people’s climate week: Art & Action for Justice
The Healthy Ocean Coalition is a network of ocean lovers who are working together to advance ocean conservation that centers both the ocean and people. Our goal is to create a world with a healthy and resilient ocean, which will require immediate change to mitigate the harm climate change, biodiversity loss, and inequitable access to nature has caused. The HOC believes that by working together, we can develop equitable and just ocean conservation policies to that dismantle and repair existing harms to the ocean and people.
While many people care about the ocean, they may need access to information, opportunities for advocacy, and a network of support to engage in protecting the ocean and our communities. The Healthy Ocean Coalition has recently completed a three-year strategic planning process that includes principles of justice, equity, inclusion, and diversity in conservation. Out of this planning process, HOC developed four ten-year goals, which focuses on protecting diverse coastal and marine habitats, increasing the resilience of the ocean to climate change, increasing participation of historically excluded and underrepresented groups, and ensuring equitable access to coastal habitats.
From these four bedrock goals, the Healthy Ocean Coalition developed five three-year goals. One of the three-year goals is to ensure the United States government does not approve any new coastal or ocean fossil fuel projects. As part of this work, the coalition has promised to listen to frontline environmental justice organizations and pressure the Biden administration to do better. To help fulfill this goal, the HOC participates in the People v. Fossil Fuels Coalition, who is working with the Stop the Money Pipeline network to distribute poster art around the country focused on climate justice, art, and action.
Our Executive Director, Sarah Winter Whelan, is helping the HOC participate in this “People’s Climate, Justice, Art, and Action by curating a set of climate justice posters in her neighborhood with her seven-year-old child. She then invited the neighborhood to come and check out the art, to help create some community around the importance of ending fossil fuel subsidies, bankrolling the climate catastrophe, and how their community can show up in this fight. So far, it has spurred conversations with several neighbors about this art and how they themselves can create a ripple effect by sharing this work.
Climate justice action centers around communities investing themselves in each other and in the fight against fossil fuel infrastructure companies and greed. It is only when we make those connections to each other that we can stand together shoulder to shoulder to save ourselves, to save our kids, and the generations that depend on us. Ending our fossil fuel economy is a crucial step in this fight, and the Healthy Ocean Coalition is doing its part.