Issues we work on
Ecological Justice
Frontline communities bearing the brunt of climate chaos and other forms of ecological disruption are the ones holding the most powerful solutions to these and related crises. Ecological justice uplifts collective efforts to build just and sustainable food and energy systems, expose false solutions, and repair relations among people, the Earth, and all living systems.
Impact Overview
Grassroots International’s support for ecological justice encompasses a variety of efforts. In communities harmed by fossil fuel exploitation and other polluting industries, our movement partners are organizing direct resistance.
They are also exposing and denouncing a host of industry-backed false solutions to the climate crisis, such as carbon offset schemes, which in reality perpetuate it. Across many different settings, they are building alternative food and energy systems grounded in community control and self-determination. Key strategies include agroecology, which involves farming in sync with nature, and just transformation, which involves confronting ecological crises in ways that address the here-and-now while building transformative alternatives. We also accompany our partners in amplifying these efforts globally through vocal participation in UN climate summits and other international spaces.
Work we’re accompanying:
- Widespread promotion of agroecology through farmer-to-farmer training, field schools, educational campaigns, advocacy, and other means
- Community organizing in resistance to fossil fuel exploitation and other polluting industries
- Rejection of corporate-backed false solutions to climate change through direct resistance, advocacy, and shifting narratives
- Vibrant presence of social movements at UN climate summits (COPs) and other global spaces, often engaging both in formal proceedings and popular mobilizations
- Social movement-led response to climate emergencies grounded in frameworks like just transformation to advance long-term visions while addressing immediate needs
Mainstream responses to environmental crises often fall back on the same practices that got us here, but social movements are clear that we need nothing short of system-wide transformation.
Take the food system, for example. On top of driving hunger and poverty, the industrial food system contributes an estimated 30-50% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, climate-induced disasters are threatening food supplies. Enter agroecology: a science, practice, and political project that applies ecological principles to food and farming systems – as many of the world’s small-scale food providers have done for generations. Agroecology counters the climate crisis by storing carbon in the soil and building up food system resiliency. A slogan of our partner La Via Campesina gets to the crux of the matter: “small-scale farmers cool the planet.”
The umbrella of ecological justice includes essential work on climate justice and environmental justice. Along the river deltas of Nigeria, eco-feminist activists are resisting oil extraction and demanding reparations from gas and oil companies for poisoning their waters. In Puerto Rico and Haiti, communities are organizing for just recoveries from “natural” disasters – so rebuilding doesn’t worsen existing inequalities. And frontline communities of color from the US to Brazil are resisting extractive megaprojects that burn carbon and destroy existing ecosystems.
We are drawing attention to the disproportionate impacts of environmental crises on frontline communities like these – and the solutions they offer. And we are amplifying the frameworks they are putting forward. These include Indigenous concepts like buen vivir and Rights of Mother Earth, emphasizing the interconnectedness among people, the Earth, and all its living systems.
