Environmental Racism and Work in a Warming World

The Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, Canada (CBTU) has joined the Adapting Canadian Work and Workplaces (ACW) research project as a partner organization by launching an action research initiative on Environmental Racism. The destructiveness and speed of climate change is a call to action. CBTU will explore the impact of climate change on racialized communities within Canada. CBTU is a community based organization that gives voice to Black Trade Unionists on issues that impact upon people of African-Canadian descent. www.cbtu.ca ACW is a partnership grant of Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Working with 47 individual researchers and 24 partner organizations in 4 countries, ACW seeks to slow global warming by developing tools to green the workplace and work itself. ACW is Canadian-focused and national in scope. http://www.adaptingcanadianwork.ca/

The CBTU Environmental Racism research project brings a vision of community engagement and mobilization around climate change by drawing Black Trade Unionists, and other racialized communities, into the fight to slow global warming while developing pathways to green jobs.

CBTU is launching a social media campaign, using the hashtag [#EnvRacismCBTUACW], to engage racialized and indigenous communities in the process of discovering what has been written so far about environmental racism in the fight against climate change. Our focus is Canada, but we are including experience from the U.S. or the world if it is relevant to our situation.

We will develop a final bibliography, building upon existing research, which will be used to design a participatory training workshop to engage the community in the struggle to slow climate change and identify pathways to green jobs.