Building Climate Justice: Empowering Communities Through Coastal Resilience at Columbia University
Last fall, the Undergraduate Program in Sustainable Development introduced a ground-breaking course titled, “Building Climate Justice: Co-Creative Coastal Resilience Planning” at Columbia University. This course sought to educate students on effective coastal resilience planning and climate justice through a unique combination of social science and data acquisition and analysis.
Building Climate Justice students celebrate the end of the fall 2023 term.
The course was developed as a collaborative effort between instructors Greg Yetman, Paul Gallay, and Kytt MacManus, with support from the Columbia University Collaboratory. It is grounded in the principle that climate-adaptation planning should not alienate the very individuals resilience planners are seeking to protect. Students were given the opportunity to experience firsthand the power of community engagement.
As the director of the Resilient Coastal Communities Project at the Center for Sustainable Urban Development and an adjunct lecturer with the Undergraduate Program in Sustainable Development, Gallay’s past work in government and environmental advocacy has emphasized the importance of effective community participation.
“The Climate School’s founding principles challenge us to pursue research, practice, and education that helps solve problems like this, and that’s exactly what the Building Climate Justice course sets out to do,” he said.
Facilitating collaboration with environmental and climate justice practitioners, students actively engaged with community-based climate and environmental justice organizations. This involvement allowed them to collect and analyze environmental, geographic, and socio-economic data pertinent to local resilience needs.
Successful completion of the course offered partial fulfillment of the Analysis and Solutions to Complex Problems requirement for the major and special concentration in Sustainable Development. The course will be offered again in fall 2024.
Students calculate air quality in the Bronx during their field visit. Photo credit: Paul Gallay
