Environmental Advocacy: The Essentials

Catalog description

All environmental professionals, from conservation biologists to environmental educators, from climate change adaptation professionals to resource managers, need to understand the essentials of effective advocacy. Advocacy has been core to effective environmental outcomes for generations. We will learn through advocacy-based case studies, debates about the ethical role of advocacy relative to one’s career, and exploration of one’s personal relationship to advocacy. Our inquiry into the essentials of advocacy will draw from international scholarship on the nature and efficacy of advocacy. We will also consider how a range of actors, including scientists, environmental professionals, educators, and citizens, engage in effective advocacy for the promotion of positive environmental behavior, resilience, social justice, and sustainability outcomes. We will explore possible scenarios for advocacy in course participants’ own professional and civic engagement and in the organizations, communities, professional and personal networks, and polities with which they engage.