It's OUR World: Climate change, culture, and social justice

Course Description

Nobody needs to be told that climate change is a global crisis. What needs to be better understood is that climate change impacts everything about how humans live on this planet. This course will offer a mini United Nations experience considering cultural, historical, social, and legal aspects of climate change.

Participants will work to consider the effects of climate change on their particular region with regard to human culture, health, and social justice (human rights). During the course of the week, students will be encouraged to think globally about the complexities of climate change issues at local, national, regional, and international levels. Interactive and experiential sessions will lead participants to collaboratively draft a U.N.-style Declaration on climate change, culture, and human rights, which will then be presented in a 60-second social media (ie. Tik Tok) video. The opinions, ideas, and commitment of participants will help drive the course to draft the Declaration and prepare the video, since it is the youth who have been left to bear the brunt of the current climate crisis.

This course will include material on climate colonialism, which may be a difficult subject for some.