Photo courtesy of Joanna Chattman. Student research projects were put on display during a poster session in the Kendade Hall atrium.
By Sarah Grinnell ’26
Staff Writer
From April 13 to 15, the Miller Worley Center for the Environment hosted the Summit on Women’s Leadership in Climate Justice, a three day series of panels and events engaging Mount Holyoke students, faculty, staff, alumni and community members in meaningful dialogue on the environmental stewardship of women.
Mount Holyoke advertised the event as “a welcoming space for all genders and nonbinary people seeking to celebrate the accomplishments and vision of women in the field of climate justice.” The summit offered a wide variety of events, such as a networking reception, a Sustainable Development Goals lab in partnership with the Foundation for Environmental Stewardship, and presentation of student posters and research projects. There were also panels by global and local voices in the field, such as Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, Kat Cadungog and Tamara Toles O’Laughlin, on topics ranging from “climate refugees and migration, the built environment, innovation in sustainability and the need for arts and humanities in the climate movement.”
The summit was unique in its hybrid format, with some speakers and attendees participating virtually. Hayhoe, for example, gave her keynote address over Zoom, explaining to the audience that she discovered “the largest part of my personal carbon footprint was flying to scientific meetings to study and talk about climate change.” Hayhoe has since transitioned many of her talks to a virtual format. She noted “in all of those 12 years, I have only once received an invitation that specifically asked me to be virtual and ask the other speakers to be virtual in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That invitation was this one,” going on to commend Mount Holyoke for “setting an example and … encouraging other people to not only talk the talk, but to walk the walk as well.”
At the introductory event on Thursday, Dr. Olivia Aguilar, Leslie and Sarah Miller Director of the Miller Worley Center for the Environment and Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, offered opening remarks on the summit, which she first proposed to Interim President Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum in August of 2023.
“After attending numerous conferences and talks on climate change, I started to realize that there was a gap in the story we’re telling … I was seeing activist panels predominantly comprised of women, while expert panels were predominantly comprised of men,” she said. In an interview with MHN, Aguilar reflected on the summit, and said, “I think the important thing that this summit does is lift up voices that are often behind the scenes or are overlooked in the field, both women and non-binary people … while women and marginalized groups will be the people most impacted by the climate crisis they are often the ones with the most innovative and holistic solutions that involve climate justice.”
Climate justice was naturally a major focus of the summit. As Aguilar said in her speech, “when we talk about the climate crisis, we must also talk about the deeply rooted injustices that have given rise to the crisis.” “If we … understand that living conditions are already unviable for many communities due to the burden of systemic racism or other forms of discrimination, we can see how climate work is also racial justice work. It’s human rights work, it’s equity and inclusion work,” she explained.
Hayhoe expanded on these inequalities in her keynote address, expressing how, “climate change affects all of us, but it doesn’t affect us all equally.” Namely, Hayhoe described how “study after study after study shows that, especially in low-income countries, but even right here where we live, climate change affects women more than it does men.” For example, Hayhoe mentioned that women are more likely to “experience poverty and have less socioeconomic power” and face “greater risk of displacement, [and] higher odds of being injured or killed during a natural disaster.” Furthermore, in countries like Malawi, the financial strain resulting from droughts can “precipitate early marriages,” and floods can “force last resort prostitution as women struggle to make ends meet.” Women, especially single mothers, “depend on community networks that fail during a disaster,” making them more vulnerable to the effects of climate change, Hayhoe explained.
Hayhoe went on to uplift the achievements of women and their active engagement in finding solutions to these climate-induced injustices, from the work of the Nature Conservancy in Papua New Guinea, where women-led communities are working to restore mangrove forests that take carbon out of the atmosphere, to Solar Sister, an organization “transforming the lives of women in Sub-Saharan Africa through empowering women and entrepreneurs to sell solar energy products.” She emphasized the importance of the education of women and girls as “a climate solution,” as it equips them to “face the impacts of climate change.”
“Young women are leading the climate protests,” Hayhoe explained. “Guess who leads the global climate talks?” she asked, citing Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and her vital role in sealing the Paris Agreement.
Attendees were able to see the values of the summit put into action during the showcase of research done by students from Mount Holyoke and other colleges. A diverse range of projects were on display in the Kendade Atrium. Charlotte Cai ’24, for example, presented her work with the Williams Mystic Program and the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indigenous tribe in Louisiana, focusing on bringing Indigenous knowledge to the forefront of youth STEM education. Sohini Bhatia ’23 completed a project that was born out of her hometown, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and the Kariakoo market, aiming to redesign the space to improve food stability and promote sustainable food practices in urban agriculture. Linh Mai ’23 presented a design for a net-zero building, which combined traditional Vietnamese architecture with global building tactics. Mai’s design sought to battle issues of cultural erosion in Vietnam and improve the sustainability of the building sector. Aguilar, who was an advisor for three students involved in the event, called the poster session “an inspiring event.”
“We work as a small community and over the course of the semester I’ve tried to emphasize the fact that community is necessary, particularly when we want to accomplish big things. This was also the message of our main keynote speakers,” Aguilar explained. “Seeing all of the various projects and knowing that students are working on similar issues helps to remind us that we are not alone in this work,” she said.
The student projects, and the summit in general, affirm Hayhoe’s belief about the trailblazing importance of womens’ education in environmental issues, as well as Aguilar’s emphasis on the representation of diverse voices in the fight for climate justice.
“Many people are still conditioned to see and hear expertise and expert opinion from certain voices and certain bodies,” Aguilar said in her speech on Thursday “But I’d like for us to change this” with the voices of these students and “women and gender diverse people” in general “of all races and ethnicities of various religious affiliations from rural areas and from urban areas for opposite ends of socioeconomic backgrounds have been doing this work.” For Mount Holyoke College, the summit was one step toward increasing the recognition of these voices in the ongoing fight against climate change.