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 |  Global Environmental Justice | 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 | Agriculture, Food, and Society | 3 |
| GEOG 259 | Society and Environment in Latin America | 3 |
| GEOG 262 | Geography of North Carolina | 3 |
| GEOG 266 | Society and Environment in Southeast Asia | 3 |
| GEOG 281 | Ethnographies of Globalization: From 'Culture' to Decolonization | 3 |
| GEOG 414 | Climate Change | 3 |
| GEOG 436 | Governance, Institutions, and Global Environmental Change | 3 |
| GEOG 437 | Social Vulnerability to Climate Change | 3 |
| GEOG 446 | Geography of Health Care Delivery | 3 |
| GEOG 451 | Population, Development, and the Environment | 3 |
| GEOG 457 | Rural Latin America: Agriculture, Environment, and Natural Resources H | 3 |
| GEOG 470 | Political Ecology: Geographical Perspectives | 3 |
| GEOG 480 | Liberation Geographies | 3 |
| GEOG 542 | Neighborhoods and Health | 3 |
| AMST 351 | Global Waters, American Impacts, and Critical Connections | 3 |
| ANTH 335 | The Commons, Ecology, and Human Futures | 3 |
| ANTH 439 | Political Ecology | 3 |
| ANTH 446 | Poverty, Inequality, and Health | 3 |
| ANTH 539 | Environmental Justice | 3 |
| ANTH 540 | Planetary Crises and Ecological and Cultural Transitions | 3 |
| PHIL 273 | Justice, Rights, and the Common Good: Philosophical Perspectives on Social and Economic Issues H | 3 |
| PHIL 274 | Race, Racism, and Social Justice: African-American Political Philosophy H | 3 |
| PHIL/ENEC 368 | Living Things, Wilderness, and Ecosystems: An Introduction to Environmental Ethics | 3 |
| SOCI 122 | Race and Ethnicity | 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 | Race and Public Policy in the United States | 3 |
| ANTH/ENEC 237 | Food, Environment, and Sustainability | 3 |
| ANTH 306 | Water and Inequality: Anthropological Perspectives | 3 |
| COMM 375 | Environmental Advocacy | 3 |
| ENEC 325 | Water Resource Management and Human Rights H | 3-4 |
| ENEC 309 | Environmental Values and Valuation | 3 |
| ENEC 350 | Environmental Law and Policy | 3 |
| MEJO 560 | Environmental and Science Journalism H | 3 |
| MEJO 562 | Environmental and Science Documentary Television | 3 |
| HIST 235 | Native America in the 20th Century | 3 |
| HIST 241 | History of Latinos in the United States | 3 |
| HIST 273 | Water, Conflict, and Connection in the Middle East | 3 |
| HIST 382 | The History of the Civil Rights Movement H | 3 |
| PHIL 280 | Morality, Law, and Justice: Issues in Legal Philosophy H | 3 |
| PHIL 364 | Ethics and Economics | 3 |
| SOCI 411 | Social Movements | 3 |
| or SOCI 413 | Social Movements, Experiential | |
| 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.
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