The earth cannot wait

The Sydney Environment Institute (SEI) at the University of Sydney is part of a consortium which was this week awarded a prestigious grant to investigate ‘Climate Justice and Problems of Scale’.

The SEI is a member of the University of Wisconsin-based Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI), which received the grant from the New York-based Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

SEI Director and grant co-lead Professor David Schlosberg and colleagues, including co-leads Associate Professor Thom van Dooren and Dr Christine Winter, will use the grant to build on existing research into Multispecies Justice and Indigenous environmental perspectives.

“We also plan to use the funds to support a fellowship for our Visiting Environmental Scholars Program, and to offer workshops on climate justice for postgraduate scholars,” Professor Schlosberg said.

The grant is worth USD $176,000.

“The scale of climate change makes it difficult to understand the differing ways in which it affects individual lives, specific communities, and the earth,” said Professor Schlosberg.

“Through this research, we hope to acquire ‘scale literacy’, and then use this to formulate strategies to address climate injustice in social, political and cultural spheres.”

Academics from six CHCI member institutions, including those from the University of Texas at Austin; the American University of Beirut; Arizona State University; Carnegie Mellon (US); and the University of Pretoria, intend to meet in person in mid-2021 for a 10-day conference to discuss the outcomes of their research.

Hero image: Melissa Bradley on Unsplash.