Session: Community‑Engaged Approaches In Climate/Environmental Justice Research: Rethinking Participation, Power, and Knowledge Production (Society for Social Work and Research 31st Annual Conference)

This symposium brings together four papers that examine climate and environmental justice through the lens of community engagement, participation, and the often‑unspoken complexities of doing this work in practice. The first three papers interrogate the practice of community engagement, and the fourth paper provides a future‑oriented example of what community‑engaged, non‑extractive climate justice research can look like. Together, they illuminate the tensions, risks, and possibilities that arise when researchers commit to relational, community‑centered approaches in contexts shaped by structural inequities, institutional pressures, and political constraints.

Paper 1 offers an autoethnographic account of a photovoice project that “failed” to produce photographs but succeeded in revealing deeper methodological and ethical tensions in CBPR. Conducted in a housing‑vulnerable community in Seoul, Korea, the project unraveled when the research agenda began to overshadow community priorities. The paper reframes failure as insight, highlighting how community resistance can redirect research toward more ethical and empowering outcomes. Paper 2 examines climate‑related stress and farmer mental health in the rural Midwest through a community‑based system dynamics (CBSD) approach. Attempts to convene participatory group model‑building sessions with farmers were unsuccessful, not because of methodological shortcomings, but because participation itself posed risks. The paper demonstrates how community‑engaged research must adapt to protect participants while still generating critical systems‑level insights. Paper 3 explores how community organizations navigating water crises in Chiapas, Mexico, strategically depoliticize their public messaging to maintain relationships with donors and local powerholders. Ethnographic findings show how financial and political dependencies shape what can be said, by whom, and in what contexts. The paper argues for reflexive, relational approaches that prioritize community protection. Paper 4 presents participant‑engaged zine‑making as a creative, non‑extractive method for sharing Indigenous water stories and stewardship practices. By allowing participants to determine what knowledge is shared, how it circulates, and what remains within the community, zine‑making centers relational accountability and community authority. The method supports multimodal expression, fosters dialogue about water and healing, and offers a portable tool for ongoing environmental justice advocacy.

Collectively, these papers reveal that community‑engaged climate/environment research is shaped as much by structural constraints, risks, and relational ethics as by methodological design. These discussions are especially critical for climate and environmental justice research because the communities most affected by climate harms are also those most vulnerable to extractive research practices, political pressures, and institutional neglect. We invite scholars to rethink community participation not as a checklist, but as an ongoing negotiation of power, accountability, and care, essential for producing just, context‑responsive climate and environmental knowledge and action.