Digital Commons Network^™

Adopting Principles Of Food Justice For Equitable Oyster Aquaculture Industry Development, Cristina Sandolo

All Theses And Dissertations

The mid-Atlantic region is experiencing a resurgence of oyster production, through both wild harvest and, more recently, aquaculture. While a historic, wild catch oyster fishery drove economic development of the region, the modern-day oyster industry is less intensive, more heavily managed, and is growing due to a growing aquaculture industry. While many Black watermen played critical roles in developing the historic wild-caught industry, barriers to advancement within the industry and to wealth accumulation in general prevented many from experiencing the full array of compensation, benefits, and legacy that the booming industry could have provided. Now, the modern-day oyster aquaculture industries …

Shifting The Industrial Food System Towards Sustainability: The Intersections Of Agriculture, Industrialization, & Health, Courtney Marchi

City and Regional Planning

This work traces the impact of the industrialization of corporate agriculture that has agglomerated globally. The aim of this paper is to discuss the major impacts and technicalities behind modern agricultural practices, and to draw attention to the intersections between industrialization, technology, health, and environmental concerns. This paper addresses the social and political implications associated with a global trade system and attempts to remedy some of them through environmentally and socially sustainable, and deconstructive, systemic approaches. There are several intersections between social equity, globalization, and agriculture that Urban and Regional Planners can work intimately with to improve overall food security …

Environmental Cues And The Sociospatial Imaginary: An Examination Of Spatial Perception And Meaning-Making In A Gentrifying Neighborhood, Todd Levon Brown

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What could be more ordinary or pedestrian than two people walking down an urban street and talking about what we see and what we make of it? Yet this simple, quotidian act of walking a street—seeing, perceiving and experiencing physical spaces, places and objects—and making meaning of what is encountered, is the basis of my dissertation. It is also my basis for claiming that I have learned a great deal—and much unexpectedly—about how differently different people see and interpret the urban streetscape. What are the various environmental cues that stand out to different individuals? What are the psychosocial imaginaries that …

Planting Power Or Planting A Paradox? Urban Agriculture, Gentrification, And Community Development In Oakland, California, Elissa M. Mann

Master's Projects and Capstones

Urban agriculture has long been used as a tool for promoting food justice and urban sustainability in municipalities across the globe. From vertical and rooftop growing operations to community and residential garden plots, the idealistically transformative nature of urban agriculture is becoming an increasingly popular subject among scholars, city planners, policymakers, and activists alike. A handful of cautionary scholars, however, have begun to uncover the elusive role that food justice oriented urban agriculture projects can play in facilitating gentrification and displacement in low-income communities. My capstone project focuses on the relationship between urban agriculture and gentrification, specifically asking: How does …

An Equitable Transformation Of The Energy System: The Role Of State-Level Incentives For Distributed Energy Resources, Trinidad A. Kechkian

Harvey M. Applebaum ’59 Award

One of the great obstacles to the transition to clean energy is that not everyone has an equal opportunity to participate. While previous research has demonstrated that the distribution of solar photovoltaic and battery storage technologies is correlated with race and ethnicity, income, educational attainment, and other variables, it has failed to perform similar analyses on specific clean energy incentive programs. This study evaluates the equitability of past and current state-level incentive programs for solar photovoltaic and battery storage systems in California and Massachusetts using multiple linear regression models. Among the most notable results, for the California programs that are …

A Living City: Food Accessibility And Urban Growth In New York City, Kat Coleman

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper examines the way in which food equity and localization initiatives, specifically in New York City, are a vital response to urban growth and sustainable food demand. Improvements to the current food system in the form of changing the way food is produced, procured, stored, transported, and distributed improves nutrition and contributes to urban sustainability. Chapter 1 provides data on urban environmental justice issues related to food equity, drawing on research from the United Nations and food justice organizations in New York City. Chapter 2 explores the ethical issues surrounding food access and food justice in an increasingly urban …

Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Benefit To Climate-Displaced And Host Communities, Gül Aktürk, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Climate change is borderless, and its impacts are not shared equally by all communities. It causes an imbalance between people by creating a more desirable living environment for some societies while erasing settlements and shelters of some others. Due to floods, sea level rise, destructive storms, drought, and slow-onset factors such as salinization of water and soil, people lose their lands, homes, and natural resources. Catastrophic events force people to move voluntarily or involuntarily. The relocation of communities is a debatable climate adaptation measure which requires utmost care with human rights, ethics, and psychological well-being of individuals upon the issues …

Ecofascist “Snakeoil” And The Imperative Of Racializing Environmental Justice For The 21st Century: A Burkean Rhetorical Criticism Of Contemporary Ecofascist Manifestos, Lantz Shifflett

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Ecofascism of the 21^st century is a revival of centuries-old white nationalist fascism integrated with a concern for environmental issues from the last few decades. Designated by their writers as “manifestos,” three ecofascists have widely disseminated their documents online just before committing acts of racially motivated terrorism in three different countries. Furthermore, these manifestos provide a lens into contemporary ecofascist conspiracies as well as their own concocted “snakeoils” that present their ecofascist agendas in the form of rhetorical “curatives” to environmental issues of pollution. These “cures” are grounded in a new “green nationalism” that attempts to disguise the white …

Evaluating Urban Parks Accessibility And Equity: A Case Study Of Hartford, Ct And New Haven, Ct, Natalie Roach, Mara Tu

Honors Scholar Theses

Public parks provide cities with environmental benefits, positive health effects, recreational opportunities, community building, educational spaces, and public amenities. However, certain populations have been systematically denied their fair share of these benefits because of unjust practices in the creation and maintenance of urban parks. With a lens of environmental justice, the goal of this research was to assess park quality and accessibility of two Connecticut cities, Hartford and New Haven, by gathering publicly available information as well as using GIS tools.

The Trust for Public Land (TPL) has an existing ParkScore rating system that evaluates the quality of a city’s …

The Amungme And The Environment: Environmental Justice History And Consumerism, Kole A. Dawson

Phi Alpha Theta Pacific Northwest Regional Conference

The Amungme are one of hundreds of Papuan people groups who lived in the Indonesian province in New Guinea for thousands of years. This group subsisted in their environment by hunting, cultivation of small crops, and practicing pig husbandry. In the late 1960s, seeking foreign capital to boost the nation’s economy, the president of Indonesia signed a contract with Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold. Freeport began mining in the early 1970s, eventually opening one of the world’s largest gold mines. Excavating sacred Amungme sites, Freeport’s massive pollution to the land and water destroyed the indigenous people’s environment both spiritually and …

Mapping Environmental Justice In Jacksonville, Erin Delgrosso

Showcase of Osprey Advancements in Research and Scholarship (SOARS)

Honorable Mention Winner

Environmental Center Leadership Program Project

The project is a digitally interactive map of environmental justice in Jacksonville. Environmental justice looks at vulnerable communities and how they have been impacted by environmental conditions. The map is to be used as a tool to visually display where environmental justice has occurred, who is affected, and which issues have been solved. It consolidates 19 case studies gathered from lawsuits, protests, citizen complaints, cleanups, restoration projects, and more. Map components include: case study title, location, timeline, environmental justice pillar, type of issue, summary, and links to references. Each case study has …

Incorporating Environmental Justice Into Youth Education, Morgan F. Prittie

Community Engagement Student Work

Social Justice is a concept which is often glossed over or excluded from student education, particularly the issues associated with Environmental Justice. Discrimination, oppression, and poor environmental practices all coalesce into dangerously impactful issues, which can be combated by further education and exposure. This project seeks to spread awareness of Environmental Justice issues, provide educators with the tools to implement social justice education, and express the importance of such exposure to students. This interdisciplinary project utilizes the facilitation of a workshop with lessons, activities, and opportunities for participants to engage in discussions. The goal of the workshop was to describe …

Environmental Social Justice Issues And Health Risks In Younger Kids From Vulnerable Communities In The United States: Educating Youth Of Immigrant Communities To Address Social Justice Issues, Shilpa J. Kulkarni

Community Engagement Student Work

This project was conducted to examine the environmental social justice issues in the United States and how they are linked to health issues in younger children in low-income communities and people of color through the lenses of multiple theoretical frameworks. The workshop was focused on educating youth from other communities of people of color, providing them resources so that while bridging the cultural gaps they will become allies. The targeted audience was Asian-Indian youth of Maharashtrian communities across the country. The youth of mixed age group and first and second generations of immigrants from those communities participated in the workshop. …

Global Perspectives, Cecilia Salvi

Open Educational Resources

A syllabus for an introductory course in global studies.

Exploring The Qualities Of Child-Friendly Outdoor Spaces: A Field Study In Low Income Neighbourhoods - Case Study: Sabra, Beirut, Lebanon, Farah Ahmad Mefleh, Hiba Mohsen, Baher Farahat

Architecture and Planning Journal (APJ)

Children’s play areas are from the past an indispensable right for children, in which it allows children to build their physical environment and assess it cognitive thinking. But today, the city, especially in low-income population suffers from a clear shortage of open spaces, where the leftover spaces are left empty used for garbage, old tanks car parts, and many other bad issues. This has negatively affected society, mainly children, where they become vulnerable to many social ills and problems that threaten their lives and behaviour. This paper tries to ameliorate and presents adequate children’s play areas, for the low-income population, …

Teaching Race And Racial Justice: Developing Students’ Cognitive And Affective Understanding, Amie Thurber, Joe Bandy, M. Brielle Harbin

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Effectively addressing both cognitive and affective dimensions of learning is one of the greatest obstacles to teaching race and racial justice in higher education. In this article, we first explore the need to integrate attention to cognitive and affective development, along with evidence-based strategies for doing so. We then provide a case study of an undergraduate sociology course on environmental justice in which the instructor intentionally adopted holistic pedagogical principles of teaching race. Analyzing student responses from a pre- and post- course survey, course assignments, and instructor observations of student participation, we find that both white students and students of …

Artistic Expressions Of Vegan Women With Disturbed Eating Behavior And Body Image Distress, Lee Ann Thill

Expressive Therapies Dissertations

This research explores the experience of women who are vegan, and have disturbed eating behaviors (DEB) and body image distress (BID). Four participants completed a series of three art-making sessions. Participants were invited to visually explore their experience as a vegan woman with DEB/BID. They made a mixed media collage with an emphasis on layering in each session. They engaged in discussion about their process, and the final art piece’s meaning. Between sessions, researcher response art pieces were created for each participant piece, with accompanying journal reflections to engage with the ideas they explored. All participant sessions were video and …

Faith, Farming And Food Justice, Catherine Curran

Charles Rice Post-Graduate Research Fellowship

Through a liberationist lens, religion and social justice are more similar than different. Food illuminates opportunities for building collective agency and community resilience in which religion and social justice might serve one another (White 2018). Specifically, faith communities can contribute to local food systems by using church-owned lands to provide access to farmland for beginning and BIPOC farmers, improve access to fresh, healthy produce, and enhance food security (FaithLands 2021). Faith communities are shifting mindsets from charity to justice and scarcity to abundance while addressing rural child hunger (Lietz-Bilecky 2020). Overall, this paper explores unique ways the Christian food movement …

Agroecology And Participatory Action Research For Food And Water Justice In Central America, Christopher M. Bacon

Environmental Studies and Sciences

I remember driving with local community leaders into northern Nicaragua’s mountains to meet with organized farmers as we continued a long-term relationship that sought to explain and construct strategic responses to drought and an El Niño event in 2016. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network warned that this area, and much of Central America, was experiencing a stage three food crisis characterized by severe food insecurity coping responses, such as skipping meals and selling assets. Yet here we found farmers that had organized themselves into a cooperative and invested not only in organic coffee for export, but also in corn …

Food Justice In Appalachia Main Exhibit Panels, Wvu Libraries

Food Justice in Appalachia

No abstract provided.

Working Towards Land Return In Goukdi’N: A History Of Genocide And A Future Of Healing, Carrie Tully

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Since 2009, the city of Arcata, R. H. Emmerson & Sons, and Humboldt State University have collaborated on the transfer of an 884-acre tract of land in Goukdi’n (known locally as Jacoby Creek Forest). The main goals of this project are to prevent fragmentation of the land, protect wildlife, and to support and enhance student research opportunities. In the ten years that it took for this land to be transferred to the California State University and in the care of Humboldt State University the Wiyot Tribe was not consulted regarding the parcels, their purchase, or their being given to HSU. …

Divide And Slaughter: Bridging The Gap Between Animal Rights And Racial Justice Through An Analysis Of The Link Between Slaughterhouses And Domestic Violence, Kailey Mcneal

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis concerns the injustices present in industrial animal agriculture in the United States, domestic violence, and their disproportionate impact on marginalized communities. Despite the work of social movements centered around domestic violence and the slaughterhouse, the state of both continues to worsen, particularly for communities of color. My research seeks to uncover what factors preclude the efficacy of these movements. A qualitative analysis of the labor advocacy and animal rights movements in the slaughterhouse and the domestic violence advocacy movement suggests that the current disparate framings of these injustices and a lack of attention to race contribute to the …

A Transdisciplinary Analysis Of Just Transition Pathways To 100% Renewable Electricity, Adewale Aremu Adesanya

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The transition to using clean, affordable, and reliable electrical energy is critical for enhancing human opportunities and capabilities. In the United States, many states and localities are engaging in this transition despite the lack of ambitious federal policy support. This research builds on the theoretical framework of the multilevel perspective (MLP) of sociotechnical transitions as well as the concept of energy justice to investigate potential pathways to 100 percent renewable energy (RE) for electricity provision in the U.S. This research seeks to answer the question: what are the technical, policy, and perceptual pathways, barriers, and opportunities for just transition to …

Vcu Monroe Park Campus 'Iconic Green' Pre-Planning And Design Study, Nicholas A. Jancaitis

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Capstone Projects

The 'Iconic Green' pre-planning study for the Monroe Park Campus of VCU provides the framework and data necessary to support the intended 'nexus' on the proposed site. A review of the existing literature on various subjects included will highlight models and successful measures that have ensured success for previous similar built works. Having an understanding of the underlying factors and implications for the site, a needs assessment using existing literature and design precedents and in comparison with VCU's own desired end state and needs. Focusing on these comparisons within a theoretical framework called the Just Beautiful City, established in this …

Health Reform Reconstruction, Lindsay F. Wiley, Elizabeth Y. Mccuskey, Matthew B. Lawrence, Erin C. Fuse Brown

Faculty Articles

This Article connects the failed, inequitable U.S. coronavirus pandemic response to conceptual and structural constraints that have held back U.S health reform for decades and calls for reconstruction. For more than a half-century, a cramped “iron triangle” ethos has constrained health reform conceptually. Reforms aimed to balance individual interests in cost, quality, and access to health care, while marginalizing equity, solidarity, and public health. In the iron triangle era, reforms unquestioningly accommodated four legally and logistically entrenched fixtures — individualism, fiscal fragmentation, privatization, and federalism — that distort and diffuse any reach toward social justice. The profound racial disparities and …

อาชญากรรมสิ่งแวดล้อม: กรณีศึกษาผลกระทบของการลักลอบนำเข้าขยะอิเล็กทรอนิกส์ ในประเทศไทย, นภัสสร เปียจันทร์

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

วิทยานิพนธ์เรื่องอาชญากรรมสิ่งแวดล้อม: กรณีศึกษาผลกระทบของการลักลอบนำเข้าขยะอิเล็กทรอนิกส์ในประเทศไทย มีวัตถุประสงค์เพื่อศึกษาสภาพปัญหาและผลกระทบของการลักลอบนำเข้าขยะอิเล็กทรอนิกส์ในประเทศไทย ศึกษาปัจจัยของการลักลอบนำเข้าขยะอิเล็กทรอนิกส์ในประเทศไทยและเสนอแนะแนวทางและมาตรการในการป้องกันและแก้ไขการลักลอบนําเข้าขยะอิเล็กทรอนิกส์ในประเทศไทยให้สอดคล้องกับอนุสัญญาบาเซล (Basel Convention) โดยเป็นการศึกษาเชิงคุณภาพด้วยการวิจัยเชิงเอกสารและการสัมภาษณ์เชิงลึกจากผู้ให้ข้อมูลสำคัญในหน่วยงานภาครัฐบาลและภาคประชาสังคม จำนวน 10 ราย ผลการศึกษาพบว่า สภาพปัญหาการลักลอบนำเข้าขยะอิเล็กทรอนิกส์เริ่มมาจากการที่ประเทศจีนมีประกาศห้ามนำเข้าขยะรีไซเคิลอย่างเด็ดขาดในปี พ.ศ. 2560 และปัญหาการกำจัดขยะอิเล็กทรอนิกส์ที่มีอยู่เดิมของประเทศไทย ทำให้ปริมาณขยะอิเล็กทรอนิกส์ในประเทศไทยมีจำนวนสูงมากขึ้น พบการลักลอบโดยการสำแดงเท็จ การดำเนินการส่วนใหญ่มักยุติที่ชั้นศุลกากรโดยไม่เข้าสู่กระบวนการทางอาญาแม้จะมีกฎหมายระบุไว้ การลักลอบนำเข้าขยะอิเล็กทรอนิกส์จะส่งผลกระทบต่อสิ่งแวดล้อม ระบบนิเวศ สุขภาพ สังคม ชุมชน และเศรษฐกิจของประเทศ สำหรับปัจจัยของการลักลอบนำเข้าขยะอิเล็กทรอนิกส์นั้น มีทั้งหมด 4 ด้าน ได้แก่ ปัจจัยด้านพื้นที่ ปัจจัยด้านการปฏิบัติงานของเจ้าหน้าที่ผู้บังคับใช้กฎหมาย ปัจจัยด้านการบังคับใช้กฎหมาย และปัจจัยด้านความคุ้มค่า ผลการศึกษาแนวทางในการป้องกัน และแก้ไขปัญหาการลักลอบนำเข้าขยะอิเล็กทรอนิกส์มีทั้งหมด 3 ด้าน ได้แก่ ด้านการปฏิบัติงาน และการบูรณาการร่วมกันของหน่วยงานที่เกี่ยวข้อง การปรับปรุงแก้ไขกฎหมาย/นโยบาย/มาตรการ และการบังคับใช้อย่างเคร่งครัด และการสร้างจิตสำนึก และการตระหนักถึงปัญหาสิ่งแวดล้อมให้มากยิ่งขึ้น

‘The Environment Is Us’: Settler Cartographies Of Indigeneity And Blackness In Prophecy (1979), Kali Simmons

Indigenous Nations Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article examines the triangulation of whiteness, Blackness, and Indigeneity in the ‘creature feature’ sf-horror film Prophecy (Frankenheimer US 1979), arguing that the film’s renderings of environmental racism ultimately function to justify white supremacist hetero-patriarchal maintenance and surveillance of Black and Indigenous lands and bodies. A close examination of Prophecy’s representational and ideological shortfalls – in particular its renderings of Black and Indigenous maternity – reveals troubling entanglements between settler-colonial logics of geography, ecology, monstrosity, and subjectivity.

The Clean Air Act: How It Can Be Localized To Promote Both Environmental And Social Justice, Tate Kirk

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, & Innovation Law

Legislators attempt to achieve intended goals by enacting laws that provide for regulatory enforcement. However, many times laws are unable to achieve their stated goals and in some ways may create new or exacerbate existing issues. Luckily, upon review, many of these issues can be fixed with quick modifications to either their implementation or enforcement mechanisms. In its current form, the Clean Air Act does not effectively account for differences in regional climate patterns, and, moreover, it perpetuates environmental injustice. If local governments were given more autonomy to enforce the Clean Air Act, they could shape its enforcement to more …

Racial & Environmental Justice: A Primer, Corrie Grosse

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Greening Inequality: How Urban Sustainable Development Fails Under Neoliberalism, Josie R. Allison

University Honors Theses

Despite its banner of common-good altruism, urban sustainable development becomes a branding scheme for municipalities when it operates under and prioritizes a neoliberal agenda. Neoliberalism is the dominant economic philosophy within the United States, and other western economies, that emphasizes extreme economic liberalism and open markets with public fiscal austerity and the diminished role of governments. This has transferred a great portion of power and funding once held by the public sector into the hands of the private sector. Under neoliberalism, city governments function with stripped federal funding and limited budgets, while leaning on private companies for public operations, like …