Perennial: The Undergraduate Environmental Journal of Berkeley

Perennial: The Undergraduate Environmental Journal of Berkeley

Project Leads: Shehla Chowdhury, Jasmine Chen, Anna Ho, Sarah Lin, Celine Yang, Charity Liu

Sponsor: N/A

Project Theme: Environmental Education

2019 Application Submission 

Project Description: Founded in Fall 2019, Perennial: The Undergraduate Environmental Journal of Berkeley serves as an open and accessible platform to showcase the diverse work of Cal’s environmental community. Operating between the space of a traditional news magazine and a formal academic journal, Perennial publishes mainly two categories of content: original editorials written by Perennial’s staff and academic papers submitted by Berkeley undergraduates. The first issue (Fall 2019) will be released in January. With a theme of “Justice,” this issue will include about 15 articles that highlight the connections between environmental topics and justice through local, national, and international perspectives. It will cover a range of topics including the climate youth activism, the environmental change and indigenous rights in Louisiana, and the plastic straw movement in the US. All of these articles aim to provide readers a new perspective to view environmental issues in different socio-economic contexts.

As a new publication, through the wide distribution of the online articles and printed publication next semester, Perennial hopes to achieve the following goals: (1) to encourage student action and scholarship; (2) inspire discussion on solutions to earth’s most critical issues; and (3) promote diversity of identity and opinion in the environmental sphere. Ultimately, Perennial seeks to raise awareness about environmental issues like climate change, environmental racism, and natural resource management and the creative solutions Cal students are using to tackle them.