College hosts Summit on Women’s Leadership in Climate Justice

BY SARAH GRINNELL ’26 STAFF WRITER

From April 13 to 15, the Miller Worley Center for the Environment hosted the Summit on Women’s Leadership in Climate Justice, a three day series of panels and events engaging Mount Holyoke students, faculty, staff, alumni and community members in meaningful dialogue on the environmental stewardship of women.

Mount Holyoke advertised the event as “a welcoming space for all genders and nonbinary people seeking to celebrate the accomplishments and vision of women in the field of climate justice.” The summit offered a wide variety of events, such as a networking reception, a Sustainable Development Goals lab in partnership with the Foundation for Environmental Stewardship, and presentation of student posters and research projects. There were also panels by global and local voices in the field, such as Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, Kat Cadungog and Tamara Toles O’Laughlin, on topics ranging from “climate refugees and migration, the built environment, innovation in sustainability and the need for arts and humanities in the climate movement.”

The summit was unique in its hybrid format, with some speakers and attendees participating virtually. Hayhoe, for example, gave her keynote address over Zoom, explaining to the audience that she discovered “the largest part of my personal carbon footprint was flying to scientific meetings to study and talk about climate change.” Hayhoe has since transitioned many of her talks to a virtual format. She noted “in all of those 12 years, I have only once received an invitation that specifically asked me to be virtual and ask the other speakers to be virtual in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That invitation was this one,” going on to commend Mount Holyoke for “setting an example and … encouraging other people to not only talk the talk, but to walk the walk as well.” At the introductory event on Thursday, Dr. Olivia Aguilar, Leslie and Sarah Miller Director of the Miller Worley Center for the Environment and Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, offered opening remarks on the summit, which she first proposed to Interim President Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum in August of 2023.

“After attending numerous conferences and talks on climate change, I started to realize that there was a gap in the story we’re telling … I was seeing activist panels predominantly comprised of women, while expert panels were predominantly comprised of men,” she said.

In an interview with MHN, Aguilar reflected on the summit, and said, “I think the important thing that this summit does is lift up voices that are often behind the scenes or are overlooked in the field, both women and non-binary people … while women and marginalized groups will be the people most impacted by the climate crisis they are often the ones with the most innovative and holistic solutions that involve climate justice.”

Climate justice was naturally a major focus of the summit. As Aguilar said in her speech, “when we talk about the climate crisis, we must also talk about the deeply rooted injustices that have given rise to the crisis.” “If we … understand that living conditions are already unviable for many communities due to the burden of systemic racism or other forms of discrimination, we can see how climate work is also racial justice work. It’s human rights work, it’s equity and inclusion work,” she explained. Hayhoe expanded on these inequalities in her keynote address, expressing how, “climate change affects all of us, but it doesn’t affect us all equally.” Namely, Hayhoe described how “study after study after study shows that, especially in low-income countries, but even right here where we live, climate change affects women more than it does men.” For example, Hayhoe mentioned that women are more likely to “experience poverty and