About: EcoGovLab Climate Change and Environmental Justice Curriculum Project

The University of California Irvine’s EcoGovLab is developing a new, interdisciplinary curriculum to draw 11th and 12th grade students into the complex, urgent work needed to address environmental justice in different communities, across California and beyond. The curriculum interlaces science, social science and civic education, incorporating multiple standards in these areas. Each of the curriculum’s two units are designed to be delivered in 15 hours of instruction, but can easily be extended beyond that.

One thread of the curriculum asks, “What is environmental injustice,” exploring the many factors (chemical, physical, biological and social) that contribute to environmental injustice, many intersecting effects in communities, and how people in different roles have responded. 

Another thread of the curriculum asks, “Where is environmental injustice,” helping students develop case studies of environmental injustice in particular places, starting in their home communities. 

The first thread foregrounds the historic and potential role of youth in movements for environmental protection and social change. The second thread draws students into possible career pathways, leveraging the environmental justice research experience gained in this curriculum. 

Through this curriculum, students will learn how to access and critically interpret diverse data resources, to move from problem characterization to political strategies and tactics, and to reflect on their own ethical and political judgments. They also will learn to use an array of concepts and analytic frameworks that will be useful to them going forward– helping them characterize stakeholder power dynamics, for example, community assets, and the intersecting form of injustice that combine to produce environmental injustice. 

This new curriculum will build on what we have learned teaching these subjects to undergraduates at the University of California Irvine. See a description of the course, Environmental Injustice, here, and examples of student research here. 

Thank you for your participation,

Dr. Kim Fortun and members of the writing team from EcoGovLab