The Yale Center for Environmental Justice hosted its sixth annual Global Environmental Justice conference, “Environmental Joy: Roadmaps for Resistance, Resilience, and Thriving” on November 8–9. In a year when over half the world experienced elections, the conference provided an early opportunity for environmental and climate leaders to convene, strategize, and forge paths forward despite the complexities of political environments across the globe. The conference brought more than 200 attendees and featured presentations from scholars, political leaders, activists, nonprofit workers.
The conference agenda consisted of tracks, interactive sessions, plenaries, and exhibitions/showcases for its art and culture components, to spark synergies among existing efforts as well as innovation and scale for new environmental justice work. The audience for the conference included environmental and climate justice communities, policymakers, academics, and thought leaders in faith and culture, though all are welcome to attend. A significant fraction of conference sessions were be designed to be hybrid, with presentations tailored to deliver experiences optimized to each modality.