A Path Towards Social-Ecological Justice

When thinking about this question my mind initially went down a more mechanistic route to attempt to achieve social-ecological justice. In the past, very important and often marginalized communities haven’t had their voices heard or even acknowledged when talking about environmental changes. To counter this I think that within every geographic area, representatives of each community/sector (coastal, First Nations, government, etc.) should be brought together, almost in a panel, to discuss changes being made to that geographic area before any of the proposed changes are made. Only once everyone has been sufficiently heard out should decisions be allowed to be made and voted upon. This idea of a panel does bring up the question of whether or not the seats should be representative of the population size of each community/sector or if each should evenly get 2-5 spots or something (depending on how large we want this panel to be). That’s a difficult question to answer when talking generally as each geographical area will have different distributions of different people. Nevertheless, I think it'd be good to form some overarching legislative body with the intention of protecting our environment and acknowledging the people who live and work within these environments. Semantics aside of how this panel works and how it’s formed, the reason I believe this kind of thing is so important is to get a discussion going about important environmental matters and having an inclusive conversation with a broad range of people. While I've proposed this panel of sorts, my ideal future involving social-ecological justice stems from a desire for accessible, open, communication around ecological sustainability within our communities #UnleashValues