Associate Director Laura Zanotti Procures Fund for Conference on Environmental Justice, a Center focus for 2020-2021

The Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership recently announced five grant recipients for project proposals enabling inclusion at Purdue.  One of these project proposals, “Next Steps – Environment Justice, Climate Change, and Racial Justice," is led by Discovery Park’s Center for the Environment’s associate director and professor of Anthropology Laura Zanotti.  This project involves the planning and implementation of a conference scheduled for spring 2021 entitled, “Next Steps – Environment Justice, Climate Change, and Racial Justice” that will leverage Purdue University’s convening power and its leadership in intersectional approaches to racial justice, climate change research, and the environmental sciences. The goal is to create a digital toolkit and a regional action network to improve environmental justice literacy and visibility.

Zanotti was inspired to lead a team of Purdue faculty and staff to propose this conference due to recent and persistent challenges concerning short- and long-term effects of the changing environment and climate on women and underrepresented minorities that present grand challenges at both the national and international level. As Zanotti suggests, “As we strive to find solutions to these problems, we must ensure the discussion integrates intersectional analyses, decolonizing principles, and critical race approaches to address fair representation and access to environmental decision-making to guarantee the rights of citizens for a safe and healthy environment.” The team points to concerns that Black communities, communities of color, women, and Indigenous Peoples continue to bear a disproportionate burden of environmental pollutants; they are often the last recipients of the benefits of environmental services; they are criminalized and policed for their efforts at political representation; and are at times denied fair access to environmental decision-making.

The goal of this virtual conference is to create a regional action network on environmental justice by bringing together Purdue’s researchers, artists, scholars and stakeholders, including peers working at research institutions across the state. Through the conference, Purdue will reach out to diverse scholars and leaders to broaden the conversation and invite experts in areas such as environmental sciences, racial & social justice, decolonization, law and environmental policy and the visual and performing arts with the intention of starting long-term collaborations and conversations to maximize the impact of discussions moving forward. The team has received a range endorsements and demonstration of interest in participating from groups at Indiana University, Bloomington (IU), Indiana University/Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), and Notre Dame University. The conference will provide an opportunity to engage researchers, students and the general public in this timely and important topic.

Purdue co-investigators for this project include, in alphabetical order: Felica Ahasteen-Bryant, Director, Native American Educational and Cultural Center; Kristina Bross, Professor of English, College of Liberal Arts, & Director of the Honors College; Lynne Dahmen, Managing Director, Center for the Environment, Discovery Park; Jeff Dukes, Professor Forestry and Natural Resources, Biological Sciences and Director, Purdue Climate Change Research Center, Discovery Park; Tim Filley, Professor of Earth, Atmospheric & Planetary Sciences, Director, Center for the Environment, Discovery Park; Shannon McMullen, Associate Professor, Patti & Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts and School of Interdisciplinary Studies, College of Liberal Arts; Venetria Patton, Professor of English and Head of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies, College of Liberal Arts; and Pamela Sari, Director, Asian American and Asian Resource and Cultural Center.

This conference serves as one part of the Center for the Environment’s activities in this space for the upcoming year.  Recently, the Center put together a comprehensive resource list that highlights important aspects of environmental justice. The page offers a curated resource list for scholars, practitioners, students, and activists interested in intersections among  environmentalism, conservation, justice, and racism. Organized conceptually and thematically, this is not meant to be exhaustive, but rather one of many resources available that can generate new conversations in the classroom, in workshops, and across communities.

The Center is also hosting a “Environmental Justice (EJ) Lunch and Learn” series this year that will feature Purdue scholars as discussion hosts for various aspects of environmental justice and intersections with aspects of social, racial and gender justice.  The first of these virtual events will take place Wednesday, September 9th and will feature Dr. Mangala Subramaniam, professor of Sociology and director of the Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence.  Her talk will focus on the complicated links between local and global struggles for environmental justice as communities confront state and global institutions. She will draw on her own, and collaborative, work to engage with the topic in terms of gender and its intersections with class, caste, race, as well as the need for integrating the technical and the social to adopt an interdisciplinary lens in studying environmental justice. Additional lunches this fall will feature Laura Zanotti speaking on EJ and land rights and Ellen Wells, Associate Professor of Environmental and Occupational health, discussion implications of environmental health for community health.