From keeping oil drilling sites away from neighborhoods and schools in Los Angeles to securing land rights for women in Sierra Leone, there is plenty of joy to be found in the trenches of environmental justice and climate work. Joy, itself, and its power to buoy up communities and individuals working on climate solutions was the theme of the 5th annual Global Environmental Justice Confere nce hosted by the Yale Center for Environmental Justice (YCEJ).
“The future we want is in our hands, but it is not going to be done if we accept defeat or think we can’t make the change. We have the capacity to produce a joyous world,” Gerald Torres, professor of environmental justice, told participants, who included environmental advocates, practitioners, and academic experts from around the world.
The conference, held at the Yale School of the Environment on October 27-28, featured interactive workshops on how joy can inform and augment practice in policy, economics, governance, evaluation, and geography and a live podcast by Yale Professor Laurie Santos, who is doing a series about climate hope on her widely followed “The Happiness Lab.”