The Environmental Justice in Tech Project started as a series of conversations between environmental hackathon organizers, environmental justice activists, and technologists. In 2021, Earth Hacks worked with a group of partners to create The Environmental Justice In Tech Blueprint, meant to be a first step in exploring these themes with our hacker community as the audience.
Since then, we have learned more and interacted with people and organizations from a variety of backgrounds and experiences. We recognize that we are not the first, nor the only, people to engage with these issues, and that we are one thread in a global tapestry of knowledge. We welcome constructive criticism, feedback, and dialogue about our resources, including any shortcomings or unintentional exclusion.
Program goals:
To unlock transformative visions for the future.
To drive an environmental justice-focused culture shift in the technology space.
To educate the next generation of scientists and engineers, and equip them with an environmental justice perspective.
To articulate tensions between the environmental justice and technology spaces.
As a direct or indirect result of the environmental justice in tech project and those who contribute to it and learn from it, we hope that within 20 years it should be commonplace for environmental justice principles to take center stage in tech projects, and for projects that do not incorporate these principles to be seen as backwards-looking and unsustainable, or unsuitable for human progress.
Of course, we recognize that given the long and painful history of technology development at the expense of people and planet, and violent industries such as the military industrial complex and oil and gas companies, a complete shift within 20 years will not be entirely possible across the whole world. However, it should be significant enough to be noticeable even to people who have not interacted directly with this work.