California State University, San Marcos
IN-48: Innovation B

Inclusive sustainability is a transformative example of innovation and investment connecting inclusive excellence and sustainability. When we can think about environmental justice as a social justice issue, we can begin to understand the complexities of marginalized and vulnerable communities. It is important to consider, many of our students come to CSUSM with a personal narrative that reflects years of environmental and social justice struggles. This initiative seeks to place students at the center of their lived experience and give them tools and access to be leaders combating some of these struggles we are currently facing as a society. We are striving to ensure our students and the wider CSUSM community can live socially just lives within our ecological limits.

UC Santa Cruz faculty in collaboration with the People of Color Sustainability Collective (PoCSC) coined the term and defined inclusive sustainability as the recognition, celebration, and validation of diverse understandings and expressions of sustainability. CSUSM has built upon what UCSC developed and currently views inclusive sustainability as a transformational framework that connects social justice and sustainability by placing student/academic success at the center while addressing holistic wellness, safeguarding environmentally sound practices, ensuring socially just communities and seeks to identify inequities for current and future generations.

Structurally, Inclusive Sustainability is a shared initiative of the OIE and SH&S. Currently, the Sustainability Manager, Juliana Goodlaw-Morris and the Assistant Director of Programs and Initiatives within OIE, Ariel Stevenson are collaborating on the Inclusive Sustainability Program. Each office brings in cohorts of students and draws on faculty for ad-hoc campus-wide efforts. The collaborative work out of these two offices has resulted in consecutive California Higher Education Sustainability awards for social equity and justice in sustainability at CSUSM in 2019 and 2020. The ongoing joint efforts are intended to meet the dual challenges of systemic racism and climate change on behalf of students, yet lack a centralized office and mission for launching, coordinating and sustaining these efforts.