Environmental Joy: Writing the Future

How do you move forward on climate solutions, sustainability, conservation, and clean energy under challenging headwinds — by building coalitions, blending traditional knowledge with modern tools, promoting community empowerment, and connecting data to human stories. Speakers at the 7th Annual Yale Global Environmental Justice Conference will discuss those strategies during the two-day event hosted by the Yale Center for Environmental Justice (YCEJ).

The conference, at the Yale School of the Environment October 31-November 1, focuses on “Environmental Joy: Writing the Future” and features an international panel of speakers who will explore what is working and what tactics should be left behind in four specific areas: sustainable infrastructure, sustainable economics, spiritual and mutual aid, and decision making.

“Over the past two years, we have recommitted to finding the joy that comes from building a community to confront the most pressing environmental justice issues. Today, our efforts require an extra dimension of hope and joy as we move on to planning the future. That future will be ours to write and it must be written with eyes, minds, and hearts wide open,” said Gerald Torres, the Dolores Huerta and Wilma Mankiller Professor of Environmental Justice, who will open the conference along with Michel Gelobter, executive director of YCEJ.

In the plenary session, Frances Beinecke ’74 MFS, president emerita of the Natural Resources Defense Council, will discuss successful approaches to transformative environmental action, with an emphasis on how state and local action can advance the environmental justice and equity agenda in the face of partisan divides.

“Every community has people on the ground who care about their community and the well-being of their families. This widespread engagement across generations is always hopeful to me,” she said. “For many of these issues we have the science, technology and affordable solutions that can be implemented. We need to galvanize public will to make the policy changes needed for the future well-being of all of us.”

Brandon Maka’awa’awa, vice president of the Nation of Hawaii, said that one promising new model for stewardship is pairing Indigenous knowledge with new technology and tools, such as using GIS mapping and AI to monitor the health of ahupua’a, a traditional Hawaiian subdivision system consisting of slices of land that run from the top of a mountain to the ocean.

“On the horizon, I envision hybrid models where Indigenous protocols guide tech innovations, such as drone-seeded native plants or blockchain-tracked resource sharing to prevent overexploitation. These could prepare us for a future where urban ahupua’a concepts adapt traditional divisions to cities, creating green corridors that connect communities to their ecosystems. The key is co-designing with elders and youth to ensure these tools amplify, rather than replace, our cultural reciprocity,” he said.

Newsletter

Subscribe to “YSE 3”

Biweekly, we highlight three news and research stories about the work we’re doing at Yale School of the Environment.

Environmental initiatives often can be viewed as an “elite concern” especially in developing countries when community members feel that pressing issues such as jobs and income are not being addressed, said Carol Santana, legal director of AmazoniAlerta, a Brazil-based NGO that promotes legal capabilities of Indigenous communities to defend their ancestral lands from deforestation.

“We need to keep in mind that environmental conservation necessarily depends on combating poverty. It is not enough to just protect endangered species, create wildlife sanctuaries, or reduce plastic production,” she said. “It is urgent to fight poverty so that environmental protection strategies can be effective. After all, people worry about eating first, and only with a full stomach will they start to think about whether or not they are ingesting microplastics.”

Community-led initiatives and strengthening ties with movements across public health, labor, environmental justice, are more vital than ever in sustaining progress on decarbonization, climate-change mitigation, and pollution, said Jennifer Krill, executive director of EarthWorks, who will be speaking on sustainable infrastructure at the conference. EarthWorks, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization promoting the equitable transition to renewable energy, has focused on community-driven, data-backed approaches in its work, she noted.

“The lived experiences of frontline communities, combined with our field investigations and optical gas imaging, gives undeniable proof of harm that fuels enforcement and policy reform,” Krill said. “These partnerships have led to concrete outcomes — from shutting down illegal operations to strengthening methane rules and redirecting public investments toward clean energy solutions.”

She advises communities to focus on the outcomes they want, not just what must stop.

“In our work, we’ve seen progress when communities pair resistance to harmful infrastructure with a clear vision for what they do want: investments in clean energy, public health, and sustainable jobs. That shift from ‘no’ to ‘this instead’ is what makes policy change possible,” she said.