Environmental Justice Minor
The minor in Environmental Justice (EJ) focuses on the intersections of inequity, the environment, and justice. The minor introduces the field’s historical foundations in scholarship on race, inequity, and social movements with of focus on their relation to environmental concerns and provides an overview of environmental justice movement work and literature from local to global scales. The goal of the minor is to provide a starting-point for understanding the meaning, significance, and potential of environmental justice as a field of action and inquiry in relation to questions of development and social difference, and in various geographic contexts. Students who complete the minor will engage with an interdisciplinary curriculum that emphasizes intersecting ideas about landscapes, ecosystems, and environmental health with questions of race, economic production, and power inequities. Students will also use geographic approaches to space, place, and scale to conceptualize, contextualize, and analyze a wide range of environmental justice related topics, and learn about tools and political processes that can be used to address environmental justice concerns. Relevant topics include, for example, the uneven social experiences with food, water, health and land access; exposures to pollution; risks to health and wellbeing; infrastructural inequities; resource extraction; colonization; and climate change.
Required courses provide an introduction to EJ and build insight into how different people, in different contexts, have looked to environmental justice framing and practices for inspiration in social and community movements, justice-oriented governance, formal state and inter-state regulatory bodies, and planning for environmental change.
Requirements
In addition to the program requirements listed below, students must:
- take at least nine hours of their minor "core" requirements at UNC–Chapel Hill
- earn a minimum cumulative GPA of 2.000 in the minor core requirements. Some programs may require higher standards for minor or specific courses.
For more information, please consult the degree requirements section of the catalog.
A minimum of 4 courses (12 credit hours) is required to complete the minor.
Code | Title | Hours |
---|---|---|
Core Requirements | ||
GEOG 240 | Introduction to Environmental Justice | 3 |
GEOG 435 | 3 | |
One elective course from List One (see below) | 3 | |
One elective course from either List One or List Two (see below) | 3 | |
Total Hours | 12 |
List One
Code | Title | Hours |
---|---|---|
GEOG 125 | Cultural Landscapes | 3 |
GEOG 232 | 3 | |
GEOG 259 | 3 | |
GEOG 262 | Geography of North Carolina | 3 |
GEOG 266 | 3 | |
GEOG 281 | Ethnographies of Globalization: From 'Culture' to Decolonization | 3 |
GEOG 414 | 3 | |
GEOG 436 | Governance, Institutions, and Global Environmental Change | 3 |
GEOG 437 | 3 | |
GEOG 446 | Geography of Health Care Delivery | 3 |
GEOG 451 | 3 | |
GEOG 457 | 3 | |
GEOG 470 | 3 | |
GEOG 480 | Liberation Geographies | 3 |
GEOG 542 | Neighborhoods and Health | 3 |
ANTH 335 | The Commons, Ecology, and Human Futures | 3 |
ANTH 439 | 3 | |
ANTH 446 | Poverty, Inequality, and Health | 3 |
ANTH 539 | 3 | |
ANTH 540 | Planetary Crises and Ecological and Cultural Transitions | 3 |
PHIL 273 | 3 | |
PHIL 274 | 3 | |
PHIL/ENEC 368 | 3 | |
SOCI 122 | 3 | |
SOCI 421 | Environmental Sociology | 3 |
H | Honors version available. An honors course fulfills the same requirements as the nonhonors version of that course. Enrollment and GPA restrictions may apply. |
List Two
Code | Title | Hours |
---|---|---|
AAAD/POLI 333 | 3 | |
ANTH/ENEC 237 | 3 | |
ANTH 306 | Water and Inequality: Anthropological Perspectives | 3 |
COMM 375 | Environmental Advocacy | 3 |
ENEC 325 | 3-4 | |
ENEC 309 | Environmental Values and Valuation | 3 |
ENEC 350 | 3 | |
MEJO 560 | Environmental and Science Journalism H | 3 |
MEJO 562 | Environmental and Science Documentary Television | 3 |
HIST 235 | 3 | |
HIST 241 | 3 | |
HIST 273 | 3 | |
HIST 382 | 3 | |
PHIL 280 | 3 | |
PHIL 364 | 3 | |
SOCI 411 | Social Movements | 3 |
H | Honors version available. An honors course fulfills the same requirements as the nonhonors version of that course. Enrollment and GPA restrictions may apply. |
See the program page here for special opportunities.
Department Programs
Major
Minor
- Climate Change Minor
- Environmental Justice Minor
- Geography Minor
- Geographic Information Sciences Minor
Graduate Programs
Department of Geography and Environment
205 Carolina Hall, CB# 3220
(919) 962-8901