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We are a multidisciplinary resource center dedicated to advancing a more transformative and emancipatory climate justice politics. We show how solutions to the climate crisis are inseparable from the resolution of other major social injustices, how unjust power relations are the root cause of all crises, and how deep structural reforms and systemic changes to power relations are required to create a more just and sustainable future for all. Our ethos aims to raise an inspirational vision of how the climate crisis can serve as a catalyst for creating a new type of society that truly meets the needs of people and the planet and show the liberatory potential of an inclusive, intersectional climate justice movement.
The Center is devoted to exploring the relationship between climate change and social justice in the context of both mitigation and adaptation policies. We are committed to exposing the root causes of the climate crisis as grounded in corporate power structures (particularly the polluter-industrial complex), neoliberalism and the assault on democracy, imperialism, globalization, processes of unequal ecological exchange, and global capitalism. We are focused on the intersectionality of class exploitation, systemic racism, patriarchy, neo-colonial status, and other structures of power and domination. We strive to provide an inspiring vision of how climate change can serve as a catalyst for transforming society for the better and creating a more just and sustainable future for all of us.
The Center is a proud member of Coming Clean, a collaborative of environmental health and justice experts working to reform the chemical and energy industries so they are no longer a source of harm. Coming Clean members include over 200 organizations and 350 individual experts in community organizing, business, science, medicine, environmental justice, policy, and other critical areas. Together we are winning campaigns for a healthy, just, sustainable society and growing a stronger, more diverse, and better prepared movement.
We are grateful to Barbara Laurence and the Center for Political Ecology (CPE) for serving as our fiscal sponsor. The Center for Political Ecology is a 501(c)3 charitable organization. Its scholar-advocates generate independent and credible research on environment, health and human rights in local and global contexts. CPE’s social documentation, action-research, and expert witness work documents the conditions that structure human and environmental crises and the consequential damages of environmental and human rights abuse; facilitates efforts to define and secure meaningful remedy; and demonstrates the crucial role of biocultural sustainability in charting a sustainable path for the future. The overarching goal of CPE’s action-research collective is to both demonstrate and apply the power of credible and independent science, including citizen science, as a means to strengthen environmental and human rights frameworks and experience.
We would like to thank the Park Foundation, the Fine Fund, and New England Grassroots Environment Fund for supporting the Center's Green New Deal Cities Resource Hub. The Park Foundation is dedicated to the aid and support of education, public broadcasting, the environment. The Fine Fund provides movement building support groups with common interests as they advocate for public health and safety. With a focus on those who have often been marginalized, the Grassroots Fund empowers those working across a broad range of environmental and social justice issues.
A special shout-out goes to Chuck Collins, Director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), for renting us critically important office space and providing assistance as we launch the Center. IPS is a progressive organization dedicated to building a more equitable, ecologically sustainable, and peaceful society. In partnership with dynamic social movements, IPS turns transformative policy ideas into action. We are grateful for their assistance.
Code of Ethics & Guiding Principles for Conducting Community-based Participatory Research by Center Fellows and Researchers. Please click below for details:
