Our Shared Story

In the Rapids: Launching the Environment Initiative

Nestled amongst the verdant forests and wild rivers of the Pacific Northwest’s storied Willamette Valley, the University of Oregon is distinguished by its institution-wide commitment to advancing community-centered climate solutions. This commitment is manifest in UO’s robust record of interdisciplinary engagement with cutting-edge environmental challenges — across every corner of the university, budding scholars, seasoned experts, and concerned community members are focusing their work on addressing the impacts of climate change.

Seeking to expand and accelerate the impact of this critical work, UO in 2021 launched the first-of-its-kind Environment Initiative (EI) as an active hub for supporting student researchers, faculty specialists, and climate-impacted communities in collaboratively pursuing a more just and livable future for all.

The EI started with a broad campus and community engagement process through which participants identified several thematic priorities:

• Ecology, Systems, and the Designed Environment
• Energy and Decarbonization
• Environmental Entrepreneurship and Circular Economies
• Hazards and Resilience
• Indigenous Ecological Knowledge and Sovereignty
• Natural Climate Solutions, Restoration, and Biodiversity
• Social Change through Environmental Education and Communication
• Water Futures, Lifeways, and Sustainable Systems

Underpinning each of these community-identified priorities was the understanding that any meaningful response to climate change must center environmental justice, consistently and unequivocally. To honor and codify that fundamental understanding, the EI developed a set of Guiding Principles, committing to being:

• Transdisciplinary and innovative in building opportunities for teaching, research, and service centered around climate solutions and environment and sustainability related topics;
• Policy-relevant, data-driven, and evidence-based by doing applied work that translates to decision-makers in government, industry, and communities;
• Rooted in and focused on the issue of equity and environmental justice, adding and amplifying voices in the conversation, including through work directly with or within diverse communities, especially Indigenous, Black, Latinx, LGBTQ+, and other underserved communities;
• Responsive to the needs of local communities, Tribal nations, the state, and eco-region, and beyond; and
• Tied to direct student outcomes, experiential learning offerings, and new ways of thinking about professional pathways for a changing world.

Through the structure provided by its thematic priorities and Guiding Principles, the EI became a catalyst for climate solution-building across and beyond campus. It launched a faculty fellowship program to promote innovation in areas from sustainable design to environmental education; championed an institutional hiring process that added nearly two dozen renowned changemakers to UO’s faculty body; awarded seed funding to cultivate new climate-focused programs in technology, economics, transportation, and leadership; and supported community-centered projects from environmental justice storytelling events to disaster preparedness initiatives.