Speaker: Maya Van Rossum, Green Amendments For The Generations

Time: 6pm PT

Location: Hemmingson Auditorium and Live-streaming

Free and Open to the Public

As the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation rise, and we continue to witness as Communities of Color, Indigenous Communities, low income communities and children are placed on the frontlines of environmental pollution and harm, we can no longer rely on federal and state legislation that are designed to accommodate environmental pollution and degradation rather than prevent it. There is a solution: bypass the laws and turn to the ultimate authority—our state and federal constitutions. Green Amendments (now in 3 states with 18 more on the way) provide constitutional recognition of environmental rights as inalienable and give the highest level of legal protection. Learn what a Green Amendment is, what it does, and how it brings transformational change to our US system of laws and governance when it comes to the environment.  Learn how you can be a leader in securing meaningful constitutional environmental rights for your community. 

About the Speaker: Maya is the Founder of Green Amendments For the Generations, a grassroots non-profit inspiring the national movement to secure constitutional recognition and protection of environmental rights in every state and ultimately at the federal level. Maya, a licensed attorney, is the author of numerous publications, including her book The Green Amendment, The People’s Fight For a Clean, Safe & Healthy Environment, now in its second edition, in which she coined and defined the term “Green Amendment”. Maya is also the Delaware Riverkeeper, leading the 4 state, watershed-based advocacy organization, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, for 30 years. She co-hosts Green Genes, an environmental podcast with her daughter. Since launching her Green Amendment movement, New York passed an amendment in 2021, proposals are advancing in 19 additional states, with half a dozen more on the way, and there is increasing use (including with Maya’s assistance) of the Green Amendments that now exist in Pennsylvania, New York and Montana.

Speaker: Anna Marandi, Senior Resilience Planner

Date: Tuesday, September 15

Time: 6pm PT

Location: Hemmingson Auditorium and Live-streaming

Free and Open to the Public

This session will provide an overview of climate-induced migration and mobility in the U.S., with particular attention to what these dynamics mean for communities that may become destinations for people seeking greater safety and stability. In the wake of increasingly severe climate events, including devastating local wildfires, questions of displacement, recovery, welcoming, and community resilience are becoming increasingly interconnected.

The speaker will introduce a simple framework to help residents, practitioners and local leaders understand how climate change may shape who arrives in—or leaves—a community, the challenges and opportunities these shifts present, and how communities can prepare and invest in their capacity to respond. The ensuing community discussion will explore critical questions: Who may be displaced or seek to relocate as climate impacts intensify? What would it take for a community to respond effectively to changing patterns of mobility? What welcoming infrastructure and services would the city or region need to consider? How can local and tribal governments support potential newcomers while enhancing life and livelihoods for existing residents?

The presentation and discussion will offer a starting point for residents and community leaders to consider how climate migration can become part of broader conversations about resilience, planning, and community well-being in the face of uncertainty.

About the Speaker:

Anna Marandi is a climate resilience and mobility practitioner, facilitator, and strategist with more than a decade of experience working with local and state governments, regional entities, Tribes, nonprofits, and federal agencies. Previously, Anna held roles with the National League of Cities and The Pew Charitable Trusts, where she supported community and state resilience efforts. More recently, her work has focused on water and natural resource planning, including leading facilitation for the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan. Her applied research on domestic climate migration has been featured on CNBC and has helped practitioners and local leaders better understand the implications of climate mobility for communities, public services, and preparedness.

A certified movement facilitator and former film and television producer in New York City, Anna brings a distinctive combination of policy expertise, strategic thinking, storytelling, and deep attunement to group dynamics to her work. She is particularly interested in creating spaces where complex questions can be explored in ways that are engaging, grounded, and useful to the people and communities involved.

Date: Wednesday, October 7

Time: 6:00pm PT

Location: The Globe Room, Gonzaga University & Live streaming (link sent day of).

Free and Open to the public

What do local candidates for office think about climate change? How will it affect your vote in November? To aid citizens in their democratic deliberations, Gonzaga’s Institute for Climate, Water, and the Environment is proud to host the Spokane Candidates Climate Change Forum on the first Wednesday each October.

The Climate Forum has been hosted annually since 2019 and is a non-partisan space where candidates for local office can share with local voters and citizens what they would or would not do or support if elected to office.

Speaker: Rachel Kurtz-McAlaine

Date: Thursday, October 22

Time: 6pm PT

Location: Hemmingson Auditorium and Live-streaming

Free and Open to the Public

For decades, environmental law in the United States has operated primarily within a conservation framework that regulates pollution and extraction while continuing to treat the natural world as property for human use. As climate disruption intensifies and biodiversity loss accelerates, this model is increasingly criticized as structurally incapable of preventing ecological harm at its roots. This lecture examines an emerging jurisprudential shift: the movement from protecting nature as an object of regulation to recognizing ecosystems as subjects of legal rights.  Focusing on Rights of Nature as both a legal and philosophical development, the presentation will explore how this framework challenges anthropocentric assumptions embedded in conventional environmental and property law. It asks what follows when rivers, watersheds, forests, and other ecosystems are understood not merely as resources, but as living systems with interests the law should recognize and protect. The lecture will also consider how this shift reframes the relationship between human communities and the natural world, emphasizing that human health, stability, and flourishing are inseparable from the flourishing of the ecosystems on which communities depend.  Alongside developments in Washington State, the talk will situate these questions within a broader global movement, tracing how jurisdictions and communities around the world are advancing new legal approaches to ecological governance. The result is not simply a new environmental doctrine, but a deeper challenge to the assumptions that have long structured modern law.

About the speaker: Rachel Kurtz-McAlaine is an attorney and advocate focused on environmental law, democracy, and systems change. She is the co-founder and board president of Standing for Nature, a nonprofit dedicated to public education and legal advocacy in support of the rights of nature and legal standing for ecosystems, and she also contributes pro bono legal work to support its mission.

Speakers: Rishi Sugla, Becca Nixon, and Dante Jester

Date: Thursday, November 5

Time: 6pm PT

Location: Hemmingson Auditorium and Live-streaming

Free and Open to the Public

As climate hazards and extreme weather impacts intensify and public systems across the United States face growing strain, mutual aid—understood as grassroots, reciprocal networks of care and solidarity—can be understood as a critical yet underrecognized form of climate resilience. While most academic and policy attention has situated mutual aid within the context of COVID-19, its significance extends across both sudden-onset disasters, such as heat waves, hurricanes, and winter storms, and ongoing structural crises, including housing and food insecurity. Across these contexts, mutual aid operates as flexible, trust-based infrastructure: networks that mobilize quickly, adapt to changing conditions, and sustain forms of care that formal institutions often struggle to provide. This talk highlights the role of mutual aid within a climate adaptation and resilience framing, in Seattle, Washington and Asheville, North Carolina and draws upon semi-structured interviews to examine possibilities and challenges to collaboration with formal health institutions and local governments. Attention to these dynamics highlights both the possibilities and tensions that emerge in relation to formal institutions, with implications for how climate adaptation, disaster response, and structural inequities are understood and addressed.

About the speakers:

Rishi Sugla is a Lead Scientist at the Climate Impacts Group (CIG) at the University of Washington, where his research sits at the intersection of climate resilience, environmental justice, and storytelling. Rishi helps lead the Northwest Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (NW RISA), a NOAA-funded program that connects climate science to decision-making across the Pacific Northwest. He brings a commitment to building durable, community-rooted relationships across sectors—connecting academic research to the lived realities of frontline and Tribal communities navigating environmental and climate change.

Becca Nixon is the Climate Social Science Specialist with the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington. Becca uses a climate justice lens and mixed social science methods (i.e., qualitative and quantitative approaches) to support climate adaptation decision-making processes and outcomes. In this work, she has partnered with local governments and community organizations throughout North America and Asia on topics including flooding, heat, smoke, green infrastructure, agricultural systems, and coastal planning. Becca holds a Ph.D. from Purdue University in environmental social science and a dual master’s degree from Iowa State University in sustainable agriculture and community and regional planning.

Dante Jester is the Climate Resilience Program Manager at the Climate Institute. Read their bio here.

Speaker: Morgan Shimabaku

Date: Monday, November 16

Time: 6pm PT

Location: Hemmingson Auditorium and Livestreaming

Free and Open to the public

As climate change drives more extreme heat, drought, flooding, wildfires, and other disasters, frontline communities, especially those already living without running water or functioning plumbing, face the greatest risks. More than two million people in the United States currently live in the water access gap (i.e. without safe water or sanitation in their homes), and millions more are vulnerable to climate-driven water quality degradation, water supply disruptions, and disasters that can quickly wipe out their access to water and wastewater services.  This presentation examines how communities, cities, and utilities are working to adapt and build climate-resilient water and sanitation services. It explores key questions: How can communities strengthen their built and natural infrastructure, improve water management and planning, and advance laws and policies that support long-term resilience? What types of funding, technology, and information are available—and accessible—to support these efforts? Drawing on findings from Achieving Equitable, Climate-Resilient Water and Sanitation for Frontline Communities by Pacific Institute, Center for Water Security and Cooperation, and DigDeep, the talk highlights major barriers that hinder equitable climate resilience in the United States, including historic underinvestment, affordability challenges, inadequate data, and gaps in capacity and governance. It also showcases real-world strategies from across the country that center community voices, address historical inequities, enhance climate readiness, and expand access to safe, reliable, climate-resilient water and sanitation.

About the speaker: Morgan Shimabuku is a Senior Research Specialist at the Pacific Institute. She conducts research on solutions to water equity and access challenges, benefits and tradeoffs of water management strategies, water resilience, and more. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies and Geology from Whitman College and a Master’s in Geography from the University of Colorado-Boulder. She lives, works, and plays with her family in Spokane.

Speakers: Jamie Bristow & Haley Crim

Date: Wednesday, December 2

Time: 12pm PT

Location: Zoom

Free and Open to the Public

The resource for educators, Transformative Skills Guide: Expanding the Definition of Climate Literacy, was the result of a collaboration between U.S. federal and international non-federal experts in climate literacy and transformative skills-building. Inspiration to create the guide came during the consultation process for the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP)’s 2024 publication, Climate Literacy: Essential Principles for Understanding and Addressing Climate Change. In 2023, the Climate Literacy Guide writing team asked 772 people over 21 public listening sessions, “What does everyone need to be able to do to address the climate crisis?” To their surprise, after analyzing the responses to this question, it became clear that participants thought holistic, psychological, relational, and collaborative skills were needed to address the climate crisis, alongside knowledge about earth sciences and physical systems. The resulting guide aims to expand climate literacy to encompass those inner skills, qualities and capacities that help translate scientific understanding into transformative shifts in the way we do things, individually and collectively.  In this session we will explore how educators, communicators and practitioners can play a key role in equipping the whole of society with these essential resources.

About the speakers:

Jamie Bristow is a writer linking inner and outer transformation, and a policy advisor on the application of inner development and contemplative practices in public life. His work includes influential reports such as Reconnection: Meeting the Climate Crisis Inside Out and The System Within: Addressing the inner dimension of sustainability and systems transformation. Jamie is currently co-founding The Reweaving Project, a yet-to-be-announced initiative with Professor Rebecca Henderson at Harvard University. He is a co-founder of the Life Itself Sensemaking Studio and an honorary researcher at Lancaster Environment Centre. He continues to be a special advisor to the Inner Development Goals, having previously led the initiative’s public narrative and policy development. For eight years, from 2015 to 2023, Jamie played an instrumental role in the UK's All-Party Parliamentary Group on Mindfulness, acting as its clerk and serving as Director of the associated policy institute, The Mindfulness Initiative. During this time he worked with legislators around the world to make mindfulness and compassion training serious matters of public policy and catalysts for a healthier political process. Jamie's earlier roles included being the Business Development Director at Headspace, and his background encompasses psychology, climate change campaigning, and advertising. He is a committed, long-term Insight Meditation practitioner and is training to teach. His teachers have included Rob Burbea and Catherine Magee.

Haley Crim is an interdisciplinary researcher focused on building will and capacity for climate action through education, communication, and workforce development. Haley is the Climate Curriculum Developer at MIT Open Learning, where she translates MIT research into public courses and resources that can help anyone, anywhere, understand our changing world and implement just and effective climate solutions. Previously, she served as the Climate Engagement and Capacity-building Coordinator at NOAA and the U.S. Global Change Research Program. She has a B.S. in Ecology and Earth Systems from Bates College and M.A. in Climate and Society from the Columbia Climate School.