Digital Commons Network^™

Resilience Justice And Community-Based Green And Blue Infrastructure, Craig Anthony Arnold, Resilience Justice Project Researchers

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

The environmental conditions of marginalized communities, particularly low-income communities of color, make those communities disproportionately more vulnerable to major disturbances and changes, such as climate change, health crises, pollution releases, disasters, economic shocks, and social and political upheaval. Many of the most important movements for justice with respect to environmental conditions, including environmental justice, disaster justice, and climate justice, are connected to broader movements for racial and social justice, asserting that Black and Brown lives matter. These movements seek to confront, dismantle, and reform systems of racism, colonialism, and structural inequality.

In particular, low-income communities of color have inequitably less …

A Community Of Fear: Emotion And The Hydro-Social Cycle In East Porterville, Michael Egge

Geography Masters Research Papers

Broader governance challenges driving water insecurity globally are well documented in the literature, however the power-laden relationships and emotions that shape water access at the household and community levels are yet to be fully investigated, especially in the context of water consolidation projects. In this article, we examine the role of emotions in mediating access to water and in the production of resource struggles among marginalized communities existing outside of conventional regulatory frameworks. We bring together two relational approaches – the hydro-social cycle and emotional political ecology – to examine water insecurity and how it manifests in the historically disadvantaged …

Wicked Problems: Understanding How Cities And Counties In California Are Tackling Climate Change And Homelessness, Guadalupe Michelle Franco

Master's Theses

California continues to endure the detrimental effects of climate change, such as poor air quality, flooding, and heatwaves. Concurrently, the state has seen an increase in the number of unhoused communities due to various ramifications such as rapid urbanization, failed political leadership, and restricted housing policies. While unhoused communities fight to access basic services, they must also now adapt to the looming impacts of climate change. Unhoused populations are especially vulnerable to climate change as they have limited access to shelter, spend the majority of their time outdoors, and lack the economic ability to adapt. While cities and counties are …

Examining The Associations Between Neighborhood Socioeconomic Status And The Potential Distribution Of Four Urban Ecosystem Services In Rochester, Ny, Joshua Greene

Theses

As populations and the total area of impervious surfaces continue to grow in cities, city planners and policymakers must consider how local ecological resources can be utilized to meet the needs and develop climate-resilient and sustainable cities. Urban green spaces (UGS) have been identified as critical resources in improving the climate resiliency of cities and the quality of life for residents through the urban ecosystem services (UES) that they provide. However, certain communities within cities do not have uniform access to these UGS, and this may be due to historical legacies (i.e. redlining) and/or contemporary practices (i.e. urban planning). Therefore, …

Do Heat Vulnerable Neighborhoods In New York City Experience Disproportionate Power Outages?, Gabrielle Alper

Theses and Dissertations

This research examines the implications of power outages on environmental justice communities in New York City by comparing heat vulnerability index rankings and power outage complaints during summer months. This study is distinct in the identification of hotspots, discussions of air conditioning equity and implications for climate resiliency planning.

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 …

Leading Climate Action Planning: A Case Study Of Local Community Practices, Mackenzie Crigger

Education (PhD) Dissertations

Given the increasing rate of anthropogenic climate change and the resulting climate impacts that communities around the world will be coping with over the next century, it is becoming increasingly important that communities, cities, and regions begin to develop climate action plans that will assist them in coping with climate impacts. As a result, it is becoming evident that understanding how to effectively develop a climate action plan (CAP) and engage a community in the climate action planning process is a question at the forefront for many municipalities. This research utilized case study to examine the process the City of …

The 2020 Impact: Rethinking Brand Approach To Sustainability Through A Postcolonial And Environmental Justice Framework, Simone Hassan-Bey

Business/Business Administration

Social unrest as a result of a pandemic and the movement for Black lives created a greater demand for big brands to increase their involvement in social responsibility. In this work, I examine the relationship between big brands to their colonial and environmental legacies to analyze how they have historically responded to social justice issues and how it has helped or hindered their journey towards sustainability. My research suggests that these brands may be failing to live up to their social responsibility claims because they struggle to see how the two actors are interconnected, as a result, I offer a …

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 Surviving Sunset Of Manila Bay And The Ethics Of Environmental Justice In Philippine Ecopoetry, Rina Garcia Chua

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

The Philippines, a country rich with natural resources, has taken steps to preserve its environmental megadiversity through the government’s existing environmental laws. However, reality seems to show a glaring disparity between what is being protected and what is being abused. The question is: what is fair to all? This paper’s primary purpose is to explore the aesthetics of local ecopoetry to discover whether the representation of environmental justice in literature can promote ecological fairness in the Third World. Using Hume’s concept of aesthetics to explore the inconsistency between the environmental laws and the message of the selected ecopoems, this study …

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.

Creation Care As Caring For Human Beings: An Environmental Justice Case Study, Jeffrey S. Lamp, Ph.D., Kathryn J. Moder, Megan R. Munhoffen, Cade A. Rich, Nathan B. Von Atzigen

Research Symposium

Caring for God’s creation is a burgeoning area of interest among Christians in recent decades. In many Christian circles, however, caring for creation is not given high priority in rankings of the duties of Christian disciples in the world. This article will argue that caring for creation is a biblically mandated call for God’s people in the world and derives from the role of human beings as caretakers of creation, creation’s status as a recipient of God’s salvation in Christ, and the connection between human beings and the other-than-human creation. If creation care is understood as an act of healing …

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 …

A Gendered Environmental Justice Perspective Of Tiger Reintroductions To Sariska Tiger Reserve, Elena C. Rubino, Kalli F. Doubleday

Journal of Rural Social Sciences

The reintroduction of Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris tigris) to the Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan, India, has resulted in perceived increases of human-wildlife conflict for local villagers. Because previous evidence from other settings suggests that women may experience human-wildlife conflict differently than men, this research employed a comprehensive environmental justice framework to explore how women have been uniquely impacted by tiger reintroductions. Findings from focus group discussions with villagers suggest that women bear greater burdens from increased tiger presence, yet these costs are not typically acknowledged by men, and women do not feel that their perspectives were considered …

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. …

Community Engagement In Oregon Water Governance: Evaluating A State Water Policy And A Collaborative Q Methodology Research Project, Clare T. Mcclellan

Environmental Science and Management Professional Master's Project Reports

This work was primarily conducted by the Oregon Water Stories Project, an interdisciplinary research group at Portland State University, in collaboration with the Willamette Partnership, an environmental non-profit in Portland, and with additional involvement from community partner organizations across the state. The overarching goal of this paper is to explore the challenges and opportunities present at the intersections of water management, stakeholder engagement, community-engaged research, and environmental justice. This study investigates this nexus first through an evaluation of Oregon’s 100 Year Water Vision that points to areas for increased integration of environmental justice principles in water policymaking. In the second …

Environmental Justice, Settler Colonialism, And More-Than-Humans In The Occupied West Bank: An Introduction, Irus Braverman

Journal Articles

Our special issue provides a first-of-its kind attempt to examine environmental injustices in the occupied West Bank through interdisciplinary perspectives, pointing to the broader settler colonial and neoliberal contexts within which they occur and to their more-than-human implications. Specifically, we seek to understand what environmental justice—a movement originating from, and rooted in, the United States—means in the context of Palestine/Israel. Moving beyond the settler-native dialectic, we draw attention to the more-than-human flows that occur in the region—which include water, air, waste, cement, trees, donkeys, watermelons, and insects—to consider the dynamic, and often gradational, meanings of frontier, enclosure, and Indigeneity in …

Memorial Parking Trees: Resilient Modular Design With Nature-Based Solutions In Vulnerable Urban Areas, Haroon Stephen, Fortino Acosta

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

Nature-based solutions (NbS) include all the landscape’s ecological components that have a function in the natural or urban ecosystem. Memorial Parking Trees (MPTs) are a new variant of a nature-based solution composed of a bioswale and a street tree allocated in the road, occupying a space that is sub-utilised by parked cars. This infill green practice can maximise the use of street trees in secondary streets and have multiple benefits in our communities. Using GIS mapping and methodology can support implementation in vulnerable neighbourhoods. In this research, we based vulnerability assessments for London, Rio de Janeiro, and Los Angeles on …

Understanding Socio-Technological Systems Change Through An Indigenous Community-Based Participatory Framework, Marie Schaefer, Laura Schmitt Olabisi, Kristin Arola, Christie M. Poitra, Elise Matz, Marika Seigel, Chelsea Schelly, Adewale Aremu Adesanya, Doug Bessette

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

Moving toward a sustainable global society requires substantial change in both social and technological systems. This sustainability is dependent not only on addressing the environmental impacts of current social and technological systems, but also on addressing the social, economic and political harms that continue to be perpetuated through systematic forms of oppression and the exclusion of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities. To adequately identify and address these harms, we argue that scientists, practitioners, and communities need a transdis-ciplinary framework that integrates multiple types of knowledge, in particular, Indigenous and experiential knowledge. Indigenous knowledge systems embrace relationality and …

Bipoc Communities And Environmental Humanities, Liza Gonzalez

Bryant University Undergraduate Journal

No abstract provided.

Environmentally Marginalized Populations: The "Perfect Storm" For Infectious Disease Pandemics, Including Covid-19, Gabriella Y. Meltzer, Oyemwenosa Avenbuan, Christina Awada, Oluwakemi B. Oyetade, Tricia Blackman, Simona Kwon Drph, Mph, Esther Erdei Phd, Judith T. Zelikoff Phd

Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice

COVID-19 has exacted a severe toll on the United States population’s physical and mental health and its effects have been felt most severely among people of color and low socioeconomic status. Using illustrative case studies, this commentary argues that in addition to COVID-19 health disparities created by psychosocial stressors such as the inability to socially distance and access quality healthcare, environmental justice communities have the additional burden of disproportionate exposure to toxic contaminants that contribute to their higher risk of COVID-19. Environmental contaminants including heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants found contaminating their nearby environments can alter the immune response, …

Hurricane Harvey: Equal Opportunity Storm Or Disparate Disaster?, Katherine Lieberknecht, Deidre Zoll, Junfeng Jiao, Katherine Castles

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, multiple media sources claimed the event was an “equal opportunity” storm. These claims challenge existing social vulnerability research that finds marginalised groups have both unequal risk exposure and subsequent differential impacts from disasters (Cutter, Boruff, and Shirley 2003, “Assessing Current and Future Freshwater Flood Risk from North Atlantic Tropical Cyclones via Insurance Claims.” Scientific Reports 7 (February): 41609; Faber 2015, “Superstorm Sandy and the Demographics of Flood Risk in New York City.” Human Ecology 43 (3): 363–378. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-015-9757-x; Thomas et al. 2013, Social Vulnerability to Disasters. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press). To understand the …

Border Environmental Justice Ppgis: Community-Based Mapping And Public Participation In Eastern Tijuana, México, Carolina Prado, Colectivo Salud Y Justicia Ambiental, Red De Ciudadanos Para El Mejoramiento De Las Comunidades

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Community mapping projects have been studied as important contributions to the field of environmental justice and Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS). As a collaborative project between the Colectivo Salud y Justicia Ambiental and Red de Ciudadanos por el Mejoramiento de las Comunidades (RECIMEC), the “Mapeo Comunitario de la Zona Alamar” was created as a mechanism for community participation in the urban planning process in Tijuana, México. This paper outlines the project’s community mapping process, including planning, data collection, priority identification, and data submission. Results from this community mapping project are analyzed including the (1) particular environmental risks and goods …

Climate Resilience And Justice In Richmond, Jeremy Hoffman

Richmond Racial Equity Essays: Individual Essays

The author examines climate change inequity in Richmond and discusses strategies to deal with it in the long and short term in ways that would lead to climate resilience policy decisions that incorporate the values of community members, demonstrably improve community health and wellbeing, and bolster socioeconomic equity across the city.

A Call For Change: Minnesota Environmental Justice Heroes In Action, Christie Manning, Alison Bautista, Avram Anderson

Books

Access Online: https://mlpp.pressbooks.pub/environmentaljustice

This book provides a brief introduction to the lives and work of Minnesota residents who advocate for Environmental Justice. Their stories were captured in interviews conducted by Macalester College students in Spring 2018, 2019 and 2020. The work featured in this volume covers a broad span, showcasing the depth and breadth of Environmental Justice. More importantly, this book celebrates the extraordinary everyday people who chose to take action in the face of injustice. While their approaches to Environmental Justice work are diverse, they are united in their persistence and their creativity.

Strategies And Techniques For Teaching Environmental Law, Heidi Gorovitz Robertson

Law Faculty Books

Teaching law students is an enormous privilege and an immense responsibility. Teaching Environmental Law, in particular, gives the professor an opportunity to help future lawyers understand some important lessons. First, contrary to the belief of many first-year law students, the legal system is not made up entirely of courts. It’s not all judicial and it’s not all adversarial. The statutes Congress creates need implementation and that’s the role of agencies. Lawyers can do a world of good by working in and around legislatures and agencies and with the people who staff them. Environmental lawyers can help shape legislation, the resulting …

Black Urban Ecologies And Structural Extermination, Etienne C. Toussaint

Faculty Publications

Residents of low-income, metropolitan communities across the United States frequently live in “food apartheid” neighborhoods—areas with limited access to nutrient-rich and fresh food. Local government law scholars, poverty law scholars, and political theorists have long argued that structural racism embedded in America’s political economy influences the uneven development of such Black urban ecologies. Accordingly, food justice scholars have called for local governments to develop urban agricultural markets that combat racism in global corporatized food systems by localizing food development. These demands have only amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has ravaged Black communities where residents suffer from preexisting health conditions …

Who Benefits From Brownfield Cleanup And Gentrification? Evidence From Chicago, Richard Melstrom, Rose Mohammadi, Tania Schusler, Amy Krings

Social Work: School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper presents research on the distribution of economic benefits from brownfield cleanup and land development. There is growing concern that cleaning up blighted areas, including brownfields, can entrench inequality by disproportionately benefiting some demographic groups more than others. We look for evidence of disproportionate benefits by relating changes in move decisions to land use activity in Chicago using a heterogeneous sorting model. Our research produces two key insights: first, Black and Hispanic households benefit less than White households from brownfield cleanup and vacant land development. Second, owners appear to benefit more than renters from cleanup and development. Overall, these …

Measuring Environmental Justice: Analysis Of Progress Under Presidents Bush, Obama, And Trump, Mollie Soloway

Student Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

The Climate Leadership And Community Protection Act’S Environmental Justice Promise, Hillary Aidun, Julia Li, Antonia Pereira

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

In 2019, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (“CLCPA”) into law. The CLCPA was passed with the objective of addressing climate change and minimizing the adverse impacts on the “economic well-being, public health, natural resources, and the environment of New York.” S. 6599, 2019-2020 Sen., Reg. Sess. § 1 (N.Y. 2019). The CLCPA seeks to meet these objectives by reducing statewide greenhouse gas emissions, scaling up renewable energy to avoid further climate change, and improving the resiliency of the state in order to address unavoidable climate change impacts. Id. The law created …