The Houston Endowment awarded a $1.25 million grant to support establishment of the Robert D. Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice (CECJ) at Texas Southern University in Houston. The center, named for Dr. Robert D. Bullard, TSU’s distinguished professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy, will assist and support underrepresented and marginalized populations to build healthy, sustainable and resilient communities in the era of climate change. Faith-based, social justice and other related institutions will receive guidance through CECJ’s equity and racial justice mission to drive environmental and climate-related education, research, policy and civic engagement. Bullard began his environmental and racial justice work as a young sociologist at TSU in the late 1970s before environmental justice had a name. “We are really excited about the Houston Endowment grant and the creation of a new center to expand our work that intersects environmental, climate, economic, health and racial justice – work that began in Houston more than four decades ago,” said Dr. Bullard, known by many as the “father of environmental justice.”
Bullard and his interdisciplinary team of researchers, health scientists, policy and community engagement experts in the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs plan an intense fund raising campaign over the next six months to leverage the $1.25 million into at minimum a $10-million endowed center to support local, multi-state, national and international environmental and climate justice work led by Black Americans and other people of color. The Center will work closely with the HBCU Climate Change Consortium, Gulf Coast HBCU-CBO Equity Consortium, and the National Black Environmental Justice Network, organizations Dr. Bullard helped found and currently serve as co-chair.
In December 2020, professor Bullard was honored by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) with it’s Champions of the Earth Lifetime Achievement Award, the UN’s highest environmental honor, recognizes outstanding leaders from government, civil society and the private sector whose actions have a transformative impact on the environment.
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