Topic: Environmental Justice, Sustainability and Gender: Interactions and Conflicts

Guest Speaker: Marcia Owens, Director, Center for Faculty ADVANCEment Associate Professor of Environmental Science & Policy, Florida A&M University

About: In 2015, the United Nations Member States adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This global framework enumerates 17 principles that recognize that global injustices such as poverty must be eradicated by including strategies that improve health, education, economic and other inequalities, all while addressing climate change and working to preserve our natural environment. Goal 5 articulates a need to “Achieve Gender Equality and Empower All Women and Girls,” citing the exacerbation of existing inequities by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Sustainability Goals do not specifically mention environmental justice, nor do they have an explicit justice framing. This discussion, however, beginning with Goal 5, will examine the complex gendered interactions and conflicts through the lenses of sustainability and environmental justice