Environmental Justice Research Articles

Ethical Implications of Environmental Policies and Practices

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the ethical implications of environmental policies and practices. Methodology: The study adopted a desktop research methodology. Desk research refers to secondary data or that which can be collected without fieldwork. Desk research is basically involved in collecting data from existing resources hence it is often considered a low cost technique as compared to field research, as the main cost is involved in executive’s time, telephone charges and directories. Thus, the study relied on already published studies, reports and statistics. This secondary data was easily accessed through the online journals and library. Findings: The findings reveal that there exists a contextual and methodological gap relating to the ethical implications of environmental policies and practices. Preliminary empirical review revealed that environmental decision-making is complex, involving trade-offs between competing values. It emphasized the importance of incorporating principles of justice and equity into governance processes, recognizing the disproportionate impact of environmental degradation on marginalized communities. The study identified gaps and shortcomings in current policies, highlighting the need for enhanced accountability and inclusivity. It advocated for a holistic and interdisciplinary approach to environmental governance, involving collaboration across diverse stakeholders to develop more effective and morally defensible strategies for addressing environmental challenges. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: The Environmental Justice theory, Ethical Decision- Making theory and Sustainability theory may be used to anchor future studies on the ethical implications of environmental policies and practices. The study made several recommendations, contributing to theory, practice, and policy. It recommended integrating ethical frameworks into policy development, strengthening community engagement, promoting environmental justice and equity, enhancing transparency and accountability, implementing ethical education and training, and fostering international cooperation. These recommendations aimed to ensure that environmental policies reflected ethical considerations, empowered communities, addressed systemic inequalities, promoted democratic governance, enhanced ethical awareness, and facilitated collaborative solutions to global environmental challenges. Keywords: Ethical Implications, Environmental Policies, Sustainability, Environmental Justice, Equity, Community Engagement, Transparency, Accountability, Policy Development, Participatory Governance, Democratic Deliberation, Environmental Inequalities, Ethical Frameworks, Education And Training, International Cooperation, Solidarity, Stakeholders, Decision-Making Processes, Global Environmental Challenges

Rural Women’s Response to Climate Change: An Exploratory Study of Women’s Grassroot Network in Odisha

The emergence of Feminist Political Ecological (FPE) position allows to rethink about social institutions like Self Help Groups (SHGs) as foundations for building green movements through everyday practice. The collective voice that has helped them emerge economically self-sufficient is reflected in their decision making, when the larger cause of climate change or environmental decision-making are involved. It is time that their actions permeating the ecology and environment gains credence and such coalitions provide ground as movements for achieving the larger collective agenda.   Idea of SHGs as social capital helped the marginalized women create different ‘gendered subjectivities’ and endowed them with a collective voice, be it conservation of their own ecological settings or confronting the social system. The case of Climate Credit Pilot Project and/or conservation of indigenous seed varieties in remote villages of Odisha bear testimony to women’s consciousness regarding climate mitigation initiatives and the meaningful actions associated with environmental justice. Such interventions show that the embedment of economic, social and cultural values of SHG groups align with their instinct for attaining a larger goal of environment protection through household and community level actions.   The gendered subjectivities including increased social consciousness among women, better access to new information, up-skilling has made them better and enlightened decision makers. The practice of joint or consensual action by SHG collectives enable them to address multi-scalar issues like climate change. However, the broader agenda of social and economic empowerment has to align with their decision making power relating to their immediate ecology and environment. In this context, the proposed study will probe emerging social consciousness of women on climate change issues, while examining their larger environmental responsibility in local situation, wherein the women remain at the receiving end. This is a field-based exploratory study of women from subsistence and indigenous communities of three districts in Odisha which interrogates the role of SHGs in creating a social space for women to engage with the question of environmental decision making. The study intends to analyse the field data in relation to environmental rights, responsibilities and knowledge of rural and Adivasi women within the institution of SHGs. It aims to formulate the concept, i.e., can SHGs be seen as co-linear spaces which needs to be strengthened as bearers of green movements at the local level as a response to the climate crisis.

Cancer control Co-benefits of the Climate-Related provisions in the American inflation reduction act.

The American Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 contains climate-related provisions that may have significant implications for cancer control and prevention. This commentary assesses the potential co-benefits of the IRA for cancer control efforts, specifically policies and programs to reduce carcinogen exposure via air quality monitoring and air pollution reduction. Allocations through the IRA for air quality improvement, paired with its environmental justice provisions, holds promise for advancing cancer prevention by targeting resources to communities most susceptible to environmental hazards. Moreover, climate resilience measures dictated by the IRA are crucial for oncology professionals grappling with the dual challenges of climate change and cancer care. Climate-driven extreme weather events can exacerbate carcinogen exposure and disrupt access to cancer care, underscoring the need for resilient healthcare infrastructure. The IRA's provisions for clean energy incentives and infrastructure upgrades offer oncology care institutions opportunities to mitigate emissions and bolster resilience against climate-related disruptions, ultimately improving cancer outcomes. Climate-related initiatives funded by the IRA present a unique and timely avenue to advance equitable cancer control efforts. This commentary underscores the critical intersection between climate resilience policy and oncology care, highlighting the potential to promote a healthier and more resilient future for all.

Environmental Justice and Systems Analysis for Air Quality Planning in the Port of Oakland in California.

Many frontline communities experience adverse health impacts from living in proximity to high-polluting industrial sources. Securing environmental justice requires, in part, a comprehensive set of quantitative indicators. We incorporate environmental justice and life-cycle thinking into air quality planning to assess fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure and monetized damages from operating and maintaining the Port of Oakland, a major multimodal marine port located in the historically marginalized West Oakland community in the San Francisco Bay Area. The exposure domain for the assessment is the entire San Francisco Bay Area, a home to more than 7.5 million people. Of the more than 14 sources included in the emissions inventory, emissions from large container ships, or ocean-going vessels (OGVs), dominate the PM2.5 intake, and supply chain sources (material production and delivery, fuel production) represent between 3.5% and 7.5% of annual intake. Exposure damages, which model the costs from excess mortalities resulting from exposure from the study's emission sources, range from USD 100 to 270 million per annum. Variations in damages are due to the use of different concentration-response relationships, hazard ratios, and Port resurfacing area assumptions. Racial and income-based exposure disparities are stark. The Black population and people within the lowest income quintile are 2.2 and 1.9 times more disproportionately exposed, respectively, to the Port's pollution sources relative to the general population. Mitigation efforts focused on electrifying in-port trucking operations yield modest reductions (3.5%) compared to strategies that prioritize emission reductions from OGVs and commercial harbor craft operations (8.7-55%). Our recommendations emphasize that a systems-based approach is critical for identifying all relevant emission sources and mitigation strategies for improving equity in civil infrastructure systems.

Transformative learning at the community-university-land interface: A political ecology of knowledge, education and health

As awareness grows of the catastrophic implications of global environmental change, multiple scholarly fields addressing health-environment relationships have advocated 'transformative' educational strategies. Holistic Indigenous health-environment models inspire and inform many such efforts, but related land-based learning initiatives involving universities are often impeded by the competitive processes of academia. In this article we report on a community-university partnership – Pedagogy for the Anthropocene (P4A) – aimed at developing transformative educational responses to pressing global crises, inspired by land-based approaches. We integrate political ecologies of health, education, and knowledge to understand the troubled production of pedagogical knowledge in P4A, participant experiences in the resulting educational programs and the role of health and bodies in both. We first trace the production of knowledge as shaped by macroscopic and localized institutional forces; organizational and occupational dynamics; interacting knowledges and individuals; and material factors. Next, we explore participant experiences in the resulting educational programming. In both steps, affect-laden bodies of academics, trainees and community members reveal entanglements with human communities and more-than-human elements, shaped in variable ways by institutional forces such as settler colonialism and university neoliberalization. One key finding involves the role of universities in relation to land dispossession at home and abroad; another includes the challenges of pursuing transformational community-university research within contemporary universities. Tracing such entanglements yields implications for future land-based learning efforts in university settings, and broader praxis for environmental justice in the shadow of higher education's complicity with settler colonialism and globally extractive neoliberal capitalism.

Fashion Marketing and Environmental Justice

Fashion Marketing and Environmental Justice

Reading the room: developing a practical justice politics of regional energy transition

ABSTRACT This study looks at the case of industrial energy transition campaigning by a traditional conservation group in a regional city that hosts coal- fired power and emissions-intensive industry. We ask, what tensions do metropolitan campaigners find when communicating the idea of just transition and building alliances in regional places? How do they deal with those tensions? What does this mean for the task of developing ‘useable useful theories of environmental justice’ ? Our results illustrate the need to navigate three principal tensions: inclusivity, recognition, and equity. The case of the Australian Conservation Foundation in Gladstone reveals that as these tensions get worked through, the campaign goal is reframed as something other than ‘just transition’ and more akin to a local environmental justice campaigning. Ultimately, the ENGO now wrestles with the local difficulties of building energy justice politics on the scale and time-frame that climate science implies.

Cumulative Exposures to Environmental and Socioeconomic Risk Factors in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin.

The environmental justice literature demonstrates consistently that low-income and minority communities are disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards. In this case study, we examined cumulative multipollutant, multidomain, and multimatrix environmental exposures in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin for the year 2015. We identified spatial hot spots in Milwaukee County both individually (using local Moran's I) and through clusters (using K-means clustering) across a profile of environmental pollutants that span regulatory domains and matrices of exposure, as well as socioeconomic indicators. The cluster with the highest exposures within the urban area was largely characterized by low socioeconomic status and an overrepresentation of the Non-Hispanic Black population relative to the county as a whole. In this cluster, average pollutant concentrations were equivalent to the 78th percentile in county-level blood lead levels, 67th percentile in county-level NO2, 79th percentile in county-level CO, and 78th percentile in county-level air toxics. Simultaneously, this cluster had an average equivalent to the 62nd percentile in county-level unemployment, 70th percentile in county-level population rate lacking a high school diploma, 73rd percentile in county-level poverty rate, and 28th percentile in county-level median household income. The spatial patterns of pollutant exposure and SES indicators suggested that these disparities were not random but were instead structured by socioeconomic and racial factors. Our case study, which combines environmental pollutant exposures, sociodemographic data, and clustering analysis, provides a roadmap to identify and target overburdened communities for interventions that reduce environmental exposures and consequently improve public health.

Access to Environmental Justice under the Aarhus Convention: Evaluating the Contemporary Hurdles for ENGOs in Challenging State Aid Decisions under EU Law

Access to Environmental Justice under the Aarhus Convention: Evaluating the Contemporary Hurdles for ENGOs in Challenging State Aid Decisions under EU Law

Evaluating conflict in collaborative environmental governance: A study of environmental justice councils

AbstractThe formal engagement of diverse stakeholder groups in environmental policy design and implementation is increasingly common. While engaging diverse stakeholders in common fora can help address complex environmental dilemmas, insofar as different stakeholders have varying perspectives and resources to contribute, this same variance can lead to intractable conflicts. While policy scholars have developed various conceptual approaches to understanding conflict in the policy process, few scholars have applied conceptual approaches to understand how policy conflicts are reflected in interpersonal communications among diverse stakeholders. In this article, we draw on environmental justice council meeting minutes and use qualitative, computational, and statistical methods to analyze, over time: (i) the extent and severity of policy conflict observed among council actors; (ii) the association between actor‐level attributes and conflict, as conveyed in two‐way communication between actors; (iii) the association between actor's sector and change in conflict; and (iv) variation in conflict across council activities. By exploring the overtime association between policy conflict and attributes of policy actors (e.g., sectoral affiliation and interpersonal attributes), our analysis addresses not only the influence of the number of interactions for an actor at the meeting but also how they are interacting at the meeting by leveraging their position in the meeting communication network. Our article contributes to the study of the public policy process and collaborative governance, drawing attention to how conflict materializes in a collaborative forum engaged in policy making.

Using Local Indicators of Spatial Association to Analyze the Environmental Justice Implications of Ambient Air Pollution in the United States

Using Local Indicators of Spatial Association to Analyze the Environmental Justice Implications of Ambient Air Pollution in the United States

Teaching Environmental Justice in U.S. Occupied Hawaiʻi: Defamiliarizing the Impacts of Militarism and Tourism on Native Landscapes

Teaching Environmental Justice in U.S. Occupied Hawaiʻi: Defamiliarizing the Impacts of Militarism and Tourism on Native Landscapes

Transitions to Food Sustainability with Intergenerational and Ecological Justice

Transitions to Food Sustainability with Intergenerational and Ecological Justice

Anti-racism, racism, and the microbiome: A review

Debates about the relationship between racism, anti-racism, and the new life sciences calls for further inquiry into the growing popularity of microbiome science. Scientists define human microbiomes as unique communities of microorganisms that vary across body-sites, lifespan, location, and lifestyle. As new biomarkers for human diversity, scientists argue that microbiomes environmentally mediate development and health, which also reframes classical models of disease. In the small subset of literature that engages the stakes for race, the implications of human microbiome science are posed in terms of paradoxically reifying racism and empowering anti-racist science. To illustrate this duality, I first review the two most pervasive critiques of explicitly and implicitly reproducing racial categories in human microbiome science. Then, I show how some of the same critics embrace other versions of microbiome science as a tool to fight for environmental justice and de-essentialize race. However, in the next section, I challenge this distinction by arguing that even the most promising aspect of microbiome science as biosocial “becoming” can reproduce racial hierarchies too. In sketching limits in the current literature, I conclude by suggesting that critical engagements with biosocial formations of race need to further examine the relational formation of whiteness and that such inquiry requires elevating Black and Indigenous scholars.

The split ladder of participation: A literature review and dynamic path forward

Participation of people in decision making and tackling complex problems where there is lack of consensus on the science and relevant values continues to be an important research topic. The 2015 Split Ladder of Participation offered a diagnostic and methodological framework cited in 162 papers. This paper addresses the question: What does a literature review of the Split Ladder of Participation reveal about engaging people in policy problems, effecting transformational change, and how can this diagnostic and strategic tool be improved? A systematic literature review revealed papers that disclose transformational change, or triple loop learning requires: strong social science; social and natural interdisciplinary science; and considerations of uncertainty in environmental science together with uncertainty of values and considerations of power. Policy problems with low levels of trust offer opportunities to engage interest and participation in their resolution. Governments over-utilizing methods limiting participation, may lead to lock-in. Focusing on complex, interconnected problems through participation creates an enduring policy and science, interdisciplinary innovation space. Recognizing participation that is plural, amorphous, and fluid draws attention to power, multiple stakeholder framings of complex issues, advances social learning changing values, norms, power, and the very ethics of science (where social and natural/physical scientists acknowledge and share their power with people), and ultimately advances environmental justice.

Harnessing the Power of Crowdsourcing and Public Participation to Advance Global Environmental Protection

The principles of international environmental law serve as an effective framework in analyzing the legal elements of environmental hazards. In the light of the matter, the important principle of participation is regarded as the primary facilitator in the process of environmental protection and the prevention of the extent and progression of environmental hazards. This principle, in considering methods such as crowdsourcing, may identify a progressive strategy and visualize the impact of citizens and people in the protection of the biosphere. The basic approaches of this research include participatory democracy, access to information, public decision-making, and environmental litigation. This research intends to light up a path to attaining the goals of international environmental legislation by drawing a two-way interaction between the two with the goal of examining the viability of realizing the principle of participation in light of crowdsourcing. It also seeks to resolve the question of how effective the process of using crowdsourcing as an implementation tool of the participation principle may be in attaining the goals of environmental support and protection. By reviewing and analyzing relevant sources, this article argues that enhancing the participation of stakeholders, including civil groups and individuals, may improve the effectiveess of environmental legislation and promote social and environmental justice and suggests that creating platforms to share information and engage with stakeholders and the public, as well as consider mechanisms to ensure accountability and the balance of power along the way, can be very effective.

There is no place to go in “America's Finest City”: Basic sanitation deprivation is punishment in San Diego, California, USA

Safe and consistent access to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WaSH) resources is an internationally recognized human right. Yet in the U.S., access to public toilets, handwashing facilities, potable water, and menstrual supplies is grimly limited, especially for unhoused people. This article develops the concept of “sanitation justice” and argues for its urgent consideration alongside calls for racial, gender, social, and environmental justice. We advance this argument via a case study analyzing three novel data sources on WaSH access in San Diego, California's second-largest city, with a focus on public restrooms: geospatial data on facility locations, infrastructure assessments, and interviews with unhoused people on their restroom needs and challenges. We present a conceptual model, informed by the prior literature and our data, for visualizing how deliberate sanitation deprivation in the U.S. urban environment functions as a punishment regime inflicted on city residents, unhoused residents especially, to the detriment of public health and safety. As our data show, WaSH access is the most basic way governments can support not only public health but also social and economic mobility. We conclude with a vision of sanitation justice that centers the voices of those most affected by sanitation deprivation.

Societal Co-benefits of Zero-Emission Vehicles in the Freight Industry.

This study was set in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA), where commercial vehicle movements were assigned across the road network. Implications for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, air quality, and health were examined through an environmental justice lens. Electrification of light-, medium-, and heavy-duty trucks was assessed to identify scenarios associated with the highest benefits for the most disadvantaged communities. Using spatially and temporally resolved commercial vehicle movements and a chemical transport model, changes in air pollutant concentrations under electric truck scenarios were estimated at 1-km2 resolution. Heavy-duty truck electrification reduces ambient black carbon and nitrogen dioxide on average by 10 and 14%, respectively, and GHG emissions by 10.5%. It achieves the highest reduction in premature mortality attributable to fine particulate matter chronic exposure (around 200 cases per year) compared with light- and medium-duty electrification (less than 150 cases each). The burden of all traffic in the GTHA was estimated to be around 600 cases per year. The benefits of electrification accrue primarily in neighborhoods with a high social disadvantage, measured by the Ontario Marginalization Indices, narrowing the disparity of exposure to traffic-related air pollution. Benefits related to heavy-duty truck electrification reflect the adverse impacts of diesel-fueled freight and highlight the co-benefits achieved by electrifying this sector.

ANALISIS DAN PERANCANGAN SISTEM PENDAFTARAN PENGAJUAN DANA KERJA LAPANGAN DI YAYASAN CAPPA KEADILAN EKOLOGI BERBASIS WEBSITE

In this era of globalization where advances in information and communication technology (ICT) are growing rapidly and the use of IT in the field of organizations. As with the CAPPA Foundation's Ecological Justice Systems, information systems have. An important role in an institution or organization to help effectiveness and performance. This designed system is intended to process financial data, especially in the field of travel transportation money.The main purpose of creating a financial information system is to process financial data quickly and accurately, because the manual system that is still used causes several problems, such as not producing 100% accurate data and the travel transportation financial data processing system.Manual administration also takes a long time. Based on the problem analysis, the author tries to design a transportation financial information system that is expected to support financial data reporting so that the resulting report is faster and more accurate

Toward a just circular economy: conceptualizing environmental labor and gender justice in circularity studies

Over the past decade, the concept of circular economy (CE) has gained political traction as a potential solution to economy-environment tradeoffs. However, critical social scientists have raised concerns that CE may not address the root causes or consequences of environmental degradation, thus remaining ineffective. Concurring with this critique, this article highlights three constituent elements of the linear economy that remain unaddressed in CE frameworks: environmental, labor, and gender inequalities. Building upon scholarship from environmental justice, environmental labor studies, and feminist ecological economics, we elaborate a conceptual framework to interrogate the existing literature. Our analysis shows that current CE models 1) are mainly concerned with return on capital investment and sustained growth of gross domestic product (GDP) rather than with redressing the North/South inequalities embedded in the linear economy model; 2) present a limited perspective on labor, with a primary focus on the number of jobs to be created, rather than their quality, or workers’ leadership; and 3) overlook gender inequalities and the sexual division of labor, thus reproducing the devaluation of care that lays at the roots of socioecological crises. We conclude by suggesting avenues for elaborating a “just circular economy” framework.