Photo courtesy of Audrey Brecher '26. From left to right, Lei Hsin '26, Lily Nemirovsky '24, and Professors Surprise, Cifuentes, Darrow and Dinko pose for a photo after the panel's conclusion.
By Sarah Grinnell ’26
Science and Environment Editor
When the Panel on the Intersection of Climate Change and Conflict kicked off with Professor Kevin Surprise jokingly thanking the audience “for coming to spend an afternoon to talk about just a really light-hearted and joyful topic,” the tone was set for timely environmental issues.
Hosted by the Mount Holyoke Climate Justice Coalition on Feb. 26 in Hooker Auditorium, the talks by Mount Holyoke College Professors Surprise, Sylvia Cifuentes, Dinko Hanaan Dinko and Robert Darrow discussed the militarization of climate change, indigenous activism in Amazonia, climate change’s impacts on development in the Sahel and a critique of scholarly theories about environmental politics.
During the hour and a half of presentations, followed by a Q-and-A, attendees were both educated on topical environmental issues as well as encouraged to find ways to take the conversation beyond the auditorium.
Professor Surprise, lecturer in environmental studies, was the first to speak, overviewing the militarization of the climate crisis and how conflict, war and imperialism all drive climate change. Surprise cited the “significant carbon footprint of war” and how framing the climate crisis as a national security issue allows for the justification of anti-immigration policy.
Cifuentes, assistant professor of environmental and social equity and justice, followed with a presentation on environmental conflict in Amazonia — a region in South America. Cifuentes cited Colombia and Brazil as having the highest number of lethal attacks against land and environmental defenders in the world, with Indigenous people being among the most at-risk. Cifuentes emphasized environmental activism in Amazonia as a matter of “territorial defense,” stressing the importance of uplifting Indigenous leaders in the fight against climate change.
Next to speak was Assistant Professor of Geography Dinko, whose talk focused on climate change’s effects on development in the Sahel. Dinko asserted that “climate change should not be considered as a danger by itself, rather considered a danger because of the lived experiences of people” in the way that it “shocks” social and economic conditions.
Visiting Instructor in Politics Professor Darrow closed with an overview of different scholarly theories about environmental politics, their implications and how they can translate into campus activism. Criticizing the view of climate change as either an individual or collective issue, Darrow argued for the importance of building mutually beneficial coalitions opposed to pitting interests against each other.
Reflecting on the event in an interview with the Mount Holyoke News, Lei Hsin ’26, one of the co-organizers of the event, spoke to the particular importance of giving space to the issues thatCifuentes and Dinko raised.
“[T]he U.S. can be isolationist with the climate change contributions it perpetuates, as well as what kind of climate change effects there are domestically in the U.S.,” Hsin said. “Those perspectives really offered the fact that this is a struggle that is felt at disproportionate degrees in the Global South.”
Hsin’s point about the importance of highlighting marginalized experiences within the climate crisis spoke to the panel’s overarching emphasis on the tightly bound intersections of racial, economic, political and environmental issues. Darrow also elaborated on this in an interview with Mount Holyoke News.
“If we don't see how environmental harms are connected with social harms, then we're kind of misunderstanding the problem,” Darrow explained, discussing how environmental policy tends to divide rather than unite constituencies, isolating social, economic, racial and environmental issues as separate interests.
Hsin offered a similar outlook, echoing points made in Surprise’s presentation. “Climate change is less so seen as a holistic issue that influences and is influenced by things like conflict. And I think increasingly with climate migration and racism and tightening of borders, it's so essential to see climate change as an aspect of every social issue,” she said.
Following the panelists’ presentations, students discussed ways to build a sustainable community at Mount Holyoke College and find optimism in dire environmental circumstances. As Darrow explained during the panel, to take an ecological approach means to “bring politics back down to earth” and to “re-embed it in local communities.”
“I think ecology is a science of relationships. And . . . to build strong ecosystems, you need to have thick webs, networks of relationships,” Darrow said.
According to Darrow, finding ways to spur local action is key to maintaining hope in the possibility of change. Darrow used the example of Varshini Prakash, a University of Massachusetts Amherst alumni whose on-campus activism eventually helped spawn the Sunrise Movement — a climate justice organization led by young people that has played a large role in advocating for the Green New Deal, according to the movement’s website.
Considering Prakash’s trajectory from on-campus activism to influencing national policy, Darrow said, “I think we don't need to be dreaming up grand solutions of how we are going to solve everything for all times. We don't need ultimate solutions. What we just need is little, small, practical actions. And I think all of those little, small, practical actions can add up. Especially if we're working collectively.”
In an interview with the Mount Holyoke News, Lily Nemirovky ’24, president of the MHCJC and the other organizer of the event, said that students’ response is what marked the success of the event. Nemirovsky explained, “I think it was really helpful not just to have the professors speaking to the students, but also to hear back from the students. And it was almost like a dialogue between the students and the participants.”
Nemirvosky’s words indicate that the panel was successful in beginning to move students and faculty from speaking about change to forging a stronger “habitat” here at Mount Holyoke, one cognizant of the interconnectedness of the issues weighing on our time that community through activism must be the means to fighting.
A suitable question for attendees and readers alike, therefore, lies in Darrow’s question: “What kind of habitat do we want to have here at Mount Holyoke?”