Jocelyn Leung: Fighting for Resilience and Climate Equity

“This is what I should do, shift systems or move systems as much as I can.”

A few minutes talking with Jocelyn Leung and you will be left inspired and impressed. We were fortunate to have the opportunity to interview Jocelyn and learn what led her to leave her job as a governmental public health researcher at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Public Health Systems and work full-time as a volunteer fighting for climate change and mental health resilience research and advocacy. She is currently a Climate and Health Equity Leaders Fellow for Health Professionals for a Healthy Climate. Her work, which involves advancing a new bill to fund a task force to explore how climate change impacts mental health, is helping support the mental health of Minnesota communities most impacted by climate change by suggesting and implementing community-driven solutions.

Her road to this work was not a straight line. In fact, she did not even study environmental health while in college. Instead, she studied international relations and later pursued a master’s degree in Chinese studies. In these classes, she learned how environmental pollution was one of the few areas where individual Chinese residents in rural areas could hold powerful local governments and businesses accountable in an autocratic political system. Local governments and businesses, which increased GDP and also pollution, often worked closely with each other, and local governments exerted a lot of pressure on local courts frequently. However, because pollution can cross provincial lines, there are a couple of cases where residents living downstream, and therefore in a different jurisdiction than the polluter, were able to find courts willing to hold the polluters more accountable. Through these classes, she learned to think of the environment in the context of politics and society and built an interest in supporting communities in the fight against environmental disinvestment and disenfranchisement. Like in China, many U.S. Environmental Justice communities, such as Black communities fighting against polluters beginning during the Civil Rights Movement, have always been vocal in protesting or bringing legal action against environmental and health hazards in their community. Unfortunately, our white majority society has and continues to exclude Environmental Justice communities from having equal access to the decision-making processes that would help them maintain a healthy environment to live in.

Jocelyn went on to get a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree in Community Health Promotion from the University of Minnesota. But it was not until she got a job at Freshwater Society, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving clean and sustainable water, that she began to think about getting involved in fighting the effects of the climate change crisis. While working at the Freshwater Society, Jocelyn collaborated with frontline communities, who face the “first” and “worst” of climate change. Frontline communities are made up of many identities and groups and can range from people relying on the environment for sustenance, and their livelihood, upholding cultural practices, preserving their cultural identity as stewards of nature, and protecting their mental health through engaging in outdoor recreation. She recounted speaking to farmers at Freshwater who were experiencing a drought or had lost almost an entire year’s worth of crops after a three-inch rainfall. This devastation and financial uncertainty had a profound impact on their mental health. Even common manifestations of stress, such as losing sleep, can have detrimental physiological effects that aren’t fully understood yet. Other communities Jocelyn worked with included residents of underinvested neighborhoods such as Rondo and North Minneapolis. Threats such as extreme heat and flooding events that are a result of neighborhoods not receiving public and private investments to maintain tree cover and green spaces over time all compound and create negative mental health implications. She credits her achievements as a researcher, evaluator, and public health professional to these conversations, and cites those connections as what helps keep her motivated even while working on a difficult and lengthy task.

Given the lack of international cooperation needed to hold some of the biggest polluters accountable,  Jocelyn admitted that she is pessimistic about how much we can actually put a stop to what they are doing. And even if we were able to stop all greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, humanity has changed the climate and weather trends enough that frontline communities would face the effects of climate change into the near future. She told us that currently and in the future, “there’s going to be more extreme weather events. There’s going to be weird precipitation patterns for a while, and there’s going to be warming temperatures. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.” Despite this skepticism, Jocelyn has found a lot of motivation to help frontline communities, specifically through building their  resilience to face challenges that come with climate change rather than mitigating our emissions. She wants to redirect resources and attention to the solutions that frontline communities create, both the upstream ones that would prevent their community members from being so stressed to the point of developing mental illness and downstream solutions to help those facing distress get the help and tools they need.All of Jocelyn’s motivations come from being grateful to frontline communities she has worked with in the past and feeling committed to finding ways to pay back or pay it forward in supporting their work. Frontline communities invited her to their work, and without their partnership and guidance, she would not have developed into the public health professional or advocate that she is today.  . She acknowledged that while she must overcome the challenges of living with mental health issues and eco-anxiety, as someone who never had to worry about money or not being able to go to college growing up, she knows people like her will be helped by elected officials who share the same educational and socioeconomic background as her.  Instead, she seeks to support and help amplify communities who lack economic means or connections to decision-makers in addressing climate issues their communities are facing. . Additionally, while Jocelyn’s coping mechanism is hugging her cat rather than enjoying being outdoors, she understands that for many people they de-stress by going outside to recreate or carry out cultural traditions. Jocelyn explained that she wants to help protect these people from losing an important way to protect  their mental health. She also spoke about how part of her motivation came from her background, as a non-Westerner. She told us, “My ancestors dealt with floods, famines, plagues and war. I think that my parents’ generation, that was an anomaly to believe that you have the means to help your next generation have a better future than the past. I think most of humanity from a historical standpoint has had to face huge obstacles, and we’ve survived and so, for me, climate change is just the obstacle that we have to deal with and there are ways for humanity to survive and still be very functional.” Although it may not be possible to completely stop the  climate crisis, it is people like Jocelyn that inspire others to move forward and make positive changes to thrive in the face of climate change.

Jocelyn’s interest in policy is what originally led to her pursuing a political science degree. In her own words, “there’s a need and policy is a solution,” because governments have significant influence over which social problems our society will focus its attention, partnerships, and resources in resolving. Currently, she is volunteering full time on a bill she co-wrote with Representative Ethan Cha and Senator Tou Xiong for the State of Minnesota to set up a task force of frontline community members who identify how climate change impacts (i.e., warming temperatures and extreme heat, water issues due to precipitation change, and declining biodiversity in ecosystems) are hurting their communities and Minnesotans’ mental health. This task force will also recommend strategies and carry out some as pilot strategies so that there will be more community-driven solutions to keep their communities healthy or better help community members in distress. While the actual solutions are yet to be determined by the task force, from talking to community members, Jocelyn can already imagine the task force considering a wide variety of issues including changes to farming practices, drinking water and water ecosystem regulations, since these are stressing out communities. The ongoing  drafting of this bill includes  members of frontline communities giving feedback and contributing to the bill’s language. Everything Jocelyn is currently doing and the purpose of the bill will center on community-based participatory methods. While the focus of the bill is to protect frontline communities, the heart of the message is that “All Minnesotans’ mental health are worth protecting.”

Given Jocelyn’s position as a public health researcher with a keen interest to change policies and systems, we asked her what advice she had for young activists looking to get involved in the environmental justice movement. She explained that there are many ways to get involved in the movement, whether it is as a protestor, scientist, engineer, community organizer or like Jocelyn, someone who works within the government system. She told us, “Everybody just needs to figure out what’s your strength? What’s your comfort level? Where do you want the systems to change or where do you think the systems could be better than before? “Some of us might gravitate to what we can fix within current systems, and others find their passion in exerting pressure from the outside and helping systems build new or more accountable frameworks.”Some of us might gravitate to what we can fix within current systems, and others find their passion in exerting pressure from the outside and helping systems build new or more accountable frameworks. And that’s going to help you decide how you can contribute, and all of them are equally fine in that we really need all of them.” Jocelyn firmly believes  that it takes everyone to make a movement and to make change. Knowing where you can make the biggest impact is important in deciding what type of activist you’re willing or able to be. All of the positions within the environmental justice movement help spread awareness about climate change and what  can be done to combat it.

Jocelyn also explained to us how to deal with our politicized society and climate change deniers. She told us that everyone at different points on their journey of accepting climate change is real, but a good place to start that would activate most people is focusing on concrete weather trends. For instance, when talking to farmers about the bill, Jocelyn starts with asking questions on whether droughts, three-inches rainfall, or rise in certain invasive species, like buckthorn, associated with climate change are hurting their crop yields, and what they propose should be done. She then says these solutions could be considered by the task force, which include them if they are interested. Jocelyn believes helping them focus on how specific climate change impacts hurt them and their mental health could help even climate deniers continue to have a dialogue with people like her that know climate change is happening. In the short run, it means that communities receive the help that they need regardless of their individual beliefs in climate change, and in the long run, some climate change deniers may change their minds.

Another area for education is helping all elected officials see climate change as real and that climate change is hurting communities and their mental wellbeing. This education is harder due to how politicized climate change is by our divisive electoral system, and we as a society are still slowly learning to more openly discuss mental health issues. She has spent a lot of time working with her chief authors to hold conversations with Minnesotan representatives and senators, and she has found it helpful to help them imagine what mental health impacts they might feel if their livelihoods, cultural lifeways, and recreation opportunities were threatened.

Jocelyn’s compassion, drive, and knowledge make her a powerful advocate for environmental justice in Minnesota. Her work is fundamental to moving efforts forward and getting public support on solving the climate crisis. During the interview Jocelyn was vulnerable and courageous by sharing her climate story and perspective on climate change. It has been a pleasure to get to know such a passionate and active person in Minnesota’s fight for environmental justice. As Jocelyn emphasized many times, the climate crisis is now and it is time we begin to move in the right direction to stopping it. With all that, Jocelyn continues to give us hope in thinking that there could be a solution to the climate crisis.