Advancing climate equity around the world

Alums Katherine Lau ’88 and James Lau ’81 showed their confidence in UC Berkeley’s leadership in climate equity and environmental justice by creating the Katherine S. and James K. Lau Graduate Fellowship in Climate Equity in 2021. The fellowship supports PhD candidates working on projects that address the adverse impacts of climate change on marginalized communities and confront the underlying causes of inequality. Here we highlight some of the nearly three dozen graduate students the Fellowship has supported.

Agricultural and Resource Economics

Cheung’s research explores the impact of informing citizens in Ghana about policy issues to increase their ability to hold political leaders accountable, focusing on artisanal and small-scale gold mining, known locally as galamsey. Key political figures—including security services, elected members of parliament, and traditional leaders—often support galamsey operations for personal benefit. Cheung collaborated closely with the Ghana Environmental Advocacy Group to organize public documentary screenings in galamsey communities, updating and coordinating community members’ beliefs about the health impacts of galamsey. They believe that this grassroots approach will empower community members to hold elected politicians and traditional leaders accountable through voting or regular interactions. By explicitly including chiefs, the research underscores the importance of incorporating nonstate leaders into environmental management frameworks.

City & Regional Planning

Hsu’s research explores the complex interactions between road safety and climate change within Taiwan’s evolving gig economy, focusing specifically on the app-based food-delivery sector. Gig workers in Taiwan often ride bikes or motorcycles—which offer little protection from heat and air pollution—and are subject to traffic congestion and delivery deadlines that may exacerbate risky driving behaviors such as speeding, harsh acceleration, and tailgating. Hsu blended focus group responses with thermal, geospatial, and kinematical data from wearable sensors to understand the link between environmental exposures and road aggression among gig workers. His findings point to the urgent need for increased regulatory oversight to safeguard the road safety of this vulnerable group and the general public.

Geography

For more than a century, swaths of Diné (Navajo) land have been reshaped to support energy infrastructure and development for western states. Manymules argues that much of this transformation has been accomplished through entrenched settler colonialism, which has allowed the US to dominate Indigenous nations and lands without an outright confiscation of territory. Merging archival and ethnographic research with Indigenous research methodologies, Manymules traces how scientific practices emerging from anxieties around soil erosion alongside capitalist development have fundamentally altered the Navajo Nation’s relation to the land. This project builds on his earlier work conducted in partnership with the New Mexico-based community organization Earth Care and its youth organizing component, Youth United for Climate Crisis Action.

Environmental Science, Policy, and Management

García’s work documents the impact of the hydropower boom on the marginalized communities of Colombia’s Upper Magdalena River Basin. The project combines archival research and oral histories with firsthand observations to trace how peasant and fisherfolk communities have struggled with these infrastructure projects and how the residual land issues shape their current views on environmental and climate justice. García conducted the research in partnership with different groups of victims of El Quimbo Hydropower Dam that currently lead conversations about achieving a just energy transition within the region. His findings could inform fair and equitable policies for low-carbon energy sources while addressing historical inequalities.

Energy and Resources

Villalpando’s project explores the combined effects of socioeconomic marginalization, environmental degradation due to climate change, and gender inequality on food systems in southern Mexico’s High Mixtec Region. Drawing from feminist political ecology and agroecology, her transdisciplinary work examines Mixtec peasant women’s agrifood practices and asks how these contribute to equitable and healthy household food systems. She analyzes the overlap of ecological and social elements of food system change and uses participatory research methods to understand the localized personal and political meanings of food sovereignty among Mixtec peasant communities. Working closely with community members, she hopes to highlight peasant women’s ability to access, create, and disseminate their agricultural values and expertise. She collaborates with Mexico’s National Autonomous University Geography Institute and UNESCO’s Mixteca Alta Geopark.

Environmental Engineering

Lane conducted an in-depth analysis of urban air pollution, focusing specifically on the disparities in air quality between historically disinvested areas and gentrifying neighborhoods. The project built on an earlier study of the relationship between redlining and air quality to better understand the associations between air pollution and displacement in the San Francisco Bay Area. Much of Lane’s initial work was informed by the experiences of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project and Groundwork Richmond, two community groups that have advocated for cleaner air and against displacement in the East Bay. Learning from these groups helped Lane devise an analytical framework relevant to community advocacy that could be applied to other affected communities nationwide.