Environmental Justice in Theory and Practice

About

How can environmental justice help to achieve an equitable and sustainable future? In this summer school, you will learn how different disciplines address such moral dilemmas and discuss real practice cases.

This summer course will introduce students to environmental justice from a variety of perspectives. We will engage with philosophical attempts to identify normative standards for what can be considered a just allocation of the benefits and burdens of environmental action. This includes questions such as: Should everybody have equal access to vital ecosystem services? Should rich countries pay for climate change adaptation in poorer countries? If so to what extent? But we will also critically scrutinize the value of philosophical reasoning as an approach to environmental justice. Does philosophy provide us with much needed impartial principles to guide our actions or is it too much of an armchair discipline, removed from what is going on in the ‘real world’? Is listening to stakeholders’ claims and the demands of environmental justice movements and activists a more practically relevant way to make sense of environmental justice? What are their objectives and strategies and how successful are they?

We will also engage with environmental justice aspects of the assessment of impacts of conservation and other environmental policies and interventions. The Intergovernmental Platform of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has well laid out that people hold diverse values for nature, linked to the way they engage with nature and their worldviews. Then how to best assess such values? What are the advantages of expressing such values in monetary terms, and what are the counterarguments? What is the role of environmental economics and socio-cultural studies in assessing values of nature? How can the process of valuation be organized in a such a way that the resulting outcomes are supported by the people whose values are at stake?

Course leader

Dr. Marije Schaafsma and Dr. Ina Lehmann

Target group

The course is designed for Master's and PhD students who have taken at least a few courses in environmental issues in their previous course of study. This can include (but is not limited to) courses in conservation biology, climate change, environmental sociology, politics or economics, etc. The level of assessment is advanced master's level but PhD students are also welcome to apply.

Course aim

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

- understand different approaches to environmental justice

- apply environmental justice theories and approaches to case studies

- assess and evaluate situations of potential environmental injustice

- work as a team on questions involving personal (normative) judgement.

Fee info

Students, PhD candidates and employees of VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam UMC or an Aurora Network Partner €545 Students and PhD candidates at partner universities of VU Amsterdam €705 Students and PhD candidates at non-partner universities of VU Amsterdam €815 Professionals €1035