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A three-day environmental conference  begins tomorrow at Yale’s Divinity School. It’s designed to bring together activists and scholars working on environmental justice issues ---- and those working on climate change.

Yale Divinity School Professor Emilie Townes, one of the organizers of the meeting, says these two groups don’t always get a chance to speak with each other. And she said sometimes they are even at odds with one other.

“Environmental Justice folks tend to be local-community based, usually people of color, lower income and they’re looking for local solutions to immediate problems in their neighborhoods or in their regions.  Climate Change activists tend to think very globally. And are usually talking to N.G.O.s and to the U.N. and larger bodies. And so they don’t have that local base just as the local folks don’t have  as much the international and national base.”

The conference includes several sessions where participants will  develop strategies for communities to address both environmental justice and global warming at the local level.