This conference is free and open to the public.

Registration is required.

The conference brings together advocates for environmental justice and climate change who attempt to address global environmental problems with community-based approaches. Environmental justice advocates have developed models of resistance to environmental racism and created models for local advocacy and political resistance. Those working on issues of climate change have advocated for place-based ecological management schemes as a way to produce the social intelligence needed to understand and address complex environmental problems. Both groups have much to learn from each other's approaches and this conference brings advocates of both approaches together to focus on how environmental justice communities can develop socially just steps to address climate change. This is where the role of religion enters the conference to help participants think about how religious communities can respond to environmental racism while confronting global ecological problems. The conference features plenary talks by Carl Anthony, Robert Bullard, Dianne Dumanowski, David Orr, and Mary Evelyn Tucker. The panelists include Anthony Leiserowitz, Nick Robinson, and Giovanna Di Chiro. The think tank sessions, which are the heart of the conference because this is where the participants develop strategies to use in their local settings, include international leaders as Desmond D'sa and Felício Pontes.

Sponsors include the Forum on Religion and Ecology, Edward J. & Dorothy Clarke Kempf Fund, Office of the Secretary, Yale Center for Transnational Cultural Analysis, Yale Divinity School, Interdisciplinary Bioethics Center, Department of Religious Studies, Department of African American Studies, Initiative on Religion and Politics, and Middle Passage Conversations Initiative on Black Religion in the African Diaspora.