Digital Commons Network^™

The Colonial Legacy Of Public Lands: Exploring Extractivism In The Bears Ears Region, Josephine W. Cohen

Student Theses 2015-Present

As the colonial ideals that underscore the United States’ founding have bled into modern environmental policy, Indigenous communities have continued to be disenfranchised from and systematically oppressed through the creation, protection, and management of public lands. This, in turn, has manifested as vast human rights abuses through methods of cultural and physical genocide. This thesis examines the role extractivism and land grabs on public lands play in violating the basic human rights of many Indigenous populations, using the case study of extractivism on Bears Ears National Monument as a guiding framework. Chapter 1 provides an overview of public lands and …

Surviving Future Pandemics: The Economic, Social, And Political Battle Against Climate Change And Infectious Diseases, Dayana Gonzalez

Student Theses 2015-Present

COVID-19 has been a rude wake-up call as it showed us how unprepared we are to fight off infectious diseases. This paper analyzes our political, social, and economic decisions to develop a plan against the future development of infectious diseases. Before the analysis, it is essential to understand that it is natural for infectious diseases to develop and spread; however, climate change has and will continue to exacerbate the number of diseases developed and spread. Chapter 1 provides data on how climate change has destroyed habitats and displaced millions of animals, forcing them to live under cramped conditions that have …

Front Matter And Table Of Contents

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

No abstract provided.

Teaching & Learning Guide For Disability And Climate Justice, Molly M. King, Maria A. Gregg, Ana V. Martinez, Emily Y. Pachoud

Sociology

Disability is widespread: nearly one in four Americans has a disability (Taylor, 2018) and disability cuts across demographic categories. Among individuals aged 15 and over, 12.6% had some type of mobility disability; above age 65, it is nearly 40% (Brault, 2012). Mobility disabilities heighten vulnerability to climate change and climate-related disasters (UNHCHR, 2020). Reduced information resources and mobility, increased health risks, and a lack of visibility in climate change discourse put people with disabilities in a more vulnerable position in the climate crisis. However, this vulnerability can be mitigated through relevant and sufficient access to information, risk mitigation …

Foodways In Chile: A Bridge Back To Nature, Kayla Weiss

Capstone Collection

As the area of food studies continues to develop and evolve it has been recognized that, not only is food a necessity to life, but it is uniquely tied to understanding culture, history, and other aspects of a society. This study arose from recognizing this influence and importance and I took the opportunity to better understand how Birchwood College might be an optimal site for a short-term study abroad program based in food studies. I conducted a needs assessment through landscape research, surveying students, and interviewing food studies faculty and international educators at Birchwood College. The research findings offered insights …

Book Review: Elementary Schoolers, Meet Media Literacy: How Teachers Can Bring Economics, Media, And Marketing To Life, Rachel Guldin

Journal of Media Literacy Education

No abstract provided.

Ignoring Native Voices: Environmental And Cultural Impact Of Oil Pipelines, Nicolette Makris

Student Theses 2015-Present

Historically we have denied and stolen the Native rights and culture. This continues today and is debatably a global human issue. Our current damaging and negative environmental actions are no exception to this problem. The fight between corporate and capitalist america and the environmental movement is one that catches not only the Native American people, culture, and philosophy in the crossfires but philosophy continues to ignore basic human rights. This thesis explores the impacts and implications of the uses of unsustainable resources, like oil pipelines, in relation to cultural and environmental impacts. This impact extends past the historical wrongdoings of …

Legal Avenues For Protecting Access To Starry Skies, Alexandra Feathers

Washington Journal of Social & Environmental Justice

In the millennia before the creation and adoption of electric lighting, night skies drenched in stars were the inalienable inheritance of humanity. Electric lighting threatens this birthright by emitting star-blocking light (also known as light pollution) into night skies. Left unaddressed, light pollution will restrict access to dark, starry skies so that many in future generations will only know the stars secondhand. Yet despite the many benefits of dark skies, little scholarship has considered the problem of light pollution limiting the accessibility of starry skies, or how law can address this problem. This Article balances the hope of a future …

Ninth Circuit Muddies The Waters Of Tribal Sovereign Immunity And The Clean Water Act In Deschutes River Alliance V. Portland Ge, Danielle Clifford

Washington Journal of Social & Environmental Justice

Throughout 2011 and 2012, members of the Deschutes River community who fish in the Lower Deschutes River in Oregon noticed a slew of significant changes to their natural environment. The Deschutes River Alliance attributed the changes to the operation of the Pelton Round Butte Hydraulic Project, which is co-owned and operated by Portland General Electric and The Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs. In July 2016, DRA filed a Clean Water Act lawsuit against them. To rule on the alleged CWA violations, the DRA must first get past the tribal sovereign immunity hurdle. It is long-recognized that American Indian Nations …

Front Matter

Washington Journal of Social & Environmental Justice

No abstract provided.

Learning With Peaceful, Heterogeneous Communities: Lessons On Sustaining Peace In Mauritius, Naseem Aumeerally, Allegra Chen-Carrel, Peter T. Coleman

Peace and Conflict Studies

Our scientific understanding of peaceful societies – and of the conditions and processes conducive to sustaining peace in multicultural societies in general – is fragmented at best. This paper addresses this gap, presenting a case study of a multicultural society often hailed for its high levels of peacefulness– Mauritius. Through a systematic review of the literature on Mauritius and qualitative interviews and focus groups with a wide range of Mauritian stakeholder groups, the study focused on gleaning insights from the lived experiences of a broad swath of Mauritian society around what it takes to maintain peace in a multicultural context. …

Beyond Brownfields Redevelopment: A Policy Framework For Regional Land Recycling Planning, Joseph Schilling

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

The fields of urban policy and urban planning lack a cohesive and comprehensive framework for recycling vacant and abandoned properties. Past and present efforts to repurpose vacant land and abandoned properties were often narrow responses driven primarily by economic redevelopment policies such as urban renewal of the 1950s & 1960s, deindustrialization of the 1970s & 1980s, and the public-private partnerships featured during the 1990s & 2000s. The 2008-2015 mortgage foreclosure crisis and Great Recession put the policy spotlight on how to address the widespread impacts from thousands of vacant and/or foreclosed homes that affected diverse markets and communities across the …

Saving The World Through Zoning: The Sustainable Development Code, Regeneration, And Beyond, Jonathan Rosenbloom, Chris Duerksen

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

The land use and planning community began to address sustainability at the local level in the 1990s, but in reality, state-of-the-art development codes drafted in the 1990s and early 2000s did little to address climate change, energy conservation, community health, loss of biodiversity, shifting biochemical cycles, racial justice, food supply, and other key sustainability issues. This article reviews past challenges that had to be overcome for sustainable development codes to become mainstream. The good news is that an increasing number of local governments are adopting ambitious sustainable development codes that hold great promise to not only protect the environment and …

The Future Of The Comprehensive Plan, David Rouse

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

This article begins with a brief history of the comprehensive plan from its historic roots to the present day. It then considers contemporary comprehensive planning practice, using the Comprehensive Plan Standards for Sustaining Places developed by the American Planning Association (APA) as a benchmark. The article concludes by exploring how the comprehensive plan can and must evolve to address the major challenges of the 21st century. It draws on research and content from The Comprehensive Plan: Sustainable, Resilient and Equitable Communities for the 21st Century (Rouse and Piro 2022).

Telos And Techne, Paul Knox

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

It seems reasonable to assert that the planning profession should be understood as serving society by providing vision, anticipation, innovation, and inspiration in the cause of human flourishing; that its telos is to create functional, efficient, and sustainable physical environments and to contribute to the material realization of societal aspirations of what it means to live well. But it is the techne—the appli¬cation of the field’s context-dependent armory of tactics, practices, concepts, approaches, and methods—that counts most in determining success in the cause of human flourishing. This article comments on the tensions between telos and techne in planning.

The Influence Of Civil Rights And Anti-Discrimination Laws On Shaping Our Transportation System, Marc Brenman, Thomas W. Sanchez

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

Regarding the title of this paper, “The Influence of Civil Rights and Anti-Discrimination Laws on Shaping Our Transportation System”, the reverse is also true—the transportation system has helped shape the civil rights laws in the U.S. The way bus lines in the South used to be segregated is one example, and fighting this helped shape the modern Civil Rights Movement. This influence goes back to include famous cases involving segregated train cars in the 1880s. In this article, we address the numerous ways in which civil rights and anti-discrimination laws shape our transportation system. We offer a suite of approaches …

Planning As If People Mattered, Arthur C. Nelson

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Resilience Re-Examined: Thoughts On The Covid-19 Pandemic's Lessons For Communities, John Travis Marshall

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

Prompted by this century’s major disasters, many local governments have adopted policies, plans, and laws to help guide their response to future natural hazard events. Some communities have prepared plans informed by their firsthand experience with recent catastrophic storms. Other communities have speculated about potential disaster scenarios; they have imagined the work involved in rebuilding their towns following an event that would threaten residents’ homes, health, and livelihoods. COVID-19 gives communities reason to reshape thinking around natural hazards planning. The ongoing pandemic should cause local governments to revisit and rework their plans for facilitating community recovery following a disaster. By …

The Current State Of Community Engagement In Urban Soil Pollution Science, Nicole Fernández-Viña, Yujuan Chen, Kirsten Schwarz

Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Faculty Research

Environmental burdens disproportionately impact the health of communities of color and low-income communities. Contemporary and legacy industry and land development may pollute soils with pesticides, petroleum products, and trace metals that can directly and indirectly impact the health of frontline communities. Past efforts to study environmental injustice have often excluded those most impacted, created distrust of researchers and other experts among frontline communities, and resulted in little to no structural change. Prevailing research methods value formal knowledge systems, while often dismissing the knowledge of those most harmed by environmental hazards. Community science has emerged as a process of doing science …

Book Reviews, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Weatherford, They Dared to Dream: Florida Women Who Shaped History. by Thomas H. Appleton Jr.; Link, Brown, Ward, and Bone, eds., Creating Citizenship in the Nineteenth-Century South. by Robert Cassanello; Kvach, De Bow's Review: The Antebellum Vision of a New South. by Frank J. Byrne; Pickenpaugh, Captives in Blue: The Civil War Prisons of the Confederacy. by David Carlson; Millner, The Allure of Immortality: An American Cult, a Florida Swamp, and a Renegade Prophet. by Katherine Marra; Bryan, Asylum Doctor: James Woods Babcock and the Red Plague of Pellagra. by Margaret Humphreys; Abreu, Rhythms of Race: Cuban Musicians and the …

Nature On A Leash: Tourism, Development, And The Environment On Amelia Island, Florida, Patrick H. Cosby

Florida Historical Quarterly

In the 2002 film, Sunshine State, writer and director John Sayles fictionalizes the recent history of Amelia Island, Florida. Sayles tells the tale of how unscrupulous developers attempted to acquire the most valuable beachfront properties from local African-American residents to build condominiums and golf courses, transforming Florida's weather and environment into a commodity to be sold to northern retirees and vacationers. Like the developers in Sunshine State, the Amelia Island Plantation sold dreams of "nature on a leash."1 Beginning in the early 1970s, the Amelia Island Plantation and its planners imposed a meticulously crafted, and prohibitively exclusive, version of living …

Book Reviews, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Carr, Digging Miami. by Ryan J. Wheeler; Marotti, Heaven's Soldiers: Free People of Color and the Spanish Legacy in Antebellum Rorida. by Patricia C. Griffin; Beeby, ed., Populism in the South Revisited: New Interpretations and New Departures. by Evan P. Bennett; Brundage, ed., Beyond Blackface: African Americans and the Creation of Popular Culture, 1890-1930. by Valerie Babb; Hersey, My Work Is That of Conservation: An Environmental Biography of George Washington Carver. by Ellen Griffith Spears; Godfrey and Catton, River of Interest: Water Management in South Rorida and the Everglades, 1948-2010. by Chris Wilhelm; Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The …

Talking Trash: A Short History Of Solid Waste Management In Florida, Andrew Fairbanks

Florida Historical Quarterly

Death and taxes may be the only certainties in life, but taking out the trash is a daily routine for virtually every American household. Human beings have always discarded things, and in the more remote past, people often used discards for other purposes, such as empty oyster shells that formed impressive Native American ceremonial mounds. Until World War II, farmers and urbanites alike fed food scraps to pets, pigs, and other animals. Today, everything from worn out furniture to old cell phones is heaped into piles that comprise one of contemporary Florida's most easily identified landscape features: landfills. As a …

Navigating The Necessary Evils: Contemplating The Topic Of Sustainability In Study Abroad, Megan Zacher

Capstone Collection

Travel is a defining feature of education abroad, instrumental in exposing students to experiences and countries beyond their campus community. The cultural exchange implied in travel aspires to benefit both host communities and students’ home institutions. However, education abroad has negative environmental impacts incongruent with many sustainability efforts. The education abroad sector aims to address this reality by advancing the use of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in program design and execution. In this study we conducted semi-structured interviews with representatives of higher education institutions, third-party study abroad providers, and professional associations to assess how stakeholders perceive this incongruency …

How An Environmental Crisis Catalyzed Community-Led Planning To Address Racial Inequities: A Case Study Of Shingle Mountain, In Southern Dallas, Evelyn Mayo

Planning Masters Professional Reports - Archive

Equity is one of the “Four E’s” representing the core values for planning at the City of Dallas, Texas (City of Dallas, Core Values). However, many neighborhoods in Southern Dallas endure environmental injustices partly because land use planning ignores or disregards the needs of low-income communities of color. This report examines the Shingle Mountain environmental justice crisis in Southern Dallas to illuminate the environmental injustices that the community of Floral Farms has endured partly due to misguided planning and the neglect of the city of Dallas.The study focuses on examining how the grassroots, community-led land use plan developed by residents …

Prefatory Matter

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

No abstract provided.

Forty Years Of Environmental Justice: Where Is The Justice?, Jon A. Mueller, Taylor Lilley

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

Environmental Justice (or“EJ”) has been recognized as a concept since

at least 1982. After decades of incremental and ineffective efforts by the federal

government, it has become clear that EJ must evolve beyond the concept

stage if it is to be an effective vehicle for social and legal change. At its heart,

EJ is a function of social inequities and environmental harms, and the disproportionate

correlation between those components can no longer be ignored

by state and federal actors. The way forward must be paved with practical

legal solutions and affirmative application of regulatory authority. This

article examines the history …

Incorporating Environmental Justice Into Benefit-Cost Analysis Of Federal Rulemakings, John D. Graham

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

President Biden proposes to revise the federal rulemaking process to advance

the values of justice and equity. This analysis offers a practical path

forward by adding an equity test to the efficiency test applied to new federal

regulations by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. This article explores

the feasibility of the proposal with applications to regulation of hazardous

air pollutants and drinking water contaminants. The proposal seeks

to advance the interests of low-income Americans in federal rulemaking, a

subgroup that has received little historical priority in the regulatory impact

analyses prepared by federal regulatory agencies.

Deconstructing Inequality: Cumulative Impacts, Environmental Justice, And Interstate Redevelopment, Lemir Teron

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

The siting and development of Interstate 81 in Syracuse, New York, similar

to highway projects across the nation, lead to the displacement of Black

Syracusans

and has exposed thousands of remaining residents at heightened

environmental harm. As the interstate is slated to be redeveloped due to age

and safety issues, national attention has focused on the highway as a potential

exemplar for similar projects across the United States. Federal law mandates

that environmental impact analysis be conducted, and due to the prevalence

of marginalized populations, environmental justice impacts are a

critical feature in this assessment. This article evaluates both the …

Armoring The Just Transition Activist, Abigail Fleming, Catherine Dremluk

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

The fossil fuel energy system, reinforced by oppressive policies and practices,

has disproportionately harmed poor people, Indigenous people, and

Brown and Black people and driven the global climate crisis. A just transition,

which displaces fossil fuels and redistributes renewable energy resources,

requires policies that are rooted in equity and shift power back to

the hands of the most vulnerable. Just Transition Activists, leaders, organizers,

and changemakers in the just transition movement, must develop transformative

skillsets necessary to radically reimagine our world and dismantle

the current unequal system of law and policy. This analysis explores the

skills, attributes, beliefs, and attitudes …