Digital Commons Network^™

Land, Society, And Justice: Reframing Geoscience Education Through A Storied Anti-Colonial And Environmental Justice Lens, Cameron Reed

Shared Knowledge Conference

Geoscience has been paramount to the transformation and advancement of society, fundamentally changing the way we view, interact, and live with the surrounding natural and built environment. It is important to recognize the value and importance of this interdisciplinary scientific field while reconciling its ties to imperial and colonizing extractive systems which have led to harmful and invasive endeavors. To prevent future injustices and resolve inequalities in colonized communities, the future of geosciences must be pushed in a new direction and be framed through a decolonial, and anti-colonial, lens where possible. Additionally, geology and its tangential studies in geosciences must …

Distributional Effect Of Exposure To Cafos: A Case Study Of Large Dairies In New Mexico, Suraj Ghimire

Shared Knowledge Conference

The industrialization of the agricultural sector has turned into a double-edged sword for the future of humanity on this planet. On the one hand, without industrialized agriculture, there would be insufficient food and fiber to feed the growing human population. On the other hand, the rapid expansion of large-scale farms has resulted in an unprecedented amount of negative externalities impacting the environment and human health. While the benefits of abundance have been enjoyed evenly across the board, the negative impacts are borne mainly by and concentrated in the historically underprivileged communities. The goal of this research is to look at …

The Washington Post Interviews Vinay Harpalani: The Courts Have Served As An Anti-Democratic Force For Much Of U.S. History, Vinay Harpalani, David A. Love

Faculty Scholarship

Certainly there are examples in which the high court has upheld the rights of the marginalized and disadvantaged. However, as Vinay Harpalani, associate professor of law at the University of New Mexico, has noted, “even when the U.S. Supreme Court makes rulings that seem to favor people of color, those rulings usually serve the interests of wealthy, elite White Americans.”

Harpalani cited how the Brown decision stemmed in part from Cold War strategy and the need for the United States to appeal to people in African, Asian and Latin American countries. “Racial segregation at home did not bode well …

Natural Resources And Environmental Law Newsletter, Autumn 2021, University Of New Mexico - School Of Law

Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Climate Change In New Mexico, Monica Ksir

Climate Change and Public Health Preparedness

No abstract provided.

Brownfields Cleanup: A Look Back And Ahead Toward Superfund Authority, Clifford Villa

Faculty Scholarship

Did you know that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, through the Superfund program within each of the ten regional offices across the United States, has millions of dollars to spend each year for cleaning up contaminated sites that are not designated “Superfund” sites? Not many people seem to know that, even lawyers who practice in environmental law, or even law professors who teach it. If these elite folks do not know that, then how would ordinary community members know that, people with busy lives who don’t do Superfund for a living? The short answer is, they probably don’t know either.

Book Review: Climate Change And The Voiceless: Protecting Future Generations, Wildlife, And Natural Resources, Jacqueline Hoswell

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

“Preservative Of All Other Rights”: Voting And Social Justice In The Post-Trump Era, Vinay Harpalani

Faculty Scholarship

As social justice advocates rejoice over Donald Trump’s defeat and look for paths forward, the biggest lesson comes from the 2020 presidential election itself. The right to vote is “preservative of all other rights[,]” and this past year underscored its importance more than ever. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, high voter turnout—and especially high Black voter turnout—propelled Joe Biden to victory. Even as the Electoral College and partisan gerrymandering continue to undermine the popular will, America’s changing demographics favor people of color and progressives. Moreover, the elected branches of government have become more significant because Trump packed the …

Front Matter, Natural Resources Journal

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Environmental Justice In New Mexico: Counting Coup, Denisse Enriquez

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Nature’S Personhood And Property’S Virtues, Laura Spitz, Eduardo M. Peñalver

Faculty Scholarship

This Article evaluates the strategy of claiming personhood for natural objects as a way to advance environmental goals in the United States. Using the Colorado River Ecosystem v. Colorado litigation as the focus, we explore the normative foundation of the claim—elements of nature are legal persons—and the work personhood is being asked to do by the plaintiff and other environmental activists. We identify three possibilities: procedural work, substantive work, and rhetorical work. Of those, we suggest the plaintiff’s strongest case is rhetorical. We say this not only because it will likely be difficult to convince a judge to extend standing …

Farmers’ Place-Based Discourse About Water Relations: Ways Of Knowing Water And Multispecies Survival, Jeffrey Alan Hoffmann

Communication ETDs

The present study looks at farmers’ discourse about water and water relations. Through qualitative interviews using the method of cultural discourse analysis (CuDA), and the framework of ecocultural dialectics, the study reveals how, as farmers talk about water, they also make explicit and implicit arguments about specific cultural relations with the biosphere, as well as the role of identity, place, and power in designing and implementing agricultural solutions to ecological and social problems. I argue that the contradictions in how farmers discursively envision the problems of water pollution and scarcity, as well as solutions to those problems in their farming …

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Where Do We Go From Here?, Steve Carr

Black History at UNM

Dr. Assata Zerai, Vice President, UNM Division for Equity and Inclusion, identifies three areas of focus to improve equity and inclusion at UNM: diversifying faculty hiring and creating an inclusive culture that supports faculty of color, creating a culturally responsive educational environment for learners, and addressing racism in health and healthcare. This article contextualizes these goals with a larger discussion about anti-discriminatory public policies and laws, as well as political and social movements both past and present. This article is a part of the Racism: An Educational Series, produced by the UNM Newsroom.

The Complicated History Of Environmental Racism, Victoria Peña-Parr

Black History at UNM

University of New Mexico Honors College Assistant Professor, Myrriah Gómez, defines and explores environmental racism, specifically its effects in New Mexico.

Assessing The Environmental Impacts Of Urbanization In Siddharthanagar, Nepal, Bishal Raj Khanal

Economics ETDs

Rapid and haphazard infrastructural expansion often contributes to large negative externalities in cities. Environmental problems like air pollution and degradation of quality-of-life elements in an urban settlement are attributed to urban sprawl. Evidence based planning tools need to be developed which can help manage the rapid urbanization that is taking place in the developing world. In this context, we examine the relationship between health outcomes and the different spatial- temporal aspects of an urban-built environment in Siddharthanagar Metropolitan City which is a major settlement in southwestern Nepal. We attempt to identify the aspects of built environment which are closely associated …

Contesting Historical Enchantment: Militarized Settler Colonialism And Refugee Resettlement In New Mexico, Christina Juhász-Wood

American Studies ETDs

This dissertation provides an interdisciplinary critical study of refugee resettlement to Albuquerque, New Mexico. I argue that refugee resettlement to the United States cannot be understood separately from the ongoing structure of settler colonialism. I analyze Albuquerque’s post-WWII militarized settlement as a settler colonial process of extraction and suburbanization that depended on Native labor and resources to fuel the growing nuclear weapons program. Albuquerque’s Kirtland Air Force Base played a role not only in displacing and thus producing refugees during the Vietnam War but also in marking Albuquerque as a distinctly militarized geography to which they were resettled. Thousands of …

Healing Through The Photographic Murals Of James "Chip" "Jetsonorama" Thomas, Mandolen Sanchez

Art & Art History ETDs

James “Chip” “Jetsonorama” Thomas is an Indian Health Services physician who moved to the Navajo Nation in 1987. Although he is not culturally Native American, Thomas depicts Navajo in large-scale black and white photographic murals. His work has been discussed in online articles and books about street art in terms of their relationship to street art, specifically the art of JR, as well as their role as activist art on the Navajo Nation. There has been a lack of substantial research, though, into the way in which his photographic murals respond to or engage with nineteenth and twentieth-century photographs of …

Environmental Justice: Law, Policy & Regulation, Clifford Villa, Nadia Ahmad, Rebecca Bratspies, Roger Lin, Clifford Rechtschaffen, Eileen Gauna, Catherine O'Neill

Faculty Book Display Case

Environmental Justice: Law, Policy, & Regulation explores theory and practice in this dynamic subject, which fuses environmental law and civil rights enforcement. From early concerns over toxic waste in minority communities, environmental justice expanded to consider the range of environmental threats facing poor, immigrant, and indigenous communities; women, children, and seniors; and other vulnerable populations. This third edition provides extensively updated materials to address environmental justice concerns today, including oil drilling in the Arctic, the Dakota Access Pipeline, drinking water contamination in Flint, and the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Featuring new chapters addressing disaster justice and …

Climate Change Adaptation In Highland Ecuador: Intersections Of Gender, Geography, And Knowledge In Farming Communities, Dinka Natali Caceres Arteaga

Latin American Studies ETDs

This dissertation uses a feminist political ecology perspective to explore the socioeconomic impacts of climate change in Ecuador, especially but not limited to the agriculture sector. It is based on the use of mixed methods that allowed the participation and validation of the local population, surpassing their role as beneficiaries to co-authors of this research.

The significance of this study relies on the position the local population holds in the fields of human geography, under a community local-planning perspective, as they attempted to collaborate in the process of adaptation to climate change by presenting analysis and calculation of an index …

Who Decides: Is Water Life Or Capital? Contesting Visions Of Western Water Management In The 21st Century, Ceorl

Water Resources Professional Project Reports

There is an ideological divide between the goal of universal access to clean water and the outcomes of how water regulations are implemented. John Fleck, author of Water is for Fighting Over: and Other Myths about Water in the West and Sivas, et al. in California Water Governance in the 21st Century present contesting prescriptions for Western water management. The ideologies advocated by Fleck and Sivas, et al. differ as to who enacts and profits from each and exemplify the divide between the goals of water regulations and how they are implemented. Fleck regards water as property and an economic …

Remaking Environmental Justice, Clifford Villa

Faculty Scholarship

From movements for civil rights in the 1960s and environmental protection in the 1970s, the environmental justice movement emerged in the 1980s and 1990s to highlight the disparate impacts of pollution, principally upon people of color and low-income communities. Over time, the scope of environmental justice expanded to address concerns for other dimensions of diversity. New and continuing challenges tell us that we need to reframe our understanding of environmental justice to ensure better protection for people going forward. One way to reframe this understanding may be to apply the heuristic of vulnerability analysis as proposed by legal theorist Martha …

The Reform Of The Compensation System For Ecological And Environmental Damage In China: Natural Resources, Environmental Enforcement, And Legislation, Weiyu Wu

Natural Resources Journal

The establishment of the Compensation System for Ecological and Environmental Damage promises to be a milestone development in China’s environmental regulations. Historically, China has used two main legal tools—direct regulation and public interest litigation—to cope with the ecological and environmental damage under its current environmental laws and management systems, but they are unable to effectively break the paradox of “polluted by the enterprises, suffered by the public, paid by the government.” China’s new Compensation System for Ecological and Environmental Damage is becoming a feasible method to comprehensively remedy China’s damaged environment by imposing negotiation and litigation against liable parties that …

Creating Social Change Through Art: The Greater Chaco Art Zines, Jeanette Hart-Mann, Asha Canalos

Natural Resources Journal

This interview with Jeanette Hart-Mann and Asha Canalos took place on March 6, 2020 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This interview was conducted in person and edited by Ariel MacMillan-Sanchez.4 Hart-Mann and Canalos explained the importance of the Greater Chaco Art Zines project, how it came to fruition, the issues of censorship that surround it, and their perspectives on generating meaningful change. Some of the art pieces discussed in this interview are published in this article. If you would like to get involved or wish to see more of the art pieces discussed in this interview please visit https://greaterchacoartzines.org/.

Chronic Environmental Exposure To Metal Mixtures In Tribal Populations And Potential Immune System Effects, Jennifer J. Ong

Biomedical Sciences ETDs

Hardrock mining in the United States (US) has left a legacy of mixed metal mine waste sites. Wastes may contain multiple metals of health concern, including arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury, and uranium, among others. Mining waste sites are disproportionately located on or contiguous to the watersheds of tribal lands. Due to proximity, and because of reliance on natural resources to maintain traditional diets and customs, Native American communities’ contact with multiple metals is often increased. Two impacted communities are the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe (CRST) and Navajo Nation. Both tribes have expressed concerns that metals in mine waste adversely affect …

Natural Resources And Environmental Law Newsletter, Fall 2019, Natural Resources And Environmental Law Program

Newsletter

Table of Contents:

• Emerita Professor Eileen Gauna Receives American Bar Association Award
• UNM Hires Joseph A. Schremmer as Leon Karelitz Oil & Gas Law Professor
• Faculty Scholarship and Presentations
• NREL Clinic Proposes Low Income Energy Efficiency Bill, Participates in Methane Regulation Expert Workgroup
• Reed D. Benson Elected to Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation Board of Directors
• Alumna Stefanie Tsosie Hired for Tribal Partnerships Program at Earthjustice
• 2019 Graduate Ann Brethour Gains National Recognition

Evaluating Sustainable & Equitable Financing For Pedestrian Infrastructure Maintenance And How The Quality Of Pedestrian Infrastructure Affects The Choice To Walk, Alexis Corning Padilla

Civil Engineering ETDs

In many communities, pedestrian infrastructure is poorly maintained. One challenge is finding sustainable and equitable funding since many municipalities across the country require adjacent property to maintain and repair sidewalks adjacent to their property. These policies are difficult to enforce, may place a high cost on lower-income households, and may be partly responsible for the poor condition of many sidewalks. Therefore, in the first part of this research, we evaluated three alternatives for financing the maintenance of sidewalks in Albuquerque, New Mexico: increasing the gross receipts tax, the gasoline excise tax, or the property tax. We concluded that any of …

Is Transportation Planning Effective? A Critical Review Of Long-Range Regional Transportation Planning In The United States, Razieh Nadafianshahamabadi

Civil Engineering ETDs

The Federal-Aid Highway Act requires urban areas with a population greater than 50,000 to create Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) to ensure that funding for transportation projects and programs are based on a continuing, cooperative, and comprehensive planning process. A major responsibility of each MPO is the creation of a long-range transportation plan (LRTP) that addresses the transportation needs of a metropolitan region over the next twenty years or more. While long-range regional transportation planning goals have grown to include a wide range of concerns and technical methods for evaluating planning scenarios have advanced substantially over the past 50 years, there …

Teacher Perceptions Of Environmental Science In Rural Northwestern New Mexico Public Schools, Marie Quiahuitl Julienne

Organization, Information and Learning Sciences ETDs

In this study, I explored what teachers perceive as the factors that impact their teaching of environmental science in rural secondary level schools in northwestern New Mexico. I adapted Bronfenbrenner’s (1994) ecological systems model, based on four environmental subsystem levels (microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem), as the conceptual framework to address the major research question of this study, and developed 18 interview questions to explore teachers’ perceptions of factors that influence their teaching of environmental science. I investigated the perspectives science teachers have about environmental science topics and the influences they perceive that affect how they teach environmental science, and …

Front Matter, Natural Resources Journal

Natural Resources Journal

Includes Acknowledgement by Serena R. Wheaton & Jennifer Brannen Co-Editors-In-Chief

Second Generation Property Rights Issues, Katrina M. Wyman

Natural Resources Journal

For decades, scholarship, inspired by Ronald Coase and advocating greater use of property rights and markets, has focused on important “first generation” issues related to establishing property rights. This article makes two main points. First, it highlights the potential for things to go awry after property rights have been established in environmental resources. In emphasizing that property rights may become misallocated, this article draws on the theoretical arguments recently advanced by Eric Posner, Glen Weyl, and Lee Fennell that private property can lead to allocative inefficiency. Second, this article highlights three categories of explanations for why environmental property rights are …