Environmental Justice in Theory and Practice
Amsterdam, Netherlands
DURATION
1 Weeks
LANGUAGES
English
PACE
Full time
APPLICATION DEADLINE
15 May 2025
EARLIEST START DATE
21 Jul 2025
TUITION FEES
EUR 545 / per course *
STUDY FORMAT
On-Campus
* VU students
Introduction
How can environmental justice help to achieve an equitable and sustainable future? In this summer school, you will learn how different disciplines address such moral dilemmas and discuss real practice cases from land to oceans and North to South.
This summer course will introduce students to environmental justice from a variety of perspectives. We will engage with philosophical attempts to identify normative standards for what can be considered a just allocation of the benefits and burdens of environmental action. This includes questions such as: Should everybody have equal access to vital ecosystem services? Should rich countries pay for climate change adaptation in poorer countries? If so to what extent? But we will also critically scrutinize the value of philosophical reasoning as an approach to environmental justice. Does philosophy provide us with much needed impartial principles to guide our actions or is it too much of an armchair discipline, removed from what is going on in the ‘real world’? Is listening to stakeholders’ claims and the demands of environmental justice movements and activists a more practically relevant way to make sense of environmental justice? What are their objectives and strategies and how successful are they?
We will also engage with environmental justice aspects of the assessment of impacts of conservation and other environmental policies and interventions. The Intergovernmental Platform of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has well laid out that people hold diverse values for nature, linked to the way they engage with nature and their worldviews. Then how to best assess such values? What are the advantages of expressing such values in monetary terms, and what are the counterarguments? What is the role of environmental economics and socio-cultural studies in assessing values of nature? How can the process of valuation be organized in a such a way that the resulting outcomes are supported by the people whose values are at stake?
Gallery
Admissions
Scholarships and Funding
Equal Access Scholarship
Application Procedure
Application for the Equal Access Scholarship will open in Febraury
Great that you are interested in applying for the Equal Access Scholarship. You can apply to the scholarship between 12 February and 1 April. Please be aware that it is only possible to select one course.
The results of the scholarship selection will be announced in May. Since we have a limited number of scholarships available for a large number of applicants, we suggest - if possible! - to complete your payment at the time of your course application to guarantee your place in the course. However, if you are not able to come without the scholarship, you can just wait until the announcement. If you would like to come, regardless of whether you will be granted the scholarship, it is best to secure your place in the course by completing your payment via our regular application form. If the scholarship is granted to you, the tuition and accommodation fees will be reimbursed.
Deadline to submit your Equal Access Scholarship application: 31 March (23:59 CET).
Requirements
When you apply via the Equal Access Scholarship application form you will be requested to upload the following documents:
- Curriculum Vitae/Résumé (CV) stating your educational background.
- Professional Letter of Reference Including:
- His/her/their experience working with you (either in an academic, professional, or volunteer setting)
- His/her/their motivation for recommending you for the scholarship
- Complete contact information
- His/her/their experience working with you (either in an academic, professional, or volunteer setting)
- His/her/their motivation for recommending you for the scholarship
- Complete contact information
- When filling out the scholarship form, we will ask the following questions*:
- Why are you interested in joining VU Amsterdam Summer School?
- What’s your motivation for selecting this course?
- How you will use the information you learn to make a positive impact in the future for both you and your community?
- Why do you deserve this scholarship?
- Why are you interested in joining VU Amsterdam Summer School?
- What’s your motivation for selecting this course?
- How you will use the information you learn to make a positive impact in the future for both you and your community?
- Why do you deserve this scholarship?
Please stick to a maximum of 150 words per question.
Green Travel Grant
At VU Amsterdam Summer School we are also committed to VU's sustainability goals and we aim to reduce the environmental impact of mobility, and specifically, student travel. Therefore, we are thrilled to offer Green Travel Grants to encourage sustainable travel for students attending our summer school.
Where can I apply?
Once the courses have been confirmed to run in mid-May or June, we will send out a newsletter to our participants with a link where they can apply for either funding for train travel or funding for bus travel.
The application period will last two weeks, and we will select the winners via a lottery system. More information on the specific deadlines can be found in the newsletter we send out in May.
How does it work?
For students to receive the economic compensation they will need to submit their purchased travel tickets via email within two weeks after being selected as winners of the grant. Once the deadline to submit their tickets has passed, the students will receive the reimbursement.
Curriculum
- Concepts and methods of environmental justice
- Urban environments
- Biodiversity and Nature’s Contributions to People
- Global climate change
- Stocktake & outlook
Program Outcome
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Understand different approaches to environmental justice
- Apply environmental justice theories and approaches to case studies
- Assess and evaluate situations of potential environmental injustice
- Work as a team on questions involving personal (normative) judgment.