Toolkit: Teaching Sustainability Across the Curriculum

The SPIKE Faculty Fellows annually provide a training for 50 faculty to help foster a network of sustainability educators across the curriculum and evidence-based, inspiring pedagogical resources. They also co-design a toolkit of resources. Below is a sample of links from the inaugural faculty training in 2026 that focused on teaching environmental and climate justice.

Toolkit for SPIKE Faculty Sustainability Across the Curriculum Training 2026

Compiled by SPIKE Faculty Fellows

Foundational Environmental Justice Documents

Principles of Environmental Justice:

Principles of Working Together:

Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing:

Local Environmental Justice Initiatives

Boulder Food Rescue:

Boulder Apple Tree Project:

Colorado Buffalo Collective:

KGNU The Brink stories:

Communicating Care podcast (on plastics):

State Environmental Justice Agency:

Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment:

CDPHE EJ Enviroscreen 2.0, including StoryMaps:

Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment (CDPHE), CDPHE’s Commitment to Public Participation and Public Participation Procedures, (overview of CDPHE’s commitment to meaningful participation and links to active public participation opportunities)

CDPHE, Community engagement, outreach, and public participation best practices, (key best practices CDPHE considers or applies when planning public participation opportunities that may be useful to local agencies, permittees, and other groups working to engage diverse individuals and communities)

CDPHE’s Office of Environmental Justice, (CDPHE’s specialized office for environmental justice)

CDPHE’s Office of Environmental Justice Resources, (describes and links to Colorado’s Environmental Justice Act, signed into law July 2, 2021; provides additional resources on specific environmental issues)

CDPHE’s Colorado EnviroScreen (currently v. 2.0), (Colorado’s GIS mapping and EJ screening tool)

CDPHE’s Environmental Justice ombudsperson, (CDPHE’s independent public advocate and manager of the CDPHE public complaint system)

Federal/National EJ Resources

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Learn About Environmental Justice, (focusing on fair treatment and meaningful involvement)

EPA, Technical Guidance for Assessing Environmental Justice in Regulatory Analysis (2d Ed., 2024),

EPA, Public Participation Guide: Internet Resources on Public Participation,

EPA’s Model Plan for Public Participation,

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Energy and Environmental Justice Policy (2024), (addressing four major tenets of energy and environmental justice, including distributive justice, procedural justice, restorative justice, and recognition justice)

Global Environmental and Climate Justice Maps, Stories, & Resources

EJ Atlas:

searchable readings related to environmental and climate justice particularly by Black, Indigenous and Latinx individuals

Coursera class on climate justice from the UC Center for Climate Justice. Also

accessible short lecture clips by UC faculty on climate justice, and other resources

UNFCCC Bali principles of Climate Justice

Syllabi contributed from several faculty members around the country

Accessible reports on a range of climate justice related topics including debt justice for

Climate reparations, and the climate/environmental costs of war/US military

easy and intermediate level information on a variety of climate justice related issues

“the existential toolkit for climate justice educators” – dealing with eco-grief and climate anxiety

On international climate change more generally (not justice specific)

earth systems, visualizations, up to date graphs of greenhouse gas outputs by country

daily news and policy analysis on the science and policy of climate change

Podcast and newsletter on all aspects of climate change

General climate literacy, responding to skeptics and mis/disinformation

Podcasts:

  • The Climate Pod
  • Outrage + Optimism
  • Drilled
  • The Climate Briefing

International loss and damage mechanism

  • Official site for the
  • ٰ’s (includes FRLD)

Corrective justice generally, in context of climate

  • For those interested in its theoretical basis, E.J. Weinrib’s 2002 offers probably the most-cited scholarly treatment (Jstor link, so article available on campus or through VPN)
  • Axel Gosseries (political philosopher from UC Louvain)

Pedagogical Exercises

Theory and evidence on the role of games in education

Resources for teaching with mapping tools

3. (note: this is an “in progress” textbook, please send any feedback to esther.rolf@colorado.edu)

4. ArcGIS StoryMap, Esri Academy Free Training:

Resources for teaching global climate injustice

  • Class activity focused on international negotiations (which can easily be used to integrate international climate justice concerns), all instructions provided:

  • Future Scenarios Reflection

  • Have students write about and/or discuss the likelihood of each scenario, what particular events or forces might push society along one path or another, which scenario(s) seem most desirable and why. Would the answer differ depending on country/class status or other axes of difference?

Resources to Support Community Engagement in Our Pedagogy

  1. 鶹ѰCommunity Engagement Resources

  1. Community Engagement Literature

  1. Public Engagement & Government Resources

Environmental Justice State by State, Public Participation,

Adriana Zuniga-Teran, Adrienne Brown, and Andrea Gerlak, The Evolution of Public Engagement in US Environmental Governance: A Justice-Centered Framework, Society and Natural Resources (2025)

UNDP, Indigenous knowledge is crucial in the fight against climate change – here’s why, (2024)

Livia Fritz, Chad Baum, Sean Low, and Benjamin Sovacool, Public engagement for inclusive and sustainable governance of climate interventions, Nature Communications (2024)

Jens Newig, Nicolas Jager, Edward Challies, Elisa Kochskämper, Does stakeholder participation improve environmental governance? Evidence from a meta-analysis of 305 case studies, Global Environmental Change (2023)

UNDP, SES Supplemental Guidance: FAQs on Applying Free Prior Informed Consent (FPIC), (2022)

Laura Berry, Jessica Koski, Cleo Verkuijl, Claudia Strambo, and Georgia Piggot, Making space: how public participation shapes environmental decision-making, Stockholm Environment Institute (2019)

Resources for teaching Sustainability in Business

  1. Business and Environmental Justice

A nice business centric introduction to EJ and suggestions for how business can contribute

What businesses need to know about policy drivers for EJ

More on how business can help


business, climate and inclusion

  1. Classroom material


Case studies from the EPA


Case studies from B-Lab


Case studies from Yale’s Center for Business and the Environment

+.
Would take some additional links to business, but good resources on teaching EJ to different audiences


The teaching Environmental Justice game is easy to integrate into business curriculum.

  1. How to speak up about EJ safely


The speaking up for science guide is useful


Support organizations


How to address EJ in your community from Antioch University

Resources for teaching about AI and unsustainability/environmental injustices

  • Artificial Intelligence – climate and environmental impacts

Colorado specific:

  • AI/Data Centers as Environmental Injustice