CIEJ - Home

Center for Interdisciplinary Environmental Justice

CIEJ a collective of activists, academics, scientists, and artists working for decolonial environmental justice efforts trans-locally. Our members are in San Diego, CA, San Francisco, CA, El Paso, TX, and Guerrero, MX.

We align ourselves with Indigenous struggles for land, water, and life. These take many forms in many places but are connected through resistance to capitalist/colonial extractivism and restoration of land relations. In the San Diego-Tijuana border region, we stand with the Kumeyaay Nation to protect the last undisturbed stretch of the San Diego River from sand mining and to protect sacred burial grounds from border wall construction/destruction. In Andean Altiplano, we stand with Lickan Antay and Kolla communities to protect ancient groundwater from mining for renewable energy technologies.

We urge the climate movement to build genuine climate solutions that do not continue exploiting Indigenous land but rather heal our relationships with each other and with the planet.

As part of San Diego's 17th Annual Enero Zapatista Month-long Series of Events,
we are hosting the following event:

Our Work

Anti-Lithium Mining

We work with Indigenous communities across the Chilean/Argentinian borders to fight against lithium-mining extraction.

Coalitions

We are working with organizations, networks, and groups across political struggles to foment larger movements against racial capitalism, colonialism, and heteropatriachy.

Decolonial Feminist Science

We create spaces of learning and horizontal dialogue that strengthens the utility of climatology, geology, marine science, and biochemistry for movement work. We utilize and repurpose our access to scientific knowledge, methods, and laboratories in service of Indigenous land/water sovereignty.

Currently At Work

We're writing and talking with climate and environmental organizations--
look out for new statements in a few weeks!

In the meantime, check out the readings under Resources, including our article No Comemos Baterias: Solidarity Science Against False Climate Change Solutions and A Just(ice) Transition is a Post-Extractive Transition: Centering the Extractive Frontier in Climate Justice, a report by London Mining Watch and War on Want.