FAUW's new member-driven Climate Justice Working Group brings together faculty members at the University of Waterloo to generate collective action on campus—and within our broader communities—to help foster a just, climate-safe future.
This is a decentralized, action-oriented group that aims to shrink the carbon footprint of our work on campus and beyond, to build climate justice awareness on campus and in our community, and to spark related research with impact across the disciplines.
Throughout, we attend to the great irony of the climate crisis: those who are least responsible for the climate crisis suffer most from its consequences, particularly People of Colour, Indigenous people, and people of low income or those living in poverty, especially people in the Global South. Moreover, the climate crisis aggravates existing social, economic, and other inequities, posing additional hardships for women, elderly people, disabled people, and people living with illnesses. And it raises pressing questions about intergenerational equity—about the precarious future we are leaving to younger people. Focusing on climate justice also encourages us to avoid reproducing colonization, dispossession, and inequality as we create solutions.
As educators of students who will bear the burden of climate breakdown, we have a special role to play in turning our attention to this issue and its equity consequences, and in joining the next generations in their call for bold, just climate action. The Climate Justice Working Group is one opportunity for faculty to do this at the University of Waterloo.
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