassroots knowledge is necessary for building power, the Initiative will continue to respond to Pope Francis’ call by spreading community-engaged research and education for climate and environmental justice in our programs, events, research grants, and training.

SCU Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies Jesica S. Fernández joined the Initiative this fall to develop our new Youth and Environmental Justice Project. The project will support community organizations, K-12 schools, and SCU researchers and students to engage youth in sociopolitical development, learning, and action for environmental and racial justice. Jesica will build on her scholarly expertise and youth development experience by leading the Youth for Justice Project (YJP) – an afterschool program at Sacred Heart Nativity School, a Catholic middle school serving low-income and working-class families in San José. In the YJP youth learn to document environmental challenges and struggles within their living and learning contexts as they reflect, discuss, and visualize through art-advocacy possibilities for social change. Jesica will organize a film screening of “Fruits of Labor” (2021) followed by a conversatorio/conversation event on April 18, 2024, that will bring together film director Emily Cohen-Ibañez, local youth activists, and environmental justice groups in the Greater Silicon Valley that are developing youth leadership to cultivate opportunities for collaborative learning and action with the SCU community. The event will complement Jesica’s spring seminar course Youth Activism & Contemporary Social Movements (ETHN 187). With enthusiasm to bring visibility to the role and agency of young people in climate and environmental justice, Jesica looks forward to leading the Youth and Environmental Justice Project.

SCU’s Center for Sustainability recognized the Initiative with its Sustainability Innovation Champion award for organizing our spring conference on Climate and Environmental Justice. The annual award honors those who are “leading a transformative program that significantly contributes to Santa Clara University's culture of sustainability.” In her remarks introducing the award, Alison Benders, Vice President of Mission and Ministry, commended the conference organizing committee for a “deep commitment to justice [that] anchors their vision for Climate Justice work generally – justice that includes full participation of those affected by climate change, a fair distribution of responsibilities and benefits at every level of our communities, and care for our common home.” She added that the Initiative’s members “have put this vision of justice into action by the most recent Climate Justice conference, as well as through years of relationship building, community research, partnered climate action, and teaching and advocacy.” Thanks to the Center for Sustainability and to Vice-President Benders for their support for the conference and frequent collaboration with the Initiative on joint programs and projects!

The Initiative will be making a new round of research grants to SCU faculty members in collaboration with SCU’s Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship. See the call for proposals, which are due January 31, 2024. 

In Our Research

This fall, the SCU Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic is working with Professor Tseming Yang on an external review of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s environmental civil rights policies and programs. The review was commissioned by the Air District to evaluate its compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, an integral part of its efforts to enhance its environmental justice policies and programs. The review involves third-year law students Garrett Clark, Rochel Go, and Isabel Harris and Clinic Deputy Director Britton Schwartz. Second-year law student Elle Christian is providing additional research support. The team is interviewing agency staff and community activists as well as reviewing agency policies. Student clinician Garrett Clark remarked, "It's very illuminating to hear the perspectives of high and low-level staff on environmental justice and civil rights, and I am looking forward to seeing what the community thinks of it all." The review findings are expected to be presented to the Air District senior leadership at the end of the year, with a formal report to follow soon thereafter.

The Initiative’s Chad Raphael and co-author Martha Matsuoka (Occidental College) published an article in the journal Social Sciences, “Aligning Community-Engaged Research Methods with Diverse Community Organizing Approaches." The article explains how community-engaged research (CER) collaborations with organizers can benefit by carefully matching the choice of research methods with community partners’ organizing strategies to ensure that research aligns with and supports organizing goals. After summarizing the many ways in which collaborative research can support organizing efforts, the co-authors argue that different CER methods align best with widely-used organizing approaches, including Alinskyite, Freirean, feminist, community building and resilience-based, and transformative approaches. The authors illustrate their discussion with examples of research conducted by and with organizations rooted in the environmental justice movement, including a case study of research methods used by the Environmental Health Coalition over several decades on the San Diego-Tijuana border.

The Initiative’s Iris Stewart-Frey, colleagues Ed Maurer (SCU Engineering) and Allen Baez Morales (SCU Frugal Innovation Hub), community partner Raul Diaz (CII-ASDENIC), as well as student researchers Briana Guingona (Environmental Studies & Sciences), Alex Avila and Turner Uyeda (Civil, Environmental, and Sustainable Engineering), and Gautam Chitnis (Computer Engineering) presented a poster of their work on climate change forecasts, information, and adaptation in Central America at the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science (CUAHSI) biannual conference. Many parts of Central America have experienced warming over recent decades, accompanied by greater frequency of drought during the time of boreal summer (June-August), disrupting critical crop cycles and contributing to food insecurity. As a response, the team has developed an automated system to download 15-day and seasonal forecasts, which, together with metrics from a local weather station, feed into a lightweight app (NicaAgua) that can operate on a mobile phone and delivers graphical and text summaries of the forecasts. As climate change amplifies, the aspiration is that accessible, skillful, and effectively communicated climate forecasts can help with climate change impact mitigation strategies. 

In collaboration with the Community Equity Initiative of California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA), the Initiative’s Water and Climate Justice program has received a $100,000 grant from the Environmental Justice Data Fund. The grant will support Iris Stewart-Frey and CRLA to use science-based advocacy to advance the human right to water in disadvantaged California communities. This project will collect and analyze data on the presence and changes in shallow groundwater contamination that will increase CRLA’s capacity to advocate for safe, sufficient water and ultimately policy change alongside the communities they serve. In addition, this project builds capacity for community-based data collection and spatial data analysis and visualization such as these interactive maps produced by the Water and Climate Justice team, including undergraduate researchers Lilah Foster, Erica Svendahl, Taylor Omoto, and Jeremy Wang. The research will result in a locally relevant environmental justice data repository to support our work advocating for equitable development, promoting environmental justice, building leadership capacity within the community, and engaging in public decision-making processes to improve neighborhoods. The project also supports the contributions of water justice science fellow Jake Dialesandro (CRLA and Environmental Studies and Sciences) and undergraduate student researchers Samantha Lei, Sarah Mohavedi, and Euchen Seo. 

In partnership with a team from ASDENIC that included director Raul Diaz and Helen Hernandez, a transdisciplinary team led by the Initiative’s Iris Stewart-Frey, Allan Baez Morales (Frugal Innovation Hub), and Ed Maurer (CESE), organized focus groups and community workshops for climate resilience capacity building in August, October, and November 2023 in Estelí, Nicaragua. Diverse members from smallholder farming communities and local government representatives attended. Stewart-Frey and colleague Ed Maurer, together with undergraduate student researchers Bri Guingona, Alex Avila, and Turner Uyeda shared findings from a survey on water security and climate resilience conducted in cooperation with Asdenic this spring, as well as locally-relevant climate forecasts. Baez Morales, Stewart-Frey, and collaborator Quiwen Li, as well as graduate students Gautam Chitnis and Tanmay Singla and undergraduate Sara Wheeler presented the new version of the NicaAgua climate forecasting app that incorporates the forecasts. Participants tested the NicaAgua app and provided feedback for further development, explored the usefulness of climate forecasts in capacity building for climate resilience, and engaged in dialogues about strategies and needs to improve water security and climate resilience under a warming climate. 

In partnership with ASDENIC’s director Raul Diaz, the Initiative's Chris Bacon and Maria Eugenia Flores Gomez co-organized a symposium in Estelí Nicaragua. The objective was to reflect on the advances, challenges, and future steps related to the practice of agroecology as a strategy to face the challenges of food security and climate change. On behalf of a transdisciplinary research team, which includes William A. Sundstrom (SCU Economics), Paola Felix (SCU ’23), Xiomara Quinonez (SCU ‘24), and members of the ASDENIC team, Bacon gave the keynote presentation sharing findings from a study assessing how smallholders are diversifying their production and adapting to climate change and other hazards. The group also advanced an important discussion about how to prepare for the likely El Niño event with associated drought and food security risks in the region. In addition to presentations and dialogue, there was an active seed and publications exchange among the 50+ participants. Participants from across the country included leaders from the National Farmers and Ranchers Union (UNAG), the PRODECOOP and Nueva Waslala cooperatives representing thousands of organic and fair trade coffee and cacao farmers, and other leaders in agroecology, food security, and sustainable markets, such as the Movement of Organic Agriculture in Nicaragua (MAONIC), the Network for Promoting Agroecology (GPAE), ADDAC, FUNICA as well as professors and students from the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua. 

Christopher Bacon, María Eugenia Flores, and Raúl Díaz (ASDENIC) gathered with the Nueva Waslala cooperative’s board of directors and staff in the municipality of Nicaragua's tropical humid region known as the capital of cocoa. The Nueva Waslala Co-op harvests cocoa with Organic and Rainforest Alliance certifications that are sold and processed into high-quality chocolates in Europe and the U.S. The research team, which also includes William A. Sundstrom (SCU Economics), presented preliminary results from a survey of 120 cacao farmers affiliated with the Nueva Waslala, comparing outcomes with the other 339 farmers in the study. Farmers confirmed key findings showing that farmers here reported shorter periods of seasonal hunger compared to the coffee producers in the Segovias and suggested that cocoa production systems, which are harvested every 15 days year-round, represented a steady income that increased food security. Climate conditions in Waslala are favorable to cacao production as they generally include a 10 or 12-month rainy season, but one month without rain can negatively impact production. Farmers and co-op staff also participated in a focus group to update the local agricultural calendar for cocoa production with a focus on gendered labor patterns. The research team is grateful to Fundación Madre Tierra for hosting this event at their center in Waslala. 

In Our Courses

Students in Chad Raphael’s spring 2023 Community Organizing course chose to volunteer with a wide variety of community and campus organizations, and national movements, including LEAD Filipino, Garden to Table, Bay Area Municipal Elections Committee, Sacred Heart Community Service’s Organizing for Justice, Sunrise Movement Bay Area, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Stop AAPI Hate, the Children’s Movement of Florida, and SCU’s tUrn Project and Queers and Allies. Students wrote weekly journal entries applying course concepts to their organization and a final synthesis paper that evaluated their organization’s strengths and areas for improvement. 

Research Grant Spotlight

Highlights of research supported by our research grant program.

Initiative research grant recipients C.J. Gabbe (Environmental Studies and Sciences), Jamie Suki Chang (UC-Berkeley School of Social Welfare), Morayo Kamson (Environmental Studies, Political Science ‘22), and Euichan Seo (Environmental Studies and Sciences ‘23) published an article, “Reducing Heat Risk for People Experiencing Unsheltered Homelessness” in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. Using descriptive and spatial analyses, and interviews with unhoused people, the researchers found that unhoused participants in Santa Clara County were exposed to extreme heat that caused negative health impacts, and faced difficult trade-offs between finding stable locations to live and avoiding extreme heat in areas with little shade or water. Unhoused people also faced barriers to accessing air-conditioned spaces, such as cooling centers, due to lack of information, transportation problems, and restrictive policies. The study concluded that the most important strategy for reducing the unhoused population's heat risk is housing provision. Interim approaches should include outdoor spaces for unhoused people designed with heat considerations in mind, and inclusive air-conditioned indoor spaces.

The Makassar Biennale published an Indonesian-language book, Mountain History and Maritime Genealogy, that included a chapter describing the effects of land reclamation on coastal communities in Makassar, Indonesia. The chapter was based on a series of interviews conducted by Tanahindie Urban Research Institute in collaboration with Initiative research grant recipients Ryan Tans and Naomi Levy (Political Science). The chapter was then offered as a prompt to artists participating in the 2023 Makassar Biennale, which exhibited artwork on the theme of “The Land Moves West”—a reference to land reclamation on Makassar’s western shoreline. The Biennale explored themes of anxiety, transformation, and loss as they relate to rapid changes in the city’s coastal environment. Read Ryan's essay about the Biennale.

Recent Programming

In partnership with the Northern California Environmental Justice Network for Community-Academic Partnerships, the Initiative's Iris Stewart-Frey and Clare Pace (UC Berkeley) co-organized two panels on water issues in tribal communities. At the first panel, Bidtah Becker, Deputy Secretary for Environmental Justice, Tribal Affairs and Border Relations, CalEPA, and Heather Tanana, College Of Law, University of Utah discussed tribal water issues, including access, infrastructure, quality, operations, and maintenance. The presenters discussed the history and status of tribal water access, as well as opportunities created by new funding from the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the state of California’s efforts to use its first-in-the-nation law establishing a human right to water to make this right a reality in Indigenous communities. (See the webinar recording.) At the second panel, James Muller, Principal Environmental Planner for Integrated Regional Water Management Program and grant manager for the Bay Area Disadvantaged Community and Tribal Partners Project and Alexander Tavizon, Bay Area Tribal Project Manager, California Indian Environmental Alliance presented a preliminary finding in their assessment of the Bay Area Integrated Regional Water Management Program, followed by a panel discussion with Gregg Castro, [t’rowt’raahl Salinan/rumsien-ramaytush Ohlone] Culture Director of the Association of Ramaytush Ohlone (ARO), Kanyon “Coyote Woman” (Hahashkani) Sayers-Roods, [Mutsun-Ohlone] Two-Spirit Indigenous relative, Co-Founder of CEO of Kanyon Konsulting LLC, and active leader in the Native Community and Charlie Toledo [Towa] Director of Suscol Intertribal Council, Napa CA. (See the webinar recording and slides.) Both events were co-sponsored by the Initiative, the Northern California Environmental Justice Network for Community-Academic Partnerships, SCU’s Office for Diversity and Inclusion, the UC Berkeley Water Equity Science Shop, Stanford’s Environmental Justice Working Group, and SJSU’s Department of Environmental Studies.

The Initiative helped support the Park Youth Committee (PYC) of Tuolumne River Trust (TRT) to host a fun-filled day of free outdoor activities and community building at Robertson Road Park in Modesto. The Initiative’s Water and Climate Justice Program and TRT have a long-standing collaboration, working on equal access to safe green spaces and supporting climate change resilience. Families enjoyed lunch and recreational stations while learning about what the PYC is doing to expand park access with riverside communities. In partnership with All Children Thrive, the Park Equity Project empowers youth and families to champion safe and accessible parks for all, promoting civic engagement and collaboration with local government. The Park Equity project is led by the PYC, composed of high school students and adult allies, which addresses pressing park equity issues in local neighborhoods with a vision to create a world where all children can thrive in safe and enjoyable parks. The PYC created a StoryMap to present their project to the city council.

The Initiative's Food and Climate Justice Program and SCU’s Forge Garden, a Center for Sustainability program, co-hosted a South Bay Food Justice Collaborative (SBFJC) Mini-Retreat. SBFJC is a community of practice consisting of more than 30 South Bay organizations working on food justice, farming, and public health that has been sharing resources, developing collaborative projects, and organizing training and field visits since March 2020. The hunger that accompanied COVID-19 accelerated this work. At a session during the Initiative's 2023 Climate Justice Conference, the SBFJC learned from FAACTS, a similar coalition in San Francisco that emerged to stop more than $30 million in cuts to community food security budgets. SBFJC is now working to develop a mission, vision, and values statement, and to establish priority actions for the coming years. Several action ideas are starting to converge on securing a tangible human right to culturally preferred food for everyone in the South Bay and beyond, policies to increase farm and garden access, farm and knowledge exchange activities among participants, and expanding collaborative projects. This event was co-facilitated with the University of California’s Cooperative Extension and Fresh Approach. Participants included community-based food justice groups such as La Mesa Verde, Garden to Table, Soil and Water, Second Harvest, West Valley Community Services, and Veggielution, as well as the County of Santa Clara Public Health Department and others. The facilitators’ team is working on the second Mini-Retreat to complete this phase of the collective planning. 

Partner Spotlight

Ecojesuit is a web-based newsletter of the Global Ignatian Advocacy Network - Ecology network, published in Spanish, English, and French with editorial and technical assistance from the Environmental Science for Social Change (ESSC), a Jesuit research institution in the Philippines. Ecojesuit’s Coordinator, Pedro Walpole, S.J., has been a source of inspiration and insight to our Initiative and serves on our advisory board. We have partnered with Ecojesuit to organize several events over the years, including an online dialogue on using agroecology to drive food system change. 

This past summer, Chris Bacon and Chad Raphael led workshops for the Ecojesuit 2023 Meeting in Bukidnon, Mindanao, Philippines, which convened Jesuit educational leaders from Africa, Asia, Australia, India, and Europe to strengthen their shared commitment, collaboration, and communication for integral ecology. Bacon led a workshop on “Agroecology and Community-based Research on Food and Water Justice: Methods and Process of Accompaniment.” Raphael led a workshop on "Communications and Networking for Advocacy and Climate Action.”

In advance of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change COP28 Conference in Dubai, EcoJesuit, the Global Ignatian Advocacy Network on Ecology, the Social Justice Ecology Secretariat, and over 100 members of the Ignatian Family have released a call for Committing to a South-North Climate Justice Advocacy, which includes:

1. Developing the Fossil Fuel Non-proliferation Treaty, slashing emissions through a just fossil fuel phaseout, and holding top polluters accountable
2. Transforming financial systems by establishing equitable financial flows of the Loss and Damage fund for climate-vulnerable communities
3. Implementing climate action on agriculture and food security … that upholds the role of agroecology and culture-based solutions in addressing food and water vulnerabilities
4. Delivering USD 100 billion of public and private climate finance annually by developed countries in support of the Global South, and bridging gaps to meet the goal of USD 4.3 trillion by 2030
5. Committing to course-correcting adaptation and mitigation deficiencies to keep the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement alive

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