Digital Commons Network^™

Exploring Transit-Based Environmental Injustices In San Gabriel Valley And Greater Los Angeles, Bailey Lai

Pomona Senior Theses

This thesis attempts to disentangle the multilayered interactions between Greater Los Angeles’s history, its built environment, and its inequitable treatment of different peoples, focusing on how transportation in surrounding suburban communities like San Gabriel Valley has developed in relation to the inner city of Los Angeles. Greater Los Angeles contains a long, winding trajectory of transit-based environmental injustices, from the indigenous societies being overtaken by the Spanish missions, to the railroads and streetcars boosting the farmlands and urban growth of Los Angeles, leading into the decline of transit and rise of automobile-oriented suburbia. Within the San Gabriel Valley, the suburban …

From Paris To Projects: Clarifying The Implications Of Canada’S Climate Change Mitigation Commitments For The Planning And Assessment Of Projects And Strategic Undertakings (Full Report), Robert B. Gibson, Karine Peloffy, Daniel Horen Greenford, Meinhard Doelle, H Damon Matthews, Christian Holz, Kiri Staples, Bradley Wiseman, Frédérique Grenier

Reports & Public Policy Documents

Canada has signed the Paris Agreement and made other international commitments to doing our fair share of what is needed to keep overall global warming to the Paris Agreement limit of well below 2ºC, and to aim for 1.5ºC, to avoid devastating climate change. However, we have not yet progressed far in translating these commitments into implications for decision making on proposed undertakings with significant implications for meeting those commitments.

Clarifying those implications and determining how best to incorporate them in deliberations and decision making is overdue and now imperative. The federal government’s new Impact Assessment Act, which is now …

Heritage Alchemy: A Model For Sustaining The Built Heritage Of Montana In The Changing Landscapes Of The 21st Century Via Perspectives From The Netherlands On Policy, Education, And Stewardship, Jeffrey Macdonald

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This Ph.D. dissertation presents sets of interrelated research problems, and challenges to sustaining the built heritage of Montana, in the context of the changing modern landscapes in the western United States. The research connects issues of heritage policy, education, and stewardship as common, and connected themes in historic preservation, historical archaeology, anthropology, and cultural landscape practices. The dissertation is comprised of three articles that are under review for publication, presenting perspectives and data assembled via empirical, and place-based field research, interviews, and interaction with heritage professionals, and site investigation conducted throughout the Netherlands between August 2013 and February 2017. These …

Hazardous Waste Site Proximity And Type 2 Diabetes: From Youths To Adults, Theresa Ann Johnson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Type 2 diabetes has reached epidemic proportions in adults and youths. Persistent organic pollutants and endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), such as pesticides, dioxins, and organochlorines, are omnipresent and persist in the environment with potential for human exposure via contaminated air, waterways, soil, and human food supply. EDCs have been correlated with diabetes incidence and risks. Residential proximity to hazardous waste sites (HWS) has been correlated with increased hospital admission rates for diabetes. The study used a sample population (N = 1,724), ages ≥ 12 years from the 2005-2012 Continuous NHANES and HWS data from the National Priorities List of Superfund Sites. …

Recasting Intellectual Property In Light Of The U.N. Sustainable Development Goals: Toward Knowledge Governance, Margaret Chon

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Watering The Desert: Azraq, Public Opinion, And Environmental Post-Materialism, Wesley Gerard

Honors Theses

In this thesis, I analyze the physical, political, and societal transformations in Azraq, Jordan, caused by over-exploitation of the town’s aquifer. I also connect the changes I and others have observed in Azraq to two main theories: postmaterialism and its counterarguments, and the tragedy of the commons. In short, postmaterialism argues that societies that have advanced so that citizens do not have to devote their time and money to survival will have larger rates of environmentalism; the tragedy of the commons details the negative consequences of environmental degradation on those living around a common resource. In conducting the study, I …

Blending Insights From Implementation Science And The Social Sciences To Mitigate Inequities In Screening For Hereditary Cancer Syndromes, Laura Senier, Colleen M Mcbride, Alex T Ramsey, Vence L Bonham, David A Chambers

Open Access Publications

Genomic screening to identify people at high risk for adult-onset hereditary conditions has potential to improve population health. However, if not equitably accessible, genomics-informed screening programs will exacerbate existing health inequities or give rise to new ones. To realize the disease prevention potential of these screening tools, we need strategies to broaden their reach. We propose a conceptual framework that merges insights from implementation science and sociological research on health inequities. Our framework does three things: first, it broadens the arenas of action beyond those typically addressed in implementation science frameworks; second, it argues for recruiting more diverse partners to …

Associations Among Neighborhood Socioeconomic Deprivation, Physical Activity Facilities, And Physical Activity In Youth During The Transition From Childhood To Adolescence, Morgan N Clennin, Min Lian, Natalie Colabianchi, Andrew Kaczynski, Marsha Dowda, Russell R Pate

Open Access Publications

BACKGROUND: This study aims to examine the longitudinal association of neighborhood socioeconomic deprivation (SED) with physical activity in youth during the transition from elementary to middle school, and to determine if access to physical activity facilities moderates this relationship.

METHODS: Data were obtained from the Transitions and Activity Changes in Kids (TRACK) study, which was a multilevel, longitudinal study designed to identify the factors that influence changes in physical activity as youth transition from elementary to middle school. The analytic sample for the current study included 660 youth with complete data in grades 5 (baseline) and 7 (follow-up). A repeated …

Top 10 Research Priorities In Spatial Lifecourse Epidemiology, Peng Jia, Ross C. Brownson, Et Al.

Open Access Publications

No abstract provided.

Front Matter - Table Of Contents - Preface

Iowa Journal of Communication

No abstract provided.

"A Global Environmental Movement That Protects Us All:" Racial Scripts, Counterscripts, And Advocating For Social Change In An Environmental Justice Context, Christopher Scott Thomas

Iowa Journal of Communication

This essay explores the means of advocacy in a letter sent by the Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP) in 1990 that charges mainstream environmentalists with environmental racism. Although the letter is known for its importance in shaping the relationship between environmentalism and environmental justice, engaging the document's collaborative rhetorics illuminates the means by which its signatories crafted resistance and solidarity. To these ends, I argue that the letter crafts links between its signatories based on corresponding structural forces and common concerns. The letter also constructs and advances counter advocacies that work simultaneously as critiques of mainstream environmentalists as well as calls …

The Water Changed Me As A Person: How Childhood Experiences With Water Affect Behavior And Attitudes Towards Water As An Adult, Victoria Heim

Honors Theses

This research serves to identify how childhood experiences with water impact a person’s attitudes and behaviors towards water issues later in life. Current research looks at more one-dimensional studies, such as only attitudes and behaviors from childhood, or not exploring multiple variables such as gender and community type and childhood experiences. By interviewing two distinct groups of students in terms of typical environmental attitudes and behaviors expressed by members of each group or political party, the College Republicans and the Office of Sustainability, we can see how the individual respondents from each group may have had childhood experiences that shaped …

Building Bridges: Examining Race And Privilege In Community Economic Development: Introductory Overview, Priya Baskaran, Renee Hatcher, Lynnise E. Pantin

Faculty Scholarship

The country has been in economic recovery since the Great Recession in 2007. Home prices have since stabilized after the mortgage and foreclosure crisis that followed the Recession. In late 2017, the federal government passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, leading to a surge in corporate earnings. As of the time of this writing, major stock indicators are at all-time highs, and interest rates are low. But corporate indicators and interest rates do not paint the entire picture. Most of the economic recovery is in affluent, predominately white parts of the country, while distressed areas inhabited by people of …

Zoned Out: How Zoning Law Undermines Family Law’S Functional Turn, Kate Redburn

Faculty Scholarship

A fatal conflict in the legal definition of family lurks at the intersection of family law and zoning law. Family law doctrines have increasingly embraced the claims of “functional families” — those whose bonds can be traced to cohabitation and shared domestic life. At the same time, zoning laws have narrowed to recognize only formal families, effectively restricting residency to individuals related by blood, marriage, or adoption. As a result, family law’s “functional turn” remains vulnerable in at least thirty-one states. Using original legal analysis and historical research, this Note illuminates that contradiction, explains how it arose, and argues that …

Whose Faith Matters? The Fight For Religious Liberty Beyond The Christian Right, Elizabeth Reiner Platt, Katherine M. Franke, Kira Shepherd, Lilia Hadjiivanova

Faculty Scholarship

By offering a sweeping account of religious liberty activism being undertaken by numerous progressive humanitarian and social justice movements, and uncovering how right-wing activists have fought for conservative Christian hegemony rather than “religious liberty” more generally, this report challenges the leading popular narrative of religious freedom.

This Is The Moment Of Truth, Ray León, Roger Lin, Camille Pannu, Irene Vasquez

Faculty Scholarship

While everyone is taking their seats, I wanted to quickly just thank the prior panelists today and bring it full circle, back to Mustafa’s opening keynote, where he asked, “Who is fighting these fights? Who is doing this work in fighting for justice?” He pointed out that many of the people fighting these fights, many of the advocates, are people who look like you and are also the same age as you. That is why we have this panel. What can you, as students, do to get involved in the environmental justice or social justice movements?

My name is Roger …

New Climate Law Will Reshape Ny’S Key Sectors, Michael B. Gerrard, Edward Mctiernan

Faculty Scholarship

Deep changes in the way electricity is generated, people and goods move around, and buildings are erected and renovated in New York will be required by the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), which both houses of the state Legislature have passed and Governor Andrew Cuomo has promised to sign.

Three Legal Visions Of A ‘Green New Deal’, Michael B. Gerrard, Edward Mctiernan

Faculty Scholarship

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who has rocketed to such fame that she is now widely known simply as AOC, and Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), co-father of Waxman-Markey, the cap-and- trade bill that narrowly passed the House in 2009 but died in the Senate, have introduced identical resolutions to create a “Green New Deal.” H. Res. 109, S. Res. 59.

Changing The National Flood Insurance Program For A Changing Climate, Dena Adler, Michael Burger, Rob Moore, Joel Scata

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Congress established the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) in 1968 to reduce flood damages nationwide and ease the federal government’s financial burden for providing disaster recovery.1 To achieve this goal, the program was designed to perform three primary functions. First, the program provides federally backed insurance to property owners and renters. Second, the program established minimum requirements for building, land use, and floodplain management practices that local communities must adopt in order for their residents to be eligible to purchase NFIP insurance coverage. Third, the program is responsible for mapping high floodrisk areas. These maps inform local land use decisions …

Environmental Refugees? Rethinking What’S In A Name, Elizabeth Keyes

All Faculty Scholarship

The phrase “environmental refugee” summons a compelling image of someone forced to relocate due to climate change. The phrase has been used effectively to raise awareness of such diverse problems as the rising sea levels that are submerging some Pacific islands, as well as the increased impact of natural disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes which cause a mixture of temporary and permanent migration. As climate change accelerates, and its human costs become ever clearer, it is completely appropriate and necessary to respond to these migrations, and a number of international initiatives are underway to do so.

As these initiatives go …

Finding The Singing Spruce: Craft Labor, Global Forests, And Musical Instrument Makers In Appalachia, Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

Musical instrument makers in the state of West Virginia in the United States pursue “singing,” lively instruments that capture ideals of musical tone and “re-enchant” their work and lives through relationships with craft materials and the forest landscape. Suitable tonewoods that grow in the region, such as red spruce (Picea rubens), intersect with makers’ desires to craft instruments in the style of famed makers such as the C.F. Martin Company and the Gibson Company as well as provide instruments imbued with a sense of place. While the demand for and symbolic import of instruments made with local wood …

แนวทางการส่งเสริมแนวคิดระบบเศรษฐกิจหมุนเวียนขององค์กรปกครองส่วนท้องถิ่นเพื่อการพัฒนาชุมชนอย่างยั่งยืน, ธงพล พรหมสาขา ณ สกลนคร

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

งานวิจัยนี้มีวัตถุประสงค์ในการศึกษา คือ เพื่อศึกษารูปแบบการบริหารจัดการชุมชนภายใต้แนวคิดระบบเศรษฐกิจหมุนเวียนขององค์กรปกครองส่วนท้องถิ่น และเพื่อจัดทำข้อเสนอแนะในการนำแนวคิดระบบเศรษฐกิจหมุนเวียนไปปรับใช้ในองค์กรปกครองส่วนท้องถิ่น โดยเป็นการศึกษาเชิงคุณภาพด้วยการสัมภาษณ์แบบเจาะลึกและการสนทนากลุ่ม เก็บข้อมูลด้วยการสัมภาษณ์ผู้ให้ข้อมูลคนสำคัญ (Key informant) ผู้บริหารและผู้ปฏิบัติงานในองค์กรปกครองส่วนท้องถิ่น จำนวน 15 ท่าน และสนทนากลุ่ม โดยเชิญผู้ที่ปฏิบัติงานในองค์กรปกครองส่วนท้องถิ่นและนักวิชาการจำนวน 6 ท่าน มาร่วมสนทนากลุ่ม โดยใช้การเลือกกลุ่มตัวอย่างแบบเจาะจง และการเลือกกลุ่มตัวอย่างแบบบังเอิญ ใช้การวิเคราะห์ข้อมูลเชิงคุณภาพ ด้วยการวิเคราะห์เชิงบรรยายและการวิเคราะห์เชิงบริบทของเนื้อหา จากการศึกษาพบว่า ประชาชนเพียงส่วนน้อยที่มีการคัดแยกขยะในครัวเรือน อย่างไรก็ตาม องค์กรปกครองส่วนท้องถิ่นได้ส่งเสริมและมีความพยายามในการนำแนวคิดระบบเศรษฐกิจหมุนเวียนมาปรับใช้ภายใต้หลักการ 3R คือ ใช้น้อยลง ใช้ซ้ำ และนำกลับมาใช้ใหม่ ด้วยการให้ความสำคัญกับการคัดแยกขยะในครัวเรือนเพื่อนำขยะที่สามารถนำไปรีไซเคิลได้ไปขายเพื่อมีรายได้มาช่วยเป็นค่าใช้จ่ายในครัวเรือน และมีการสนับสนุนให้ชุมชนมีการจัดตั้งธนาคารขยะเพื่อเป็นสถานที่รวบรวมและรับซื้อขยะรีไซเคิลจากประชาชน ส่วนขยะ เช่น เศษอาหารมีการส่งเสริมในเรื่องปุ๋ยหมัก ปุ๋ยชีวภาพ และการนำมาหมักเพื่อผลิตก๊าซชีวภาพไว้ใช้ในครัวเรือน ข้อเสนอแนะสำหรับองค์กรปกครองส่วนท้องถิ่นในการนำแนวคิดระบบเศรษฐกิจหมุนเวียนไปปรับใช้มีดังนี้ 1) ควรจะร่วมมือกับสถาบันการศึกษา ในการออกแบบและผลิตถังหมักก๊าซชีวภาพที่เหมาะสำหรับใช้ในครัวเรือน และสามารถผลิตก๊าซสำหรับเพื่อใช้ในการเป็นเชื้อเพลิงในการประกอบอาหารได้ 2) ควรมีการออกแบบ ผลิต และพัฒนาตู้รับซื้อขวดพลาสติดอัตโนมัติและติดตั้งในพื้นที่ชุมชนต่างๆ 3) รัฐบาลร่วมกับองค์กรปกครองส่วนท้องถิ่นซึ่งเป็นผู้จัดเก็บขยะควรจะบูรณาการร่วมกันในการพัฒนาสถานที่ โรงงาน อุปกรณ์ สำหรับการการแปรรูปขยะมูลฝอยผลิตเป็นเชื้อเพลิง (Refuse Derived Fuel: RDF) และ 4) รัฐบาลควรจะให้ความสำคัญและจริงจังในการบูรณาการร่วมกับองค์กรปกครองส่วนท้องถิ่น การไฟฟ้าฝ่ายผลิต การไฟฟ้าส่วนภูมิภาค และภาคเอกชน ในการกำหนดนโยบาย แผนการปฏิบัติการ การการกำหนดพื้นที่ (ตามปริมาณขยะที่สามารถนำไปเป็นวัตถุดิบได้ในระยะยาว) และแนวทางการให้สัมปทาน สำหรับการจัดตั้งโรงผลิตไฟฟ้าจากขยะ และเงื่อนไขการรับซื้อไฟฟ้า ที่สร้างแรงจูงใจในการลงทุน

Can Offshore Wind Electricity In Taiwan Be Sustainable?: The Case Of Taiwan's First Offshore Wind Project, Formosa 1 In Miaoli, Yu Ju Lin

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

While sustainability is implementing all over the world to strive to balance the development and environment, Taiwan is also committed to the transition towards renewable energy, and offshore wind electricity is one of the emerging industries with potential, therefore taking its newly operated project as a case study. The purpose of the research is to determine whether offshore wind electricity is a viable solution to achieve inclusive sustainability in Taiwan and the concept of procedural justice is involving to examine the planning and construction stages of the development while environmental justice is applied to evaluate the overall outcome from the …

The Roles Of Animals And Plants In Linda Hogan's Solar Storms, Thammika Sawaengsri

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

This paper aims to examine the role of animals and plants in Linda Hogan’s Solar Storms (1995). It investigates how the lives of animals and plants have been intertwined with the Native Americans in their plight and struggle against the whites’ colonization from the pre-Columbian time to the present. It examines Hogan’s unique characterization of animals and plants. This paper argues that Hogan portrays as sentient agents with mysterious, transgressive, and creative qualities that are incomprehensible to human beings. Furthermore, the paper also discusses the non-humans’ roles in shaping the identity and history of the indigenous characters. In addition, the …

Ethos In Climate Change Communication: Analyzing Digital And Broadcast News Coverage Of The Fourth National Climate Assessment, Dakota Rohlin Mr.

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This project analyses digital and broadcast news media coverage of the Fourth National Climate Assessment in order to get a sense of ethos constructions in climate communication. The project provides a comparative rhetorical analysis of a range of online print news stories, and two broadcast segments, while coding and categorizing the different authority figures cited or appealed to. By categorizing figures of authority and analyzing the results through a lens of epistemic injustice, and with a more ecological approach to ethos, the findings suggest a need for more expansive and inclusive representations of climate change in mainstream media. The results …

The Green Web: Evaluating Online News Communities And Their Environmentalism, Stian Himberg Roussell

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In the past news and media were disseminated through channels that were difficult for consumers to communicate with. Now a new form of news dissemination is taking place on the internet where communication between consumers and producers exists. Crowdsourced social media sites, where users elect and vote on articles and comments to represent a topic, are creating new forms of news dissemination, which heavily alters media content, and community discussions. This study was conducted in order to better understand how crowdsourced social media platforms affect users’ perception of environmental topics, issues, and problems. It focuses on the crowdsourced social media …

Just Preservation, Adrian Treves, Francisco J. Santiago-Ávila, William S. Lynn

Animal Sentience

We are failing to protect the biosphere. Novel views of conservation, preservation, and sustainability are surfacing in the wake of consensus about our failures to prevent extinction or slow climate change. We argue that the interests and well-being of non-humans, youth, and future generations of both human and non-human beings (futurity) have too long been ignored in consensus-based, anthropocentric conservation. Consensus-based stakeholder-driven processes disadvantage those absent or without a voice and allow current adult humans and narrow, exploitative interests to dominate decisions about the use of nature over its preservation for futurity of all life. We propose that authentically non-anthropocentric …

Environmental Gentrification, Sarah Fox

University of Colorado Law Review

Gentrification is a term often used, much maligned, and difficult to define. A few general principles can nonetheless be distilled regarding the concept. First, gentrification is spurred by rising desirability of an area for housing or commercial purposes. Second, this rising desirability, following basic supply-and-demand principles, leads to higher property values and rents in an uncontrolled market. Third, gentrification leads to a shift in the demographics of a neighborhood. This shift can change not only the socioeconomic and racial composition of the area but also the community's character, as residential and commercial options begin to reflect the preferences of the …

The Manager-Judge And The Judge-Manager: Towards Managerial Jurisprudence In Civil Procedure, Doron Menashe

North Dakota Law Review

No abstract provided.

Emergence: Developing Worldview In The Environmental Humanities, Rhonda D. Davis

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

While the environment has long played a role in humanistic expressions and investigations, the need for a more integrated look at the human-environment relationship has become ever more pressing. More than ever, humanities scholars are recognizing their ability to mobilize critical and creative action to address pressing socioeconomic, sociopolitical, and socioenvironmental problems. Teaching and engaging students through interdisciplinary methods, connecting students and communities, developing a sense of agency and responsibility for planetary sustainability has become a visible focus in higher education. My study aimed to understand how an environmental humanities class affects, if at all, the way students construct worldview. …