On the Syllabus: New Solutions to the Climate Crisis

The Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community is often lumped together as a monolithic group, but in actuality, it is vast and diverse. With different needs, cultures, religions, and histories, the community represents over 30 countries and ethnic groups that speak over 100 languages.  

But from Fiji and the Marshall Islands to Japan and across East and Southeast Asia, one thing unites many of these communities—the impact of climate change and environmental degradation. The Asia-Pacific region, home to more than 60 percent of the world’s population, is disproportionately affected by ecological catastrophes, be it sea level rise, ocean pollution, coastal erosion, or biodiversity loss. Many AAPI communities are now facing threats to their physical and cultural survival. 

This reality is fueling a new effort at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. The three-year initiative, supported by the Mellon Foundation, will establish an interdisciplinary Environmental Humanities Environmental Justice (EHEJ) cluster at the university centered on AAPI communities. Grant activities will include hiring faculty, creating a forum for knowledge exchange and a professional development group for students and young faculty, and working with community partners to develop curricula on the connections among America, Asia, and Oceania and on the importance of the humanities in seeking environmental justice. 

“Climate change impacts are already present in everyday life. They are driving politics. They are driving family-level decisions. They are driving young people’s concerns about their own futures and the future of their ancestral homelands or their current homelands,” says Alexander Mawyer, a project lead and associate professor and director of the Center for Pacific Islands Studies at UH Mānoa. “Because many East and Southeast Asian communities are also already profoundly experiencing climate change hazards and impacts, there is a bridge between the experiences and thought spaces of our Pacific Islander American communities and our Asian American communities, which our project will allow our students to explore.”  

As one of the most diverse campuses in the country, located at the crossroads of Asia and the Pacific, UH Mānoa is well placed to carry out this work. Across the UH system, more than 50 percent of students and 46 percent of faculty identify as Asian, Asian American, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander. The university also has a long history of engagement with the region and AAPI communities. 

“America looks really different when you’re looking at it from Hawai‘i because of its history and because we are not just talking about Asia and the Pacific, we are part of it, both from our location and from the communities that we serve,” says Cathryn Hope Clayton, associate professor and chair of the Asian Studies Department ​at the university, who will also helm the project. This initiative is “continuing something that we’ve been doing for a long time, but taking it in a new direction and trying to institutionalize it in new ways that will make it more transformative.” 

The field of environmental humanities uses literature, history, philosophy, and other humanities disciplines to address environmental problems such as climate change. As this initiative grapples with these issues in the Asia-Pacific region, it is trying to advance the humanities field toward environmental justice—where everyone has access to the same environmental protections and benefits and meaningful involvement in its solutions—for AAPI students and communities. 

These two things, environmental humanities and justice, are inextricably connected, says Clayton. Inequities in how climate change is experienced often map onto other kinds of inequities. So, finding solutions to these environmental concerns first requires understanding things such as who is hardest hit by these problems and why and what kinds of specific issues they are facing. Simply stated, studying humanities disciplines like history can help advance future solutions that are just and informed. 

“This unique endeavor bridges three distinct yet interconnected fields: environmental justice, environmental humanities, and social justice,” says Gaye Chan, interim associate dean of the university’s College of Arts, Languages, and Letters. “This project will foster meaningful dialogue between scholars and organizers, creating a platform for cutting-edge research that directly addresses these on-the-ground challenges.” 

With climate change and other environmental crises worsening, these innovative, nuanced, and effective solutions are needed more urgently than ever. However, despite the AAPI community being the fastest-growing racial group in the country, they are often left out of or marginalized in conversations and spaces around environmental solutions.  

This isn’t due to the community’s lack of interest or civic and political engagement, though. A 2012 National Asian American Survey showed that 70 percent of Asian Americans consider themselves to be environmentalists, compared to the national average of 41 percent. More recently, nearly 70 percent of Asian American voters surveyed in a poll agreed that Congress and the president should pass stronger legislation to combat climate change. 

“When you look at the environmental movement, you don’t see or hear those voices,” says Clayton. “We need to hear from the range of Americans about these topics, which means understanding the diversity of ideas and experiences and potential solutions that they bring with them.” 

By engaging AAPI scholars and local AAPI organizations in one place, the initiative is working to integrate the experiences and perspectives of the diaspora to boost their resilience and responses to climate change and other pressing environmental issues. In the process, it is also breaking down barriers between the university and its surrounding communities.  

“This justice angle for our students today—it’s ground zero. These are communities that are least responsible for all of these hazard drivers, but they’re most impacted,” says Mawyer.   

Through the new EHEJ cluster, the initiative will hire more professors in these areas and create a knowledge hub that will engage faculty, students, and others to share research, ideas, and solutions. New learning materials will also be created as part of the hub as well as greater professional development and networking opportunities for students from these communities. Due to the university’s far geographic distance from the continental US, it can be harder for students to access professional networks, mentorship, and support systems. 

Building bridges lies at the heart of this project—bridges between environmental conservation, sustainability sciences, social sciences, and the humanities, across departments doing this work at the university, and among AAPI communities. While tackling these issues at the transregional level, instead of locally, nationally, or globally, is no easy task, those behind the initiative are optimistic.  

“We hope the project can highlight shared historical legacies, conceptual vocabularies, and perspectives on what environmental justice means and looks like, across these diverse but interconnected regions, that can in turn illuminate new ways of addressing some of these problems, rather than focusing on individual communities or nation-states,” says Clayton. “I think that’s one of the most exciting things.”