An Ecological Perspective on Environmental Justice

By Theo Gress, Resilient Adaptation Program Associate

I feel lucky when a dinner discussion turns to meaningful conversation. Recently, a friend asked: “What do you think matters most in environmentalism, and when did you form that belief?” This question has stuck with me. Its scale overwhelms me, too; who am I, as an individual on this massive planet, to make a claim about what matters most? My response partially stems from beliefs formed during childhood, but it also reflects why I am passionate about the climate resilience and social justice work I do at Climate Resilient Communities (CRC). 

Theo tabling at the East Palo Alto Resilience Fair

From an early age, my parents taught me to appreciate the outdoors. I enjoyed time in parks near home and camping with relatives in the mountains. I spent countless hours at the Sacramento Zoo learning the importance of species conservation as a child and as a teenage volunteer. I absorbed the idea that all things are connected and was drawn to academic topics that allowed me to explore these patterns of connection.

I studied ecology at Stanford and developed the comprehensive ideas I hold about what matters in addressing environmental issues. My training as an ecologist shapes my perspective: To truly address all of the world's environmental challenges, we must recognize that everything humans do affects our relationship to the environment. “Everything humans do” includes how we talk about and act within systems of economics, politics, and inequality. It includes our choices about what we buy, use, and throw away, as well as how much water, energy, and other resources we consume. “We,” meaning all human beings, are merely one part of the earth’s complex ecological system, just like bees and trees.

Thinking ecologically creates opportunities to build more effective environmental solutions. Steven Mintz, a historian from the University of Texas at Austin, recently wrote about the ways environmental activists have understood their mission and often disagreed on how to approach the same issue at the same time. “These weren’t just policy disagreements. They reflected divergent philosophies about the human relationship to the Earth: Are we stewards, managers, disruptors, or dependents?” he wrote. In reality, human beings fit in all of those categories and an ecological perspective unifies these diverging philosophies. All categories of relationships to Earth, past and present, influence and structure the range of possibilities and types of relationships we can have with our environment. 

In ecology, I am often reminded of how small my individual contribution will be in addressing our existential and planetary challenges. Humans are only one of millions of species. There are 8 billion humans, each one of us an unfathomably tiny fraction of life on Earth! Some look at that number and claim there is nothing any one of us can do. Others argue that individual actions are ineffective compared to changing larger systems via governmental policies and regulations. 

Changing individual behaviors or actions is not mutually exclusive from creating policies that can change whole systems. These two options lie along the spectrum of ways humanity could attempt to remake our relationship with the environment. Even with numbers that are impossible to count on fingers and toes, we need to refuse to accept that our individual smallness justifies inaction. Instead, it should motivate us to understand how individually and as parts of systems, we can contribute to making this amazing world a little better, like a single bee pollinating a flower. I am awed by how significant my own life feels given that it’s only 1 in 8 billion. There is so much possibility in that incomprehensibly small number, which is still greater than zero. As a trained scientist I sometimes feel like the words I’m supposed to use do not honor the beauty of life enough!

Theo working on rain garden maintenance at an East Palo Alto home

My work at CRC has driven me to find ways to share that feeling of individual power and significance with others. Small tangible actions empower people to make better choices, collaborate with others, and contribute in multiple ways to improve our lives and the lives of our friends and neighbors. CRC encourages its staff to work on environmental justice through both individual actions and by building collective power for systems change. That multi-modal approach is required to achieve CRC’s mission: empowering community voices and implementing frontline and locally-led climate solutions that result in immediate and tangible improvements in the lives of the residents of our communities.

The actions of our work sometimes feel simple compared to the huge academic concepts discussed in ecology or systems-thinking courses. CRC listens to people. That is the first step towards empowerment though organizing and mobilizing a broad base of residents. CRC develops implementable solutions to challenges people face, like collecting rainwater and installing rain gardens in areas that flood. CRC weatherizes and upgrades homes of low-income residents to make families safer and more resilient. We give youth opportunities to explore current environmental topics. All these actions inspire individuals to learn more and take action, which builds relationships with other community-based organizations and local governments to create opportunities for systems change. All the actions we take individually and together, are creating a beautiful and sturdy mosaic of environmental justice.

What matters most in environmentalism is thinking more broadly, ecologically, about the relationships between all the systems that allow us to live. CRC’s justice-centered work is ecological: it shapes how people relate to each other and the world around them.

An excursion with CRC's Youth Climate Collective

Questions like these make me incredibly grateful for the relatives, friends, and colleagues who inspire me to have hard and important conversations, to think deeply about the work I love. Conversations won’t offer clear answers to unify all environmental activism, but hopefully inspire others to talk boldly about their passions and think about the relationship with Earth they would like to foster. I also know conversation alone is far from enough. So, I’m deeply appreciative to be a part of a workplace that facilitates connection and resilience as personal and communal. Our actions towards climate resilience may seem small and inadequate sometimes, but they are an essential part of the glue and mortar of the mosaic and move us gradually towards the world we want to inhabit.