Sustainable Development and Environmental Justice
At its core, the Sustainable Development and Environmental Justice focus of Africana Studies at The University of Toledo seeks to increase and enhance environmental leadership of poor and minority communities`. Our Africana Studies program is a forerunner in the field due to its early concentration on sustainable development and environmental justice. Students in Africana Studies at the University of Toledo uniquely learn the general knowledge of this field of study, as well as gain an in-depth background in sustainable development and environmental justice.
Dr. Rubin Patterson, the Africana Studies program interim director, writes a monthly “green column” in Toledo’s African American newspaper, The Sojourner’s Truth, to help enrich the community conversation about environmentalism and preparing for green-collar employment. He also works on grants related to research on green jobs and publishes regularly on the topic in peer-reviewed journals and books. UT alumnus, Jeff Johnson, who helped establish Africana Studies as a student leader in the early-1990s, funds and remains actively involved in an endowed scholarship open to Africana Studies majors and minors. The scholarship is the Jeff Johnson Africana Studies Scholarship in Sustainable Development and Environmental Justice.
The specialized areas of sustainable development and environmental justice emerged to correct the long-term environmental, biological, and economic adverse effects of industrial production, as well as the attendant racial and class-based discrimination regarding the distribution of industrial and municipal pollution, brownfields, and noxious facilities.
While African Americans are overrepresented around census tracts housing brownfields and hazardous waste, they are underrepresented in the professional areas of environmental public policy, environmental studies, environmental activism and NGO administration, environmental sciences and engineering, and environmental entrepreneurship. By combining Africana Studies with environmental studies, our program strives to become a national leader in increasing the number students from all communities who will become trained professionals that work to help end environmental racism and initiate products and services that sustain communities, both environmentally and economically. Our program provides students with excellent preparation for future graduate and professional training for broad environmentally-oriented careers.
The University of Toledo’s Africana Studies program provides students with opportunities to concentrate on addressing either environmental justice and sustainable development issues in black communities in the United States or in Africa. In addition to becoming steeped in the associated scholarship, students will have the opportunity to engage in either community-based and participatory action research in Toledo, or in policy-level research in Africa.
African Americans constitute about a quarter of Toledo’s population of nearly 300,000 in a metropolitan area of approximately 700,000. Toledo provides a terrific space to study sustainable development and environmental justice. The city is right in the middle of the old industrial rust belt. After formally being the “glass capital of the world” and subsequently a leading manufacturing center, particularly in association with the Big Three automotive producers, the decline of glass and manufacturing production left Toledo searching for a third act. Federal, state, and local government, as well as the private sector, has invested significantly in capacity-building in the renewable energy sector. Metropolitan Toledo has emerged as one of America’s leading centers for the research, development, and commercialization of renewable energy, particularly photovoltaic and thermal solar. As part of its community engagement, Africana Studies helps inform, prepare, and mobilize black Toledo around a whole new green economic sector that is poised to takeoff. Overall, society will be better off when all communities can effectively collaborate on increasing the number and quality of green collar jobs as well as compete for them.
In addition to gaining careers in association with the renewable energy industry and other sustainable development activities, there are also career opportunities with regard to addressing the lingering environmental injustices from the twentieth century. Not unlike other urban areas, brownfields and noxious facilities in general are disproportionately located in black communities in Toledo. Students will learn the theory and practice of addressing environmental justice.
Numerous opportunities exist for students in the burgeoning green sector. An example is with Green for All, which seeks to assure that all communities, including the most distressed, play critical roles in overhauling the economy with clean technologies. Internship possibilities also exist with the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
With regard to Africa, the continent may have the smallest carbon footprint, but it suffers the most from climatic shocks. The growing season and agricultural yields are both being reduced due to environmental changes triggered primarily by the industrial West, and more recently by newly emerging industrial powers. Students will have an opportunity to engage African sustainable development and environmental justice issues in some of the leading institutions on the continent that were founded to alleviate poverty in Africa and end the continent’s marginalization in the global economy. Opportunities are available for students to do fieldwork on environmental and other development issues at universities with whom the Africana Studies program has relationships, particularly in southern Africa. Relationships are being established with the following South African universities to support student and faculty exchanges and meaningful study abroad opportunities: University of Witswatersrand, the University of Pretoria, the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and the University of South Africa.
Students can consider international internships and subsequently career opportunities with institutions such as: the United Nations Environment Program and the Green Belt Movement founded by Wangari Maathai, winner of the first Nobel Peace Prize awarded for environmentalism With a focus on sustainable development and environmental justice, the Africana Studies program at the University of Toledo uniquely helps prepare students for important and rewarding leadership positions in environmentally-oriented careers in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.
Some of the available courses include: Environmental Inequality; Environmentalism in Urban Communities; Environmental Justice; and Women and the Environment in Africa.