Climate Change and Human Rights Workshop

Climate change has many overtly environmental expressions: it has contributed to aberrant temperatures, extreme weather, rising sea levels, and ever-increasing levels of drought. But climate change is not a purely environmental issue; it also has profound impact socially, economically, and geo-politically. And upon closer examination, it becomes clear that environmental changes do not affect human populations uniformly. In fact, the United Nations, the National Institutes of Health, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and countless other organizations recognize that climate change disproportionately impacts women, minorities, impoverished peoples, indigenous populations, people in developing nations, and other marginalized groups. Moreover, research shows that carbon taxes (often included in proposals to mitigate the greenhouse effect) have the heaviest burden on the poor. Thus, to fully address and solve the multilateral matter of climate change, we need to take into consideration the stances and experiences of marginalized peoples and developing nations.

Join the World Affairs Council and Western Washington University on November 3rd  for an educator’s workshop all about climate change and its relationship to issues of social justice and human rights around the world. Teachers will explore climate change from both an environmental and a societal perspective, and will learn tools for engaging students around the issues.

Teachers will receive standards-aligned curricular resources and full original lesson plans to help bring the complex topic of climate change to the classroom. This is an interdisciplinary workshop, and would be appropriate for teachers in the Sciences, Arts, and Humanities. 
Workshop includes 3 clock hours (with STEM components), classroom resources, and a light dinner.

Workshop Speakers:

Dr. Jennie Hoffman has been broadly engaged in the field of climate change adaptation for over a decade. She helps organizations integrate climate change into their work through direct engagement and targeted research, and develops and leads adaptation-related workshops and trainings for diverse audiences. Her areas of expertise include decision making in times of uncertainty, climate change vulnerability assessment, and adapting conservation, planning, and resource management for a changing climate. Jennie has a PhD in marine ecology.

Dr. Hoffman will speak on climate change, how it manifests itself as well as how people come together to make decisions and implement change.

Dr. Troy Abel is Associate Professor of Environmental Policy in Western Washington University’s Huxley College of the Environment. He is currently involved in several large grant projects focused on environmental governance including one from the National Science Foundation. He is an award-winning author of several books including FIVE SEASONS IN ECTOPIA: Rainforest Immersion and Conservation Action in Costa Rica.

Dr. Abel will speak on Environmental Policy and Justice as it relates to climate change.

Ryan Hauck is the Director of the Global Classroom Program at the World Affairs Council and has 25 years of experience as a classroom teacher in Upper School Social Sciences. He currently teaches at Glacier Peak High School in Snohomish. Ryan completed his master’s degree in Globalization and Educational Change from Lehigh’s Comparative & International Education Department. He brings his own real-life experiences into the classroom so that his students begin to understand the value of cross-cultural understanding and humanitarian action.

Tami Caraballo teaches science and biotechnology at Glacier Peak High School. She won a Science Teaching Excellence award of $10,000 from Amgen in 2015 in order to develop a Biotechnology course on global human health in partnership with Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center, Seattle Bio Medical Research Institute, and the University of Washington.

Ryan Hauck and Tami Caraballo will frame the conversation on climate change and social justice in terms of student engagement, and will provide tools for bringing these issues into K-12 Social Studies and Science classrooms.

Workshop sponsored by Western Washington University and Facing the Future