Julian Agyeman is Professor and Chair of Urban Policy and Planning at Tufts University. He is also Adjunct Professor in Environmental Justice and Sustainability at the Hawke Research Institute for Sustainable Societies (HRISS) at The University of South Australia, Adelaide, co-editor of Local Environment: the International Journal of Justice and Sustainability , a contributing editor to Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development , an associate editor of Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture, and a member of the editorial boards of The Journal of Environmental Education, Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy , and the Australian Journal of Environmental Education. His scholarly publications demonstrate a rich range of research in geography, policy and planning, education, and their interdisciplinary intersections. His current four areas of research are “the nexus between the concepts of environmental justice and sustainability and, specifically, the possibility of a 'just sustainability;' the potential of the concept of 'spatial justice' to contribute to 'just sustainability;' the potential in emerging discourses around food justice/sovereignty to contribute to discourses around 'just sustainability;' and the extent, complexity and pervasiveness of 'rural racism' in Britain, its linkages to wider discourses of belonging, 'becoming', continuity and change in racialized spaces and ultimately to discourses of nationhood” (Agyeman, 2010).

I was first introduced to Julian Agyeman’s interdisciplinary scholarship when I borrowed a recent book that he had authored, Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice (2005) from the University of Minnesota library where I was completing my Ph.D. dissertation. The book’s advocacy of just sustainability would influence my own research. At face value, just sustainability, which is “the need to ensure a better quality of life for all, now and into the future, in a just and equitable manner, whilst living within the limits of supporting ecosystems” (Agyeman, Bullard and Evans, 2003, 5), seems simply to reiterate the charge of environmental justice, emphasizing the need for equity concerns (racial, ethnic, gender, sex, and economic) within the domain of environmental concerns. However, the just sustainability paradigm, outlined in detail in Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice , demands more. Evolving from a grounded examination of environmental justice and sustainability organizations in action, it advocates measures that seek to overcome shortfalls of both movements. Its theory is decisively positioned in practice, and it is keenly aware of the embedded and complex sociopolitical and cultural relations between humans and the environment as well as humans and other humans. Thus, it walks a compelling line, advocating a pragmatic path towards the long-term success of a utopian goal that envisions equity and ecological health for all, human and non-human alike, much like ecopedagogy’s own agenda.

I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Agyeman in person when he visited Gettysburg College as the Fall 2008 Convocation speaker. After a visit to my Introduction to Environmental Humanities class, where his talk, “Redefining the American Dream,” electrified my students, we had the chance to chat. Our conversation inspired this interview, which was conducted via Skype on January 12, 2009, and explores the similarities between just sustainability and ecopedagogy. I directed Julian to ecopedagogy’s “General Principles” (Kahn, 2008, p. iii), asking him to comment on how just sustainability might intersect with and reflect these ideas. In my mind, ecopedagogy’s third principle, which advocates “mounting creative and emancipator political action based on formative dialogue across a wide range of interested parties,” seems to articulate a foundational component of just sustainability, which is movement fusion . This is where our discussion began.