Digital Commons Network^™

Us Environmental Injustice Goes Well Beyond Flint, Lauren Carasik

Media Presence

No abstract provided.

Reviving The Environmental Justice Agenda, Rachael E. Salcido

Chicago-Kent Law Review

During his 2008 campaign, President Obama pledged that his administration would put an emphasis on environmental justice, outlining a strategy to address the unequal burden of pollution in low-income, minority and indigenous communities. Though many criticize some of the shortcomings, such as inadequate pursuit of civil rights remedies, the administration has followed through to supply some of the most critical components of solutions to the environmental justice challenge: leadership, capacity, collaboration-in-fact, and funding. This article will examine the reinvigorated Inter-Agency Working Group on Environmental Justice, the roadmaps prepared to address EJ, and significant rules and guidance enacted by the EPA …

Presidential Legitimacy Through The Anti-Discrimination Lens, Catherine Y. Kim

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The Obama administration’s deferred action programs granting temporary relief from deportation to undocumented immigrants have focused attention to questions regarding the legitimacy of presidential lawmaking. Immigration, though, is not the only context in which the president has exercised policymaking authority. This essay examines parallel instances of executive lawmaking in the anti-discrimination area. Presidential policies relating to workplace discrimination, environmental justice, and affirmative action share some of the key features troubling critics of deferred action yet have been spared from serious constitutional challenge. These examples underscore the unique challenges to assessing the validity of actions targeting traditionally disenfranchised groups—be they noncitizens, …

The Injustice Of Sea Level Rise: Ethics And Evidence, Lies And Liability--Event Poster, Professor Keith Rizzardi

Lectures and Presentations

The Center for International Law & Justice (CILJ) and the Environment, Development & Justice Program (EDJP) present a lecture by Professor Keith Rizzardi. Professor Rizzardi, an experienced government lawyer and litigator, teaches at St. Thomas University School of Law.

The Injustice Of Sea Level Rise: Ethics And Evidence, Lies And Liability--Text Of Speech, Professor Keith Rizzardi

Lectures and Presentations

The Center for International Law & Justice (CILJ) and the Environment, Development & Justice Program (EDJP) present the Second Annual Climate and Energy Justice Lecture by Professor Keith Rizzardi. Professor Rizzardi, an experienced government lawyer and litigator, teaches at St. Thomas University School of Law.

The Injustice Of Sea Level Rise: Ethics And Evidence, Lies And Liability--Slides And Data Presentation, Professor Keith Rizzardi

Lectures and Presentations

The Center for International Law & Justice (CILJ) and the Environment, Development & Justice Program (EDJP) present the Second Annual Climate and Energy Justice Lecture by Professor Keith Rizzardi. Professor Rizzardi, an experienced government lawyer and litigator, teaches at St. Thomas University School of Law.

Beyond Baby Steps An Empirical Study Of The Impact Of Environmental Justice Executive Order 12898, Elizabeth Ann Glass Geltman, Gunwant Gill, Miriam Jovanovic

Publications and Research

This study evaluated the impact of Executive Order (EO) 12898 to advance environmental justice. We conducted a review evaluating the frequency and effective use of EO 12898 since execution with particular focus following President Obama’s Plan EJ 2014. We found that both EO 12898 and Plan EJ 2104 had little, if any, impact on federal regulatory decision making. To the extent federal agencies discussed EO 12898, most did so in boilerplate rhetoric that satisfied compliance but was devoid of detailed thought or analysis. In the 21st year, with the exception of the Environmental Protection Agency, very little federal regulatory activity …

Integrating Climate Change Resilience Into Hud’S Disaster Recovery Program, Justin Gundlach, Channing R. Jones

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)’s community development block grant disaster recovery program (CDBG-DR) can better and more clearly incorporate climate resilience and adaptation priorities. This article identifies and analyzes the statutes that have guided HUD's approach to disaster recovery to date, as well as forms of “soft guidance” issued by HUD for use by various stakeholders, including both HUD CDBG-DR program officers and the state and local officials that interact with them. Comparing these materials reveals a tension between the requirement that all projects funded by CDBG-DR “tie back” to the most recent disaster, and the logic …

Climate Change And The Confluence Of Natural And Human History: A Lawyer’S Perspective, Josh Eagle

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Truth, Justice, And The Common Good: Core Capstone Final Essay, Valentina De Santis (Class Of 2016)

Writing Across the Curriculum

The course Truth, Justice, and the Common Good brought awareness to themes of the environment, common good, and social issues. Environmental justice is the involvement of the society to respect and care for environmental laws and regulations. It is a part of the common good to appreciate and respect the natural world. The common good is customized toward every individual and it is the decision of the human being to recognize the common good daily. From the readings and presentations in class, a correlation was formed between beliefs and values towards topics in religion, justice, and community.

What A Waste: Segregation And Sanitation In Brooklyn, New York In The Post-Wwii Era, Amanda T. Chang

Pitzer Senior Theses

Through studying the intersections of sanitation and segregation in Brooklyn, New York in the post-WWII era, this thesis reveals a web of willful white negligence that constructed a narrative that supports continued environmental injustices towards black Americans. As a result of housing discrimination, the lack of sanitation, and the political and social climate of the 1950s, black neighborhoods in Brooklyn became dirtier with abandoned garbage. Institutional anti-black racism not only permitted and supported the degradation of black neighborhoods, but also created an association between black Americans and trash. In the present day, this narrative not only leads to the increased …

Banning Metal Mining In Guatemala, Randall S. Abate, Raquel Aldana

Journal Publications

Metal mining is unsustainable for Guatemala and its harms insurmountable for its people. Guatemalans who oppose metal mining have been fighting for decades domestically and internationally against the environmental degradation and other human rights abuses from metal mining activities in the country with little to show for their efforts. The State is too weak and corrupt to offer much hope for reform. Guatemala requires extensive governance reforms to become the type of strong democracy capable of reaping the potential benefits of metal mining in its territory. This is a long-term project. Most Guatemalans opposed to metal mining already know this, …

Beyond Science And Hysteria: Reality And Perceptions Of Environmental Justice Concerns Surrounding Marcellus And Utica Shale Gas Development, Ann M. Eisenberg

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Mapuche Resilience: Environmental Justice In Chile, Hannah N. Lussier

ENV 434 Environmental Justice

This paper presents a close analysis of the Mapuche Conflict and its implications from an Environmental Justice perspective. It serves to outline the plight of the Mapuche, a South American indigenous group, in their continued struggle to gain the rights to autonomic control over their ancestral territory from the Chilean government. By utilizing a holistic approach to research, this paper serves to provide a background on the conflict as well as to incorporate claims to justice. It chronicles the depth and breadth of media attention on the issue by incorporating perspectives from scholarly articles, news sources and social media platforms. …

Toxic Stress : Exploring Mental Health Narratives Of Environmental Justice In Richmond, California, Elizabeth Gonzalez

Theses, Dissertations, and Projects

The purpose of this exploratory study was to gather narratives of residents and/or community members who perceive the presence of the Richmond Chevron Oil Refinery in their community as a psychological stressor. The study used semi-structured interviews with eight community organizers and activists to gather qualitative data providing personal accounts of the possible psychological impact of living near a toxic facility with great political power in the city. The common trend among the narratives was the tendency of the participants to focus on a macro interpretation of how mental health is affected by a corporate giant. A collective sense of …

Environmental Racism And The Movement For Black Lives: Grassroots Power In The 21st Century, Rickie Cleere

Pomona Senior Theses

This thesis explores the ways in which the environmental justice movement, which is in opposition to environmental racism, and the Black Lives Matter movement, which is in opposition to police brutality and other forms of racism, are part of the same struggle: a struggle against the neoliberal violence of the state. This struggle against neoliberal violence is at the same time a struggle for communities of color to achieve self-determination on a global scale, a monumental task which might be informed through a revolutionary intercommunalist framework of global grassroots solidarity. State oppression embodies violence in more forms that one, including …

Dismantling Structural Inequality In The Inland Empire: Rebuilding Community From The Ground Up At Huerta Del Valle Garden, Jennifer E. Reyff

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis provides an analytical case study of Huerta del Valle Community Garden as a successful model of redefining social capital through not only providing healthy, affordable, high quality produce to a community subjected to the disproportionate consequences of systemic inequality, but also in incorporating a food justice education framework to underlie all development at the garden. Located in the city of Ontario, Southern California – the heart of the Inland Empire, known for its prominence within the nation’s goods movement industry and its landscape of sprawling warehouses – local residents face high rates of poverty, obesity, and a lack …

Brooklyn Trash Problems, Christina Diaz

Capstones

Walk through the streets of New York and at some point you’ll inevitably pass by a wafting smell of garbage, but residents of North Brooklyn are handling more than their share of the smelly load and they’re tired of getting dumped on.

A newly formed coalition of neighbors and environmental activists has begun a turf war against Brooklyn Transfer LLC, a waste transfer station located on Thames Street in East Williamsburg, which handles private commercial waste through ­­­­­­­­­­­­­Five Star Carting.

Link to Map: https://www.zeemaps.com/map?group=1769408

A Longitudinal Study Of Human Exposure To Potential Nuclear Power Plant Risk, Dean Kyne, Jason T. Harris

Sociology Faculty Publications

This study constructs a potential risk index (PRI) for the 65 U.S.-based commercial nuclear power plant (NPP) sites in relation to their surrounding populations. Four risk levels are defined: low risk, moderate risk, high risk, and very high risk. Discrepancies that exist in the sociodemographic characteristics of the host communities’ populations are examined as sorted by risk-level category. It is found that a greater percentage of minority groups are exposed to the highest levels of risk. In addition, percent “Hispanic” and percent “Other,” a grouping that includes multiracial, mixed, interracial, as well as Hispanic and Latino groups (for example, Mexican, …

Which Came First, People Or Pollution? A Review Of Theory And Evidence From Longitudinal Environmental Justice Studies, Paul Mohai, Robin Saha

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

A considerable number of quantitative analyses have been conducted in the past several decades that demonstrate the existence of racial and socioeconomic disparities in the distribution of a wide variety of environmental hazards. The vast majority of these have been cross-sectional, snapshot studies employing data on hazardous facilities and population characteristics at only one point in time. Although some limited hypotheses can be tested with cross-sectional data, fully understanding how present-day disparities come about requires longitudinal analyses that examine the demographic characteristics of sites at the time of facility siting and track demographic changes after siting. Relatively few such studies …

‘We Are The Monitors Now’: Experiential Knowledge, Transcorporeality And Environmental Justice, Dayna Scott

Articles & Book Chapters

Residents of pollution hotspots often take on projects in ‘citizen science’, or popularepidemiology, in an effort to marshal the data that can prove their experience of the pollution to the relevant authorities. Sometimes these tactics, such as pollution logs or bucket brigades, take advantage of residents’ spatially ordered and finely honed experiential and sensory knowledge of the places they inhabit. But putting that knowledge into conversation with law requires them to mobilize a new, ‘foreign’ set of tools, primarily oriented to the observation, measurement and sampling of pollution according to conventional scientific standards. Here, I employ qualitative empirical methods in …

Which Came First, People Or Pollution? Assessing The Disparate Siting And Post-Siting Demographic Change Hypotheses Of Environmental Injustice, Paul Mohai, Robin Saha

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Although a large body of quantitative environmental justice research exists, only a handful of studies have examined the processes by which racial and socioeconomic disparities in the location of polluting industrial facilities can occur. These studies have had mixed results, we contend, principally because of methodological differences, that is, the use of the unit-hazard coincidence method as compared to distance-based methods. This study is the first national-level environmental justice study to conduct longitudinal analyses using distance-based methods. Our purposes are to: (1) determine whether disparate siting, post-siting demographic change, or a combination of the two created present-day disparities; (2) test …

Spatial Associations Between Contaminated Land And Socio Demographics In Ghana, Russell Dowling, Bret Ericson, Jack Caravanos, Patrick Grigsby, Yaw Amoyaw-Osei

Publications and Research

Associations between contaminated land and socio demographics are well documented in high-income countries. In low- and middle-income countries, however, little is known about the extent of contaminated land and possible demographic correlations. This is an important yet sparsely researched topic with potentially significant public health implications as exposure to pollution remains a leading source of morbidity and mortality in low-income countries. In this study, we review the associations between several socio demographic factors (population, population density, unemployment, education, and literacy) and contaminated sites in Ghana. Within this context, both correlation and association intend to show the relationship between two variables, …

Texas Colonias: Injustice By Definition, Caitlin Lewis

Environmental and Earth Law Journal (EELJ)

Colonias are usually characterized as rural or semi-rural slums inhabited by Mexican-origin immigrants and Mexican Americans. This Comment examines the socioeconomic and environmental burdens faced by Texas colonias and the public and private attempts to address these hardships.

Who Speaks For The River?: The Oldman River Dam And The Search For Justice By Robert Girvan, Cory T. Shaman

The Goose

Cory T. Shaman reviews Who Speaks for the River?: The Oldman River Dam and the Search for Justice by Robert Girvan.

Whose Meanings: Constructing Environmental Justice, Sofia L. Martinez

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

This study interprets language use and meaning with regard to race in a state regulatory process before the New Mexico Environmental Improvement Board (EIB). The document researched is the legal transcript of the EIB Hearing in 2006. The hearing was held to revise the New Mexico Solid Waste Regulations and to consider environmental justice provisions. The study analyzes language and the construction of meaning and discourses in this formal rule-making site; and how these discourses serve as a site for resistance as well as where the State creates and maintains its hegemony. The implication for educators is to consider the …

Redlining The Green: Environmental Racism And Justice In The Bronx, Kelsey Vizzard

Student Theses 2015-Present

Historically, the availability of economic, social, and political opportunities has been almost absent from marginalized communities, such as the Bronx. For reasons like race, ethnicity, and class, these geographic areas have been targeted and named as risk areas in the mid 1900s by banks and other agencies. This historic phenomenon is known as “redlining.” As a result, they received little, if any, economic, social, and political support from the government and other agencies and systems. Instead, any effort to climb the economic and social ladder was initiated by community members and organizations. As a result the community has suffered difficulties …

Natural Resource Revolutions: Mexico And Cuba Within The Sphere Of U.S. Hegemony, Joseph J. García

Latin American Studies ETDs

The improbable trajectories of Mexico and Cuba give rise to compelling questions: in what ways have the revolutionary governments of Mexico and Cuba been able to practice successful defiance of the United States hegemon of the twentieth century? And how has that defiance helped to define U.S. foreign policy in Latin America? This dissertation presents a detailed examination of the contexts surrounding both the Mexican and Cuban Revolutions and their struggle against imperialist-driven interventions by the United States in Latin America and the Caribbean. I argue that through strategic decisions, the Mexican and Cuban revolutionary governments were able to ward …

How Environmental Justice Patterns Are Shaped By Place: Terrain And Tree Canopy In Cincinnati, Ohio, Usa, Adam Berland, Kirsten Schwarz, Dustin L. Herrmann, Matthew E. Hopton

Cities and the Environment (CATE)

Understanding the spatial distribution of environmental amenities requires consideration of social and biogeophysical factors, and how they interact to produce patterns of environmental justice or injustice. In this study, we explicitly account for terrain, a key local environmental factor, while assessing whether tree canopy is distributed equally in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. We conducted separate analyses for all land and for residential land only. For all land, terrain alone accounted for 59% of the variation in tree canopy cover. In our spatial autoregressive model, socioeconomic variables describing race, wealth, and education did not explain significant variation in canopy cover. In other …

Calpuff And Cafos: Air Pollution Modeling And Environmental Justice Analysis In The North Carolina Hog Industry, Yelena Ogneva-Himmelberger, Liyao Huang, Hao Xin

Sustainability and Social Justice

Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) produce large amounts of animal waste, which potentially pollutes air, soil and water and affects human health if not appropriately managed. This study uses meteorological and CAFO data and applies an air pollution dispersion model (CALPUFF) to estimate ammonia concentrations at locations downwind of HOG CAFOs and to evaluate the disproportionate exposure of children, elderly, whites and minorities to the pollutant. Ammonia is one of the gases emitted by swine CAFOs and could affect human health. Local indicator of spatial autocorrelation (LISA) analysis uses census block demographic data to identify hot spots where both ammonia …