Digital Commons Network^™

Toxic Landscapes, Environmental Justice, And The Community: An Assessment Of Citizen Participation In Superfund Site Remediation Across Vulnerable Populations, Simone Justine Domingue

LSU Master's Theses

The environmental justice movement has made progress toward unveiling environmental inequalities and addressing these inequalities through the empowerment of low-income and minority communities. Federal agencies like the EPA have incorporated environmental justice principles into their operating frameworks, with the goals of ensuring every community is treated similarly when it comes to the implementation of environmental statutes, and ensuring community members are active participants in environmental activities that affect community well-being. Community involvement at federal Superfund sites is rarely conceptualized as an event related to environmental justice despite the role it has in shaping decisions at hazardous waste sites. This study …

Ecotherapists' Perceptions About The Efficacy Of Their Work, Fiona C. Lundy

Theses, Dissertations, and Projects

This qualitative, exploratory study sought to answer the question, what do ecotherapists think makes their nature-based therapy (NBT) work effective and for whom? Twelve American mental health clinicians who practice NBT's (including animal-assisted therapy (AAT), horticultural therapy (HT), nature-reconnection practices (NRP's), and wilderness therapy (WT)) regularly in their professional work were recruited using snowball sampling. Semi-structured interviews revealed that practitioners explain NBTs' effectiveness by citing the biological, psychological, spiritual, and therapeutic power of the natural world, the different ways that NBT's are structured, and additional factors that are unknown. Participants shared varied views about whom ecotherapies best serve; some stated …

Growing The Mission: Nonprofit Organizations Conducting Food-Growing Activities In The Twin Cities Of Minnesota, Marcos Stoltzfus

School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations

Growing food has become an increasingly common activity for nonprofit organizations, and doing so offers many opportunities to confer benefits to individuals and communities. Through a qualitative methodology, this research project uses a grounded theory approach to explore the challenges, opportunities, and issues faced by nonprofits in the Twin Cities that conduct food-growing activities as part of their mission. The study found three main categories of themes relevant to this sub-sector: Food Philosophy and mission prioritization, business model and economic concerns, and integrated program design characteristics. These factors are discussed from a nonprofit management lens, and implications for leaders are …

Performance And Resilience: Performance, Storytelling, And Resilience Building In Post-Katrina New Orleans, Sophia Colette Becker

Honors Papers

"Performance and Resilience: Performance, Storytelling, and Resilience Building in Post-Katrina New Orleans" uses a mixed method approach to investigate the role of digital storytelling and contemporary performing arts in building community and environmental resilience. Through semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and scholarship from the fields of performance studies and environmental studies, this piece focuses on post-disaster landscapes, particularly post-Katrina New Orleans, to investigate the impact of storytelling platforms and performance spaces in retaining social and cultural memory.

Healing And Belonging: Community Based Art And Community Formation In West Oakland, Pablo Miguel Cerdera

Honors Papers

Community Based Art is a model of art making which centers community and interpersonal interaction. Through an in depth case study of Brett Cook's West Oakland based project "Reflections of Healing" this thesis attempts to understand how community is both reflected and constructed in Community Based Art, as well as the political, social, and aesthetic consequences of this construction. Of particular interest are the relationships between art, community, race, class, gentrification, and self-determination. Ultimately, this thesis finds that through an ambivalent and sometimes messy process of collaboration, Reflections of Healing constructs a hopeful and positive image of community that prefigures …

You Get What You Pay For: The Nfip Is Underwater And Climate Change Adaptation Is Essential To Reach Dry Land, Alana Dietel

Florida A & M University Law Review

Climate change is a reality, and Florida is uniquely situated to feel its effects sooner than other states. This is due to the prediction of a substantially rising sea level and the fact that a majority of the most populated and popular areas in Florida are located along or near the coasts. Part I of this article examines the realities of climate change. Part II reviews the current state of the most significant attempt at flood insurance by the Federal government, the NFIP. Part II also reviews Florida’s statewide initiatives, as well as local initiatives of three distinct Florida counties. …

Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, And Residential Mobility By Dorceta E. Taylor, Alan Barton

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Gvsu Press Releases, 2015, Grand Valley State University

University Press Releases, 1961-Present

A compilation of press releases for the year 2015 submitted by University Communications (formerly News & Information Services) to news agencies concerning the people, places, and events related to Grand Valley State University.

Washington's Fish Consumption Rate And Water Quality Standards: Fostering Allies To Keep Our Seafood Clean, Tiffany J. Waters

All Master's Theses

Washington State’s current fish consumption rate and water quality standards update has been a highly contentious public policy debate between Washington State tribes, the State of Washington’s Department of Ecology, the Federal Environmental Protection Agency, and many prominent Washington State industries. Environmental groups and Washington tribes have partnered in the Keep Our Seafood Clean Coalition to educate the public on the need for increasing water quality standards to protect tribal and public health. My research includes analyzing Washington's tribal/State agency co-management relationships, the water quality standards history and current criteria, and the narratives of the public debate; and conducting interviews …

Table Of Contents

Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest

The final issue of Volume XVIII, the Symposium Edition.

Potential Social Impacts Of Hydraulic Fracturing And Shale Gas Development In The Uk, Kelsey Reckart

Honors Theses

Hydraulic fracturing has been responsible for revolutionizing the oil and gas industry in the US, and has since gained increasing popularity as nations across the globe look for new energy sources. The United Kingdom (UK) has recently taken steps to use hydraulic fracturing to develop their own shale gas industry, although thus far the industry is still in the initial exploratory stages of development. There has been much debate over the benefits and risks that hydraulic fracturing and shale gas development pose to UK communities and this thesis will investigate the potential social impacts that hydraulic fracturing may have on …

How Police Brutality Harms Mothers: Linking Police Violence To The Reproductive Justice Movement, Arneta Rogers

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

The recent and highly publicized killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old African American and the subsequent grand jury decision not to indict Darren Wilson, the Ferguson, Missouri police officer who killed him, evoked mass social protest, and highly emotional and politically charged social commentary on the racialized effects of police brutality. While the crisis of systemic police violence has historically centered on the harm inflicted on victims of police brutality and, more generally, on the communities where they are from, an agitated group of feminist scholars and reproductive justice advocates have offered a more nuanced appraisal of the harm …

Beyond Known Worlds: Climate Change Governance By Arbitral Tribunals?, Valentina Vadi

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Can economic development and the fight against climate change be integrated successfully? What role, if any, does international investment law play in global climate governance? Can foreign direct investments (FDI) be tools in the struggle against climate change? What types of claims have foreign investors brought with regard to climate change--related regulatory measures before investment treaty arbitral tribunals? This Article examines the specific question as to whether foreign direct investments can mitigate and/or aggravate climate change. The interplay between climate change and foreign direct investments is largely underexplored and in need of systematization. To map this nexus, this Article proceeds …

Do Air Pollutant Emissions Lead To An Increase In Total Personal Health Care Costs By State?, Dana Jespersen

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Total personal health care costs are increasing in the United States every year. Currently personal health care costs are predicted to increase at a national average rate of 6.5 percent. This is on track with the historical data. The increase has returned to the 6.0 percent mark after falling down to an increase of 3.7 percent in 2013. Recovering from the recession and the implementation of the Affordable Care Act has contributed to the steady increase back up to the average 6 percent increase per year. When looking at individual states, all averaged around the 6 to 8 percent increase …

Resistance Songs: Mobilizing The Law And Politics Of Community, Anthony V. Alfieri

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Millennial Who Planted Trees, Trevien Stanger

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In this work of creative non-fiction essays and stories, the author explores ecological restoration through a variety of contexts, settings, and conditions.

Craig Santos Perez: Poetry As Strategy Against Military Occupation In Guåhan (Guam), Robert John Briggs

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is interested in hearing the voices seldom heard. It looks at the poetry of Craig Santos Perez, a native Chamorro from Guam, in an attempt to begin puzzling out the idea of transformation in Guam and the military's complicity in the process. While erasure seems to be trending and emerging as a term that would, on the surface, adequately bring attention to the loss of culture, land, and language in Guam, it has the tendency to overshadow and ignore the varying degrees that Guam has changed in the presence of military rule. Other forms of transformation include, but …

The Human Footprint Of Our Daily Consumption: Defetishizing Commodities Through New Media, Kelly Mcguire

Research Papers

No abstract provided.

Blended Framework: Bill Mckibben's Use Of Melodrama And Comedy In Environmental Rhetoric, Megan E. Cullinan

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In the last five years, as climate change became less abstract and more noticeable, conversations surrounding the issues have begun to change. In the past, solutions to climate change were framed in terms of how individuals can made a difference—and yet, no significant changes have occurred. Research shows that the main contributors to climate change are the fossil fuel industry, as both extraction and consumption of fossil fuel products are irresponsible and unsustainable. Thus, it is important for climate change conflict to leave the personal sphere and become more prominent as a political controversy.

Bill McKibben’s blended framing of climate …

Women’S Voices For The Earth: A Discourse Analysis Of Gendered, Environmental Media Advocacy, Marit Olson

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Women’s Voices for the Earth (WVE), a Missoula based, nationally recognized non-profit, empowers women to advocate against toxic chemicals that cause individual and community health hazards. There is little analysis of the intersection of women’s and environmental subjugation and how these intersections influence women’s environmental organizations. My research examines the influence of ecofeminist ideology, as framed by Karen Warren’s ecofeminist and class analysis, in WVE’s online discourse, primarily social media. To do so I apply a Foucaultian discourse analysis to WVE’s online publications, and compare that to an analysis of the online presence of Toxics Action Center (TAC), a non-gendered …

Integrating Geoscience Into Undergraduate Education About Environment, Society, And Sustainability Using Place-Based Learning: Three Examples, David Gosselin, Steven Burian, Tim Lutz, Julie Maxson

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Faculty Publications

From water to energy, and from climate change to natural hazards, the geosciences (marine, Earth, and atmospheric science) have an important role to play in addressing a wide range of societal issues, with particular relevance to how humans can live sustainably on Earth. Although arguably important to developing solutions for many societal issues, more often than not, students have limited exposure to the geosciences in high school or college. To address this geoscience literacy problem, the Interdisciplinary Teaching of Geoscience for a Sustainable Future (InTeGrate) Talent Expansion Center has engaged members of the geoscience community and their colleagues in allied …

The Disparate Impact Of Shuttered Schools, Courtney Lauren Anderson

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Connecting The Point(S), Hunts Point, Bronx, New York, Corey Clarke, Jocelyn Dupre, Leah Feder, Sarah Gelder, Nate Heffron, Stephanie Printz, Josh Thompson, Laxmi Ramasubramanian

Publications and Research

Hunts Point is a notoriously over-planned neighborhood. As the exploration of recent plans on page 15 illustrates, Hunts Point has been both the beneficiary and victim of planning efforts that have left many in the community feeling over-surveyed with inadequate results to show for it. Our client made it clear from the beginning that the community did not need another plan to sit on a shelf. Therefore, the team chose to focus on small-scale, actionable interventions that could be implemented without significant capital outlays. To this end, we began by conducting an analysis of existing conditions, investigating both the physical …

County Demographic Influence On Toxic Chemical Activities Of Chemical-Related Industry In Michigan, Lisa Helen Perricane

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

There are a large number of chemical facilities that emit toxic chemicals in Michigan, and there is a concern regarding toxic chemical exposure to the residents of Michigan counties. However, it is uncertain whether chemical companies that emit toxic chemicals in Michigan are influenced by county demographic factors in deciding whether to engage in voluntary pollution prevention (P2) activities and whether this decision influences U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (U.S. EPA) Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI) scores. Using Bullard's theory of environmental justice, the purpose of this quantitative study was to determine if there was a correlation between chemical-related industry's voluntary P2 …

Stewardship And The Roots Of The Ecological Crisis: Reflections On Laudato Si', Brian G. Henning

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Understanding Vulnerability In Alaska Fishing Communities: A Validation Methodology For Rapid Assessment Of Well-Being Indices, Conor M. Maguire

All Master's Theses

Social well-being indices measure how fishing communities are likely to be affected by social-ecological perturbations, and are a significant tool to identify the primary issues influencing communities’ sustained participation in fishing activities. In an attempt to further our understanding of how communities are affected by such perturbations, we have developed a rapid assessment methodology to test the external validity of a set of well-being indices that measure community vulnerability. This methodology informs how well such indices reflect the communities they represent by measuring elements of well-being through field observations, and comparing them to corresponding index components created from secondary data …

Identification Of Environmental Health Gaps In State-Recognized American Indian Tribes In Connecticut, Meera Ravichandran

Public Health Theses

This study assessed the sanitary infrastructure and policies affecting the environmental health aspects of three state-recognized American Indian Tribes in Connecticut. A historical search was conducted to gather records pertaining to the Paucatuck Eastern Pequot, Golden Hill Paugussett, and Schaghticoke Tribes at the state and town levels to determine what, if any, data were available on drinking water and wastewater quality and disposition on Tribal lands. This investigation was supplemented by questionnaires and an on-site survey of sanitation conducted in cooperation with the Connecticut Department of Public Health. The survey included the collection of drinking water samples for analyses along …

Namati: Innovations In Legal Disempowerment For Health? A Sierra Leonean Case Study, Ikenna Okezie Achilihu

Public Health Theses

Drawing on eleven weeks of fieldwork for Namati’s Health Accountability and Social Empowerment Program, this case study investigates whether Namati interventions reinforce existing formal and customary structures for the amelioration of grievances between health clinics, their associated staff, and intended beneficiaries. Furthermore, this study questions Namati’s role as an organization that fosters sustainable change at: the level of the grassroots in its ability to influence government health policy, and at the level of the elites in its ability to improve administrative and policy deficiencies in the area of health access. Finally, this study answers critical questions on the equity-enhancing effects …

The Hydrosocial Costs Of High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing: A Tale Of Two Counties In Michigan, Amanda Kreuze

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Although natural gas has been praised as a clean and abundant energy source, the varying impacts and uncertainties surrounding the process of extracting natural gas from unconventional sources, known as horizontal high-volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF) or “fracking,” have raised important concerns. The practice of HVHF is expanding so quickly that the full impacts are not yet known. This thesis project, using a grounded theory methodological approach, explores the risks and benefits associated with HVHF as recognized by the residents of two Michigan counties, one that currently produces natural gas by HVHF (Crawford County) and one that does not (Barry County). …

Engaging Metis: Exploring An African Woman's Negotiation Of Change, Ruby Pappoe

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

African women’s emerging visibility as social and political actors has received a lot of attention in the past two decades. Scholars have explored women’s political movements and sociocultural activism from various perspectives to expose their contributions to social change. Although this scholarship has expanded to incorporate multiple voices as well as expose the contemporary strategies of resistance women engage in to overcome difficult challenges, there seems to be little research on ordinary women as they also confront their daily challenges in hope of improving their situations. This research takes up this gap by exploring a Ghanaian woman’s resistance in the …