Environmental Justice Groups Research Articles

Aligning Community-Engaged Research Methods with Diverse Community Organizing Approaches

Community-Engaged Research (CER) often involves partnerships between academic or professional researchers and community organizers. Critical CER and organizing each aim to mobilize people and resources to produce actionable knowledge in order to build grassroots leadership and power that promote equity and justice for marginalized communities. This article argues that critical CER collaborations can benefit by carefully matching the choice of research methods with community partners’ organizing strategies to ensure that research aligns with and supports organizing goals. We aim to add to the CER literature a more specific rationale for why professional researchers should share control over the choice of research methods with community organizers, and more detailed guidance for how CER teams can select methods that best advance organizers’ goals. After summarizing the many ways in which collaborative research can support community organizing efforts, we argue that different CER methods align best with widely-used organizing approaches (including Alinskyite, Freirean, feminist, community building and resilience-based, and transformative approaches). We illustrate the discussion with examples of research conducted by and with organizations rooted in the environmental justice (EJ) movement, which prioritizes community organizing as a strategy and draws from multiple organizing traditions, including a case study of research techniques used by the Environmental Health Coalition, one of the oldest EJ groups in the U.S.

Just Transition for Healthy People on a Healthy Planet.

The definition of Just Transition in recent years has been shaped by the political and ideological leanings of multiple stakeholders. Labor movements look at a Just Transition that secures workers' rights and jobs; environmental justice groups include whole communities impacted by fossil fuel in their description; multilateral institutions, investors, and transnational corporations see it through lenses of economics, financial support, and investment. However, a perspective on health is missing in all these approaches. The COVID-19 pandemic has established the importance of health-based planning, making evident the co-dependence of ecological health and human well-being. The debilitating post-pandemic economic crisis has reiterated the interlinkage between economics, public health, and the environment. This document posits that health is the overlapping but missing link between the different movements' dream for Just Transition into an equitable world, and to heal people and the planet damaged by fossil fuels. We need Just Transition that has holistic health systems and accessible healthcare services at its core.

The Politics of Survival in Puerto Rico: The Balance of Forces in the Wake of Hurricane María

Puerto Rico’s left-wing forces have long tried to unify, a goal that has proven difficult to reach and even harder to sustain. At its strongest, the Left has faced intense repression from both the United States and the island’s colonial government. Yet, activists and left-wing intellectuals agree that deeper differences account for the collective inability to build unity. Historically, left-wing forces in Puerto Rico have split over the national question. Pro-independence groups, arguably the largest sector, have prioritized decolonization while socialists, feminists, and environmentalists have proposed a broader anti-oppressive praxis centered on social and economic issues. Other groups, such as the Movimiento Socialista de Trabajadores, do not see these struggles as mutually exclusive, calling for the formation of a socialist republic in Puerto Rico. Today a new wave of Leftist organizing is emerging, one free from traditional Marxist or nationalist dogmas. This new Puerto Rican Left is organizing for economic justice and against colonialism while putting a greater emphasis on gender, sexuality, and race. It aims to foster young leadership, articulate new solidarities, and revive the practice of community organizing. It is learning from the errors of the past while picking up the sediments of previous struggles. Yet, if the Left wants to remain relevant, it must collaborate with the youth, student, community, feminist, farmer, and environmental justice groups that are bringing new energy to the island. This essay contextualizes the Puerto Rican Left in relation to the island’s political economy, identifies the forces in the Puerto Rican Left, reviews their differences and recent history, and presents a brief analysis of their political influence in Puerto Rican and US politics.

Assessing impacts of climate variability and changing cropping patterns on regional evapotranspiration, yield and water productivity in California’s San Joaquin watershed

Climate variability and changing cropping patterns are two main factors directly influencing catchment hydrological processes and agricultural productivity. Assessing the response of hydrological processes and agricultural production to the combined impacts is of great importance for enhancing water resources management, water productivity and agriculture sustainability. SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tools) models embedded with 2007 and 2018 land use were built for the San Joaquin watershed (SJWS) in California’s Central Valley. Global sensitivity analysis were conducted to select parameters that have the largest influence on evapotranspiration (ET) processes. The model was calibrated and validated produced good agreement for monthly ET from remote sensing and yield of 8 major crops using county level reported yields during the periods of 2001–2009 and 2010–2018. Based on the outputs of the calibrated SJWS SWAT model, regional ET showed a significant increase, which was caused by rises in temperature and changing cropping patterns associated with increase in area under nut crop production. Seven major crop yields increased excluding alfalfa, implying that the impacts of increasing temperature and small decreases in precipitation were not dominant factors in explaining observed changes in yield. From periods 2001–2009–2010–2018, total water productivity (WP) increased slightly from 2.11 to 2.15 kg/m3, associated with more water-intensive permanent crop production systems. Total economic water productivity (EWP) increased significantly by 111% from 0.55 to 1.16 US$/m3, which also indicated the substantial economic benefit brought to the SJWS by expanding the land area under high-EWP crops such as nut crops and vegetables. Nutritional water productivity (NWP) for energy, protein and fat were reduced from 1211 kcal/m3, 183 g/m3 and 105 g/m3 to 1141 kcal/m3, 111 g/m3 and 88 g/m3 during the period 2010–2018 mostly due to high water use. Total NWP for calcium was increased from 114 to 145 mg/m3, respectively. This study provides initial insights into the response of WP, EWP and NWP to the changing cropping patterns and climate variability for major crops in the SJWS, which could be used by a wide range of stakeholders including farmers, commodity boards, irrigation districts, groundwater sustainability basins, environmental justice groups and policy makers to optimize water resources planning and management. We recommend creating a comprehensive index that incorporates WP, EWP and NWP for making sustainable water resources planning and management decisions.

The (in)visible victims of disaster: Understanding the vulnerability of undocumented Latino/a and indigenous immigrants

As climate change advances, communities across the United States are adapting to the increased threat of wildfires, drought, heatwaves, and infectious diseases. Such disasters are expected to become more frequent and severe. Now more than ever, it is crucial to understand how these events amplify existing inequalities, and how to lessen the resulting harms. Differences in human vulnerability to disaster stem from a range of social, economic, historical, and political factors. We argue that given their social status, undocumented Latino/a and Indigenous immigrants are particularly vulnerable to disasters and require special consideration in disaster planning. They are disproportionately affected by racial discrimination, exploitation, economic hardships, less English and Spanish proficiency, and fear of deportation in their everyday lives— their pre-disaster marginalized status. In the case of the Thomas Fire in California's Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, we show that emergency response and recovery efforts ignored their needs. Resources were directed toward privileged individuals, leaving local immigrant rights and environmental justice groups to provide essential services such as language access to emergency information in Spanish and Indigenous tongues; labor protections for farmworkers endangered in the fields; and a private disaster relief fund for undocumented immigrants ineligible for federal aid. The article concludes with preliminary participant observations from the COVID-19 pandemic response in the region, indicating how lessons from the fire have informed official actions. As governments grapple with the increasing severity of disasters, understanding the differential impacts on undocumented immigrants can help improve disaster planning to protect the most vulnerable and stigmatized populations.

New Scholarship

New Scholarship

Is social licence “going rogue”?

In this commentary we trace an important change in the use of social licence for resource‐intensive development projects. Social licence is shifting from an approach used by companies to improve relations with affected communities to a concept now used by environmental justice groups, non‐governmental organisations and local communities to contest unpopular resource‐intensive development projects. The term “going rogue” is a productive metaphor to explore this important change in the role of social licence. We focus on the different logics behind how social licence is being used by progressive groups to protest resource‐intensive development, weak state policies and broader economic processes. We end by exploring what the shifting terrain for social licence means for the politics of resource extraction.

Regulation and Distribution

This Article tackles a question that has vexed the administrative state for the last half century: how to seriously take account of the distributional consequences of regulation. The academic literature has largely accepted the view that distributional concerns should be moved out of the regulatory domain and into Congress’ tax policy portfolio. In doing so, it has overlooked the fact that tax policy is ill suited to provide compensation for significant environmental, health, and safety harms. And the congressional gridlock that has bedeviled us for several decades makes this enterprise even more of a non-starter. The focus on negative distributional consequences has become particularly salient recently, playing a significant role in the 2016 presidential election and threatening important, socially beneficial regulatory measures. For example, on opposite sides of the political spectrum, environmental justice groups and coal miner interests have forcefully opposed the regulation of greenhouse gases through flexible regulatory tools, in California and at the federal level, respectively. The time has come to make distributional consequences a core concern of the regulatory state; otherwise, future socially beneficial regulations could well encounter significant roadblocks. The success of this enterprise requires significant institutional changes in the way in which distributional issues are handled within the Executive Branch. Every President from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama has made cost-benefit analysis a key feature of the regulatory state as a result of the role played by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and the Trump Administration is keeping that structure in place. In contrast, executive orders addressing distributional concerns have languished because of the lack of a similar enforcement structure within the Executive Branch. This Article provides the blueprint for the establishment of a standing, broadly constituted interagency body charged with addressing serious negative consequences of regulatory measures on particular groups. Poor or minority communities already disproportionally burdened by environmental harms and communities that lose a significant portion of their employment base are paradigmatic candidates for such action.

The Origins of Identity Politics

The Origins of Identity Politics

Distributive justice and human rights in climate policy: the long road to Paris

The Paris Agreement, adopted by 196 countries, is the first global climate change instrument to explicitly reference human rights as a guiding principle. The treaty does not expound on the implications of climate change for human rights but the fact that it calls on State Parties to respect human rights when combating climate change shows a significant improvement in international thinking and acceptance of the linkages between human rights and climate change. Indeed, this is no mean feat. The journey to Paris has been a long and arduous process, especially for the broad coalition of indigenous people, gender, human rights, environmental and climate justice groups that worked tirelessly to bring the issue to global focus. My goal in this article is to explore the implications of a human rights clause in the Paris Agreement. Does it carry any legal or political weight? Are State Parties likely to operationalize it? In what ways can they enforce this part of the Agreement? To answer these questions, this article traces the historical account of the connections between human rights and climate change within the United Nations system and examines issues of equity and distributive justice in international climate change frameworks such as the UNFCCC, Kyoto Protocol, and the Paris Agreement. The article expounds on opportunities for integrating human rights-based approaches into national and international climate policy and concludes on the need for further integration of both issues in future research and treaty negotiations.Keywords: Climate change, human rights, justice, policy, Paris Agreement

Engaging Communities in Research on Cumulative Risk and Social Stress-Environment Interactions: Lessons Learned from EPA's STAR Program.

Studies have documented cumulative health effects of chemical and nonchemical exposures, particularly chronic environmental and social stressors. Environmental justice groups have advocated for community participation in research that assesses how these interactions contribute to health disparities experienced by low-income and communities of color. In 2009, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a request for research applications (RFA), “Understanding the Role of Nonchemical Stressors and Developing Analytic Methods for Cumulative Risk Assessments.” Seven research projects were funded to help address this knowledge gap. Each engaged with communities in different ways. We describe the community engagement approaches of the seven research projects, which ranged from outreach through shared leadership/participatory. We then assess the experiences of these programs with respect to the community engagement goals of the RFA. We present insights from these community engagement efforts, including how the grants helped to build or enhance the capacity of community organizations in addition to contributing to the research projects. Our analysis of project proposals, annual grantee reports, and participant observation of these seven projects suggests guidelines for the development of future funding mechanisms and for conducting community-engaged research on cumulative risk involving environmental and social stressors including: 1) providing for flexibility in the mode of community engagement; 2) addressing conflict between research timing and engagement needs, 3) developing approaches for communicating about the uniquely sensitive issues of nonchemical stressors and social risks; and 4) encouraging the evaluation of community engagement efforts.

Evolution of the environmental justice movement: activism, formalization and differentiation

To complement a recent flush of research on transnational environmental justice movements, we sought a deeper organizational history of what we understand as the contemporary environmental justice movement in the United States. We thus conducted in-depth interviews with 31 prominent environmental justice activists, scholars, and community leaders across the US. Today’s environmental justice groups have transitioned from specific local efforts to broader national and global mandates, and more sophisticated political, technological, and activist strategies. One of the most significant transformations has been the number of groups adopting formal legal status, and emerging as registered environmental justice organizations (REJOs) within complex partnerships. This article focuses on the emergence of REJOs, and describes the respondents’ views about the implications of this for more local grassroots groups. It reveals a central irony animating work across groups in today’s movement: legal formalization of many environmental justice organizations has made the movement increasingly internally differentiated, dynamic, and networked, even as the passage of actual national laws on environmental justice has proven elusive.

Solidarity after Bhopal: Building a Transnational Environmental Justice Movement

Abstract This article documents the history of the U.S.-based campaign that emerged around the ongoing Bhopal disaster, since the 2001 merger of Union Carbide Corporation (Union Carbide) and the Dow Chemical Company (Dow). Based on interviews with key organizers and former and current campaigners in the United States and in Bhopal, the article discusses how this movement has worked to keep the Bhopal disaster alive and relevant for its three target constituencies in the United States. By appealing to social and environmental justice (EJ) groups, students, and the Indian diaspora, the campaign has won small victories in India and has challenged Dow's greenwashing attempts. Members of the diaspora have been instrumental in setting in motion what scholars have called the boomerang effect through exerting pressure on the Indian government. We also see the double boomerang at work in the United States when EJ activists make strategic references to Bhopal in times of crisis. More needs to be done, however, to b...

CAFOs and Environmental Justice: The Case of North Carolina

On the coastal plain of eastern North Carolina, families in certain rural communities daily must deal with the piercing, acrid odor of hog manure—reminiscent of rotten eggs and ammonia—wafting from nearby industrial hog farms. On bad days, the odor invades homes, and people are often forced to cover their mouths and noses when stepping outside. Sometimes, residents say, a fine mist of manure sprinkles nearby homes, cars, and even laundry left on the line to dry.1 Today’s industrial-scale farms—called concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs)—house thousands of animals whose waste is periodically applied to “spray fields” of Bermuda grass or feed crops.2,3 The waste can contain pathogens, heavy metals, and antibiotic-resistant bacteria,4,5 and the spray can reach nearby homes and drinking water sources. The odor plume, which often pervades nearby communities, contains respiratory and eye irritants including hydrogen sulfide and ammonia.6,7,8 A growing body of research suggests these emissions may contribute not only to mucosal irritation9 and respiratory ailments10 in nearby residents but also decreased quality of life,11 mental stress,12,13 and elevated blood pressure.14 The home of a minority family in Kenansville, North Carolina, situated next to a concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO. Dust, odors, and manure from CAFOs can reach nearby residents’ homes, including their laundry. Although the Midwest is the traditional home for hogs, with Iowa still the top-producing state, North Carolina went from fifteenth to second in hog production between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s.15 This explosive growth resulted in thousands of CAFOs located in the eastern half of the state—squarely in the so-called Black Belt, a crescent-shaped band throughout the South where slaves worked on plantations.16,17 After emancipation many freed slaves continued to work as sharecroppers and tenant farmers. A century later, black residents of this region still experience high rates of poverty, poor health care, low educational attainment, unemployment, and substandard housing.18,19 The clustering of North Carolina’s hog CAFOs in low-income, minority communities—and the health impacts that accompany them—has raised concerns of environmental injustice and environmental racism.20 As one pair of investigators explained, “[P]eople of color and the poor living in rural communities lacking the political capacity to resist are said to shoulder the adverse socio-economic, environmental, or health related effects of swine waste externalities without sharing in the economic benefits brought by industrialized pork production.”21 Although North Carolina is not the only area with environmental justice concerns vis-a-vis CAFOs, it has become one of the best studied.

A low-cost particle counter as a realtime fine-particle mass monitor.

Exposure to particles with aerodynamic diameters less than 2.5 μm is estimated to cause significant morbidity and mortality worldwide leading many countries to develop ambient air pollution standards and guidelines. At local scales, community and environmental justice groups are also concerned about PM 2.5 concentrations that may be elevated above regional concentrations typically measured by centrally located monitors and standards as well. In an attempt to develop a low cost, easy to use monitor we evaluated a low-cost optical particle counter, the Dylos™, as a fine particulate mass sensor. Modified into a system called the Berkeley Aerosol Information Recording System (BAIRS), we compared performance against standard commercial instruments in chambers using polystyrene latex spheres, ammonium sulphate, and woodsmoke and in an urban ambient setting. Overall we find that the limit of detection of the BAIRS is less than 1 μg m (-3) and the resolution is better than 1 μg m(-3) for PM 2.5. The BAIRS sizes small (<0.5 μm) particles, and is able to accurately estimate the mass concentration of particles of varying composition including organic, inorganic, and ambient particles. It is able to measure concentrations up to 10.0 mg m (-3). In an ambient roof-top test of the BAIRS and a more expensive commercially available light scattering particle monitor the BAIRS response tracked well with the commercial monitor and daily means were within 80% of each other. We conclude that with appropriate modification the system could be developed into an accurate low cost realtime particle mass monitor for use in a wide range of applications.

Progress and Pollution: Port Cities Prepare for the Panama Canal Expansion

Early in the planning of the Panama Canal, Navy Commander Thomas Oliver Selfridge, Jr., wrote that “advantageous as an interoceanic canal would be to the commercial welfare of the whole world, it is doubly so for the necessities of American interests.”1 And indeed, since the Canal opened in 1914, it has been the main conduit for ocean-going ships carrying trade worldwide. Today the United States ranks number one in tons of cargo passing through the Canal (China ranks number two).2 In 2011 nearly 13,000 ocean-going cargo ships made the passage.3 Starting in the late 1950s (and expanding rapidly thereafter), internationally traded goods started being shipped in large metal containers, making it possible to load and unload cargo by machine instead of by hand and spurring the manufacture of larger ships.4 “Panamax” ships were designed to be just small enough to squeeze through the locks of the Canal.5 Today, even larger ships—called “post-Panamax” because they are too large to fit through the Canal6—make up 16% of the world’s container fleet but account for nearly half the fleet’s cargo capacity.7 To allow these larger ships to transit the Canal and increase its ability to handle higher volumes of ships, Panama is building a third set of locks, with construction expected to be finished in 2015.7 The Panama Canal expansion has sparked the competitive imagination of East Coast and Gulf Coast (EC/GC) port authorities, who hope to capture some of the 70% of U.S. imports currently controlled by West Coast (WC) ports.8 Ports typically make their revenues through leases with shipping lines, wharfage fees, and tariffs. So the more containers a port handles, the more money it can make. Experts at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) call the Panama Canal expansion a likely “game changer” for U.S. trade, potentially redistributing the market share of each coast’s ports, as well as opening up new import and export markets for agricultural and other products along inland waterways.7 Some have estimated that container volumes at EC/GC ports could more than double from 2012 to 2029.7 But with this growth come questions about what major initiatives to expand cargo capacity could mean for public health in these port cities.

The Messy Politics of “Clean Coal”

Clean coal is a widely used and highly contested term in debates over energy policy and climate change in the United States. While the discourse of “clean coal” originated in industry and government circles, it has been debated, shaped, and contested by a wide range of players, including environmental and social justice groups. In this article, I examine how different local, regional, and national environmental and social justice groups participate in debating and defining these technologies and their implications for the energy future of the region.

National Survey of Environmental Justice Groups: What Do They Look Like (Organizational Structure)? What Do They Do (Tactics)? Some Implications

Environmental justice emerged as a grass roots movement to battle the injustices of inequitable enforcement of national environmental laws that affected people of color. A Web-based survey was conducted to gauge what these groups look like today in terms of their organizational structure and the types of tactics they use in their struggle to combat environmental racism. The findings indicated that these groups have lost many of the characteristics of social movements. They have also defied the traditional trajectory of transitioning to interest groups. Instead, the vast majority of these groups have incorporated as 501c(3) nonprofits. Their organizational structure is more institutionalized in terms of staffing, resources, budgeting, and decision making. The tactics they primarily use include: educating and training other groups, organizing other groups, and researching issues. These groups have been in existence for an average of nineteen years and serve multiple populations including Anglos. As nonprofit organizations, they have been able to gain access to the regulatory process by serving on boards and commissions; they may have contributed to the policy process by identifying problems and providing solutions although this remains unclear; and, they have excluded themselves from the political process since nonprofit organizations are barred from lobbying and, thus, attempting to influence federal environmental legislation.

Using Visual Images to Achieve Environmental Justice: A Case Study of the Asarco Copper Smelter in El Paso, Texas

Abstract Little research has focused on the use of visual imagery in struggles for environmental justice (EJ). This article contributes to knowledge by gauging respondents' reactions to two images used in a recent conflict surrounding the proposed reopening of a copper smelter owned by the American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO) in El Paso, Texas. After viewing the images, respondents voiced concern about environmental injustices and expressed interest in job creation that would be safer and fairer for themselves, their children, and future generations. An analysis of respondents' reactions informed the creation of two alternative images designed to resonate with local values and advocate for environmental justice. When designing protest images, EJ groups should use text to make the point of the image clear, include pertinent information about the hazard, and use imagery that is meaningful to people who are likely to be affected.

An Analysis of the “Path of Least Resistance” Argument in Three Environmental Justice Success Cases

Research suggests that environmental hazards tend to be disproportionately sited in poor and minority neighborhoods. Recent findings indicate that the greatest environmental inequalities may have been related to the 1970s “not in my backyard” movement and the “path of least resistance.” The purpose of this research is to expand upon the “path of least resistance” perspective by looking at three environmental justice success cases. In each case community-based environmental justice groups were able to stop the siting of an industrial facility. We find that in one case the company never again attempted to build the facility and waste materials were sent to an alternative location. In the other two cases the companies were able to construct similar facilities in different communities. While the demographic characteristics of the failed and successful sitings were similar, there is still some evidence that industry production practices change as a result of these environmental justice social movements.