Abstract
This article identifies the top 40 most influential environmental conflict cases in the US while also showcasing innovative mixed methods for more rigorous participatory collaborative work on environmental conflicts. University of Michigan students and faculty collaborated with Environmental Justice Organizations, Liabilities and Trade (EJOLT), a European Union mapping initiative, to identify US cases for their wider study. We began with an intensive scholarly and media literature review, combined with results from 31 semi-structured interviews with informants from a broad database of US environmental justice (EJ) departments, initiatives, and symposia. We then wrote short descriptions of 90 EJ conflict cases in US history, incorporating them into a detailed participatory online survey to garner expert and public input on which of them have been the most influential in shaping US popular opinion, policy, and political will on EJ issues. Seeking to provide a rigorous basis for the EJOLT mapping exercise, but also to instill an ethic of knowledge co-creation within the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s mechanisms for assessing EJ issues, we distributed the survey widely and posted it on the EPA's EJ Blog. It received over 1000 hits in the first two weeks. Our surveys remained active for about three weeks, for a total of 350 responses (101 from respondents who self-identified as EJ experts, and 249 from those identifying as members of the wider public). After eliminating incomplete or duplicate responses, we weighted to correct for that imbalance in the numbers, considering a total of 165 in our analysis. These responses comprise the list of 40 cases (unranked) we launched on the atlas in March 2014, and describe in this paper; the top five including multiple oil- or petroleum-based cases, one clean water case, one climate change case, and one confined animal feeding operation case.
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