One of the Southeast U.S.’ and Gulf South's most renowned veterans of climate justice struggles as an activist, community organizer, coalition-builder, and award-winning litigating environmental and human rights attorney, Colette Pichon Battle, born and raised in Bayou Liberty, Louisiana, focuses on creating spaces for frontline communities to gather and advance climate strategies that help them steward their water, energy, and land responsibly. She draws from her decades of experience fighting for equitable climate resilience to unearth historic lessons and exposes the root causes of the inequities and imbalances that characterize our relationships to the natural world and to each other. Colette argues that we must expand our understanding of what a genuine Climate Justice movement needs to encompass if we are to succeed in innovating a better future, and why such struggles as gender and migrant justice are inextricably connected to human rights for clean air, clean water, sovereign land, and community control of justly-sourced sustainable energy.

This keynote talk was delivered at the 2024 Bioneers Conference. To see more conference talks visit https://www.bioneers.org/2024talks