In partnership with Mission Zero and the Environmental Studies Class, the class aims to reflect upon the past and create a more equitable, responsible future.
What does environmental racism have to do with current scientific and environmental practices?
That’s the question that a new course launched by the University of Colorado Boulder’s Department of Environmental Studies aims to answer.
This course is a partnership with Mission Zero, a non-profit organization that supports university students working on climate solutions. It has yet to be named. What are the relevant conditions? What are the conditions? And how can we change them?
Denise Fernandes (a doctoral candidate in environmental sciences) is the courses instructor.
Students might find it difficult to discuss topics, Denise Fernandes (a doctoral candidate in environmental sciences and the courses professor) said. Students will be more able to deal publicly with issues if they are more aware of the past.
Fernandes stated that many American environmental studies departments are very white-centric and hold Western Eurocentric views about how the environment works. Fernandes added: Students must learn how race interacts with the environment.
Fernandes’ goal is to have students.
- Learn strategies to observe, analyze and critically reflect on the relationships between the environment and power, policy, technology, and socially constructed differences such as race, class, and ethnicity.
- Learn to identify and combat racism in environmental policy-making and decision-making
- Engage in antiracist action in academic and non-academic settings.
Fernandes states that the course will be experiential and may include case studies.
- Discussion of the history of the Rocky Flats nuke-weapons facility south Boulder, which is now accessible to the public, and discussion of superfund sites and weapons production, as well as unequal human-environment impact.
- Discussing why the 80216 ZIP Code in Denver is the most polluted.
- Examining acid mine drainage and its unjust impacts on the disadvantaged members of the communities within the Animas River Watershed.
- Exploring connections to reliance upon natural gas, hydraulic fracture (fracking), and the siting of wellheads in and around Weld county.
This course will provide students with a critical understanding of how economic and political power dynamics and interactions have influenced events and policy. It uses a variety of approaches.
Fernandes stated that I am excited about the social media engagement I have for students. They can use Instagram and TikTok to create various types of media communication using the stories they find in our library. When they graduate, students will be able use this course to help them in their job and have the skills to become social media communicators.
Fernandes also plans on using the University Libraries. The library’s Rare and Distinctive Archives contains a remarkable collection of Colorado environmental stories.
It is important to understand how conserving and conserving our environment has affected certain communities in the past.
This course is unique among the environmental studies programs. Karen Bailey, assistant professor in Environmental Studies and Fernandes mentor, said that it’s rare to find a whole course devoted to studying intersections between racism and environmentalism.
Bailey hopes that this course will spark a lively conversation about how people have been marginalized and exploited in the name of the environment, and to help create a framework for more humane and equitable practices in the future.
Bailey said that it is important to know the history of how conserving and protecting the environment has had adverse impacts on certain communities.
This history can be used to help us move forward in a more just, equitable, and responsible way. We don’t want to discourage anyone from being environmentalists or place blame on anyone in this class. We want them to be able to think for solutions and learn. It is important to learn the history of the past in order to move forward in better ways.