COP27’s Newest Headliner: Environmental Justice

As the U.N.’s COP27 conference wraps up, we encourage decision-makers to shift their focus to equity-centered solutions such as local clean energy workforce development and training. Governments and businesses can then financially invest in local communities of color after years of colonialism and environmental racism. In this way, those most likely to be impacted will see financial benefits from climate policy. The same way corporations do.

Environmental justice must be at the forefront of every conversation about climate change.

What’s Wrong With This Picture? (COP27 Edition!)

Running from Nov. 6-18, the United Nations COP27 conference brings together political leaders and representatives from 190 countries to discuss climate-related topics including climate change adaptation, climate finance, decarbonization, agriculture and biodiversity.

And from the looks of the photos emerging already from day one, women’s representation at COP27 is practically nonexistent.

The Eyes of the World Are on Iran

He is in Tehran. I am in Baltimore. The separation is unbearable. Right now, I don’t even want an answer. I want a sign that means he’s alive, that he’s not dead, that the internet has been restored, that he hasn’t been arrested or beaten.

The death of the 22-year-old Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, at the hands of the “morality police” hasn’t just sparked spontaneous protests—it’s countrywide. Women are removing their headscarves and burning them because they are tired of being told what to do with their bodies. Men cheer them on, and some block the fists and batons crashing down on their sisters.

The Desperate Effort to Silence Iranian Feminists

Protests have raging across Iran over the last week after the death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman in the custody of the Islamic Republic’s morality police due to her defiance against the strict dress code. The country’s desperate effort to silence Iranian feminists has taken the form of violent responses and crackdowns of both in-person demonstrations and online activism.

Ukrainian Women on the Front Lines

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, war crimes fill the news, political dialogue seems hopeless and 7 million refugees—at least 90 percent of whom are women and children—have fled across the borders into Europe.

Still, resistance blossoms in Ukraine from a generation that’s enjoyed relative freedom and democracy. The way forward in Ukraine—and elsewhere—is through people power.