EcoEquity is an activist think tank focused on the development and promotion of a just and adequate solution to the climate crisis.  Through our participation in domestic and international networks of both activists and scholars, we argue for a precautionary approach to the prevention of dangerous climate change, and for a global policy architecture that would protect the right to sustainable development.

EcoEquity seeks to contribute to a just solution to the climate crisis by emphasizing the importance of equity principles in all aspects of the policy response, by producing political and economic analyses that highlight equity issues, and by developing practical proposals for equitable climate policies. Our focus is on the international negotiations but we believe as well that, domestically, strong "just transition" policies will be crucial for both realist and moral reasons.

In the few years since we were organized, we have accomplished a great deal, and this with only a very, very small amount of funding.  Here is an extremely incomplete list:

• Established ourselves as a trusted, expert presence in a number of key climate networks, including (domestically) the U.S. Environmental Justice movement, where we have long been members of the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative and (internationally) the Climate Action Network.


• Maintained a well-regarded,well-trafficked website in which we've published a number of noted essays. These have focused on the politics and philosophy of equity in the climate debate, but have also sought to summarize the science in a clear and straight-forward manner. See, for example, Honesty About Dangerous Climate Change, which we published in September of 2004.


• Worked to develop the Contraction and Convergence approach to global climate justice into a more robust system capable of accounting for both per-capita emissions rights and varying national circumstances, which we dubbed "Per Capita Plus."

• Published Dead Heat: Global Justice and Global Warming (Seven Stories Press, 2002). The book was well received, has been widely quoted, and is used in academic courses at Princeton and the University of Washington, among others.

• Served as core organizers of the Climate Action Network's 2002 "Equity Summit" in Bali, a key climate movement strategy retreat in which the demands of equity were closely examined and debated.

• Become the resident climate change experts at the online foreign policy think tank Foreign Policy in Focus. See for example, Where We Stand, which was written just before the 2005's Montreal climate conference.

• Via consulting contract for the UK's Institute for Public Policy Research, influenced the International Climate Change Taskforce to endorse a long-term climate stabilization target of 400 ppm CO2-equivalent. This is the first time this honest but demanding target was publicly tied to the 2ºC threshold.


• Written A Brief, Adequacy and Equity-Based Evaluation of Some Prominent Climate Policy Frameworks and Proposals, an incisive and reasonably comprehensive overview and critique of "principle based" approaches to differentiation.  


• Managed, finally, in the blog we published during 2005's Montreal climate conference, to finally engage the anti-emission-trading mainstream of the climate justice movement in a public debate about international financial mechanisms.

• Developed and launched to Greenhouse Development Rights framework.  Actually, this is a big deal, and we should say more about it.  But it would be easier, and less redundant, to just point you to the Greenhouse Development Rights homepage.


• Launched, as a followup to the Greenhouse Development Rights effort, a "Global Climate Justice for Americans" project designed to develop effiective ways of introduciing the Greenhouse Development Rights insights into the US domestic climate debate.

For justice in a finite world...

    Tom Athanasiou (toma@ecoequity.org) 

    Executive Director

    Paul Baer (pbaer@ecoequity.org)  

    Research Director

Our location ...

Our advisory board...

• Azibuike Akaba, Environmental Justice Specialist, California EPA

• Eugene Coyle, PhD, Ecological Economics, "public servant"

• John Gershman, Associate Professor, Wagner School of Public Policy, New York University

• Barbara Haya, PhD Candidate, Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley

• Glenn Fieldman, Associate Professor, San Francisco State University

• Donna Green, Research Scientist, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization

• Dan Kammen (chair), Professor, Energy and Resources Group and Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley

• Juliette Majot, Consultant specializing in Non-profit Organizations

• Richard Norgaard, Professor, Energy and Resources Group

• Patrick McCully, Executive Director, International Rivers Network

• Susan Ode, Program Coordinator,International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives

• Timmons Roberts, Professor of Sociology, College of William and Mary

• Sivan Kartha, Senior Scientist, Stockholm Environment Institute

• Jim Williams, Energy consultant, Associate Professor, Montery Institute of  International Studies