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Environmentally Just Futures: A Collection of Community-Driven African Environmental Education and Improvement Initiatives

Advocating for healthy environments is a matter of justice. Changes in environments have tremendous impacts on the health of communities, and oftentimes, individuals are unable to safeguard themselves through individual actions alone. Efforts frequently require collective action and are often most e...

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Autores principales: Nwanaji-Enwerem, Onyemaechi, Baccarelli, Andrea A., Curwin, Brian D., Zota, Ami R., Nwanaji-Enwerem, Jamaji C.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9180885/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35682206
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19116622
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author Nwanaji-Enwerem, Onyemaechi
Baccarelli, Andrea A.
Curwin, Brian D.
Zota, Ami R.
Nwanaji-Enwerem, Jamaji C.
author_facet Nwanaji-Enwerem, Onyemaechi
Baccarelli, Andrea A.
Curwin, Brian D.
Zota, Ami R.
Nwanaji-Enwerem, Jamaji C.
author_sort Nwanaji-Enwerem, Onyemaechi
collection PubMed
description Advocating for healthy environments is a matter of justice. Changes in environments have tremendous impacts on the health of communities, and oftentimes, individuals are unable to safeguard themselves through individual actions alone. Efforts frequently require collective action and are often most effective when led by the communities most impacted. In this spirit, we launched “Vibrations”, an African environment photo essay contest. Through funding and publicity, we aimed to support community-led environmental improvement and education initiatives presently taking place on the continent. We received nearly two dozen submissions and selected eight winners. The winners come from five countries (Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, and South Africa) and have taken on a range of projects aimed at improving environments across a variety of African regions. Projects included efforts to combat pollution, create environmentally conscious school curricula, utilize clean energy sources, and spread awareness about environmental justice concerns in local communities. It is our hope that this report highlights these transformative community-driven efforts, promotes continued conversations on environmental justice in Africa, and encourages meaningful action via policy changes and collaborations throughout the African continent and beyond.
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spelling pubmed-91808852022-06-10 Environmentally Just Futures: A Collection of Community-Driven African Environmental Education and Improvement Initiatives Nwanaji-Enwerem, Onyemaechi Baccarelli, Andrea A. Curwin, Brian D. Zota, Ami R. Nwanaji-Enwerem, Jamaji C. Int J Environ Res Public Health Commentary Advocating for healthy environments is a matter of justice. Changes in environments have tremendous impacts on the health of communities, and oftentimes, individuals are unable to safeguard themselves through individual actions alone. Efforts frequently require collective action and are often most effective when led by the communities most impacted. In this spirit, we launched “Vibrations”, an African environment photo essay contest. Through funding and publicity, we aimed to support community-led environmental improvement and education initiatives presently taking place on the continent. We received nearly two dozen submissions and selected eight winners. The winners come from five countries (Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, and South Africa) and have taken on a range of projects aimed at improving environments across a variety of African regions. Projects included efforts to combat pollution, create environmentally conscious school curricula, utilize clean energy sources, and spread awareness about environmental justice concerns in local communities. It is our hope that this report highlights these transformative community-driven efforts, promotes continued conversations on environmental justice in Africa, and encourages meaningful action via policy changes and collaborations throughout the African continent and beyond. MDPI 2022-05-29 /pmc/articles/PMC9180885/ /pubmed/35682206 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19116622 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Commentary
Nwanaji-Enwerem, Onyemaechi
Baccarelli, Andrea A.
Curwin, Brian D.
Zota, Ami R.
Nwanaji-Enwerem, Jamaji C.
Environmentally Just Futures: A Collection of Community-Driven African Environmental Education and Improvement Initiatives
title Environmentally Just Futures: A Collection of Community-Driven African Environmental Education and Improvement Initiatives
title_full Environmentally Just Futures: A Collection of Community-Driven African Environmental Education and Improvement Initiatives
title_fullStr Environmentally Just Futures: A Collection of Community-Driven African Environmental Education and Improvement Initiatives
title_full_unstemmed Environmentally Just Futures: A Collection of Community-Driven African Environmental Education and Improvement Initiatives
title_short Environmentally Just Futures: A Collection of Community-Driven African Environmental Education and Improvement Initiatives
title_sort environmentally just futures: a collection of community-driven african environmental education and improvement initiatives
topic Commentary
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9180885/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35682206
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19116622
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