Environmental Justice Research Articles

[A top-down path to promote environmental justice in a contaminated area. The experience with the community of Porto Torres (Sardinia, Italy)].

Nowadays, in Italy, researchers from various disciplines and institutions are referring to environmental justice to promote health equity in relation to environmental risks and benefits. This presents an opportunity for the convergence of bottom-up and top-down perspectives, which differ in nature, to advance environmental justice at the local level. This contribution presents the experience of researchers from the Italian National Institute of Health in the contaminated area of Porto Torres (Sardinia). The experience began with the development of study activities aimed at describing the health profile of the population residing in Porto Torres. These activities embraced the requests of the local community and included interactions with local institutional and social actors. The study activities were designed with a focus on environmental justice, which requires an understanding of the local context and of its history. The contribution describes the various stages that led from the development of the study to the engagement with local institutional and social actors, communication of study results, and participation in local initiatives on environmental justice. Finally, the text proposes some considerations on how researchers from a central institution can develop and conduct study activities to promote environmental justice at the local level.

Bottled Water Consumption and Perceptions of Household Water Quality: An Intra-Urban Analysis of Greensboro, North Carolina

Perceived household water quality can affect decision-making about bottled water consumption, an issue of environmental justice. Residents who do not trust the quality of their tap water may drink bottled water as an alternative, but people also choose to drink bottled water for other reasons, such as taste or convenience. This study examines patterns of bottled water consumption and perceptions of tap water quality across neighborhoods of Greensboro, North Carolina, with differing income levels. Household surveys were used to investigate residents’ consumption of bottled water and tap water and their stated reasons for consuming bottled water. Results indicate that respondents in low-income neighborhoods report drinking significantly (p=0.001) more bottled water than respondents in higher-income neighborhoods. Concerns about the safety of tap water were a significantly (p=0.00005) more important reason for respondents in low- income neighborhoods to choose bottled water compared to respondents in higher-income neighborhoods. The results of this study indicate that intra-urban differences in perceptions of household water quality are a major environmental justice issue in that concerns about safety drive low-income residents to spend their limited income on bottled water.

Environmental Injustice Is Associated With Poorer Asthma Outcomes in School-Age Children With Asthma in Metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia

BackgroundEnvironmental justice mandates that no person suffers disproportionately from environmental exposures. The Environmental Justice Index (EJI) provides an estimate of the environmental burden for each census tract but has not yet been utilized in asthma populations. ObjectiveWe hypothesized that children from census tracts with high environmental injustice determined by the EJI would have a greater burden of asthma exacerbations, poorer asthma control, and poorer lung function over 12 months. MethodsChildren 6-18 years with asthma (N=575) from metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia, completed a baseline research visit. Participant addresses were geocoded to obtain the EJI Social-Environmental ranking for each participant’s census tract, which was divided into tertiles. Medical records were reviewed for 12 months for asthma exacerbations. A subset of participants completed a second research visit involving spirometry and questionnaires. ResultsCensus tracts with the greatest environmental injustice had more racial/ethnic minorities, lower socioeconomic status, more hazardous exposures (particularly to airborne pollutants), and greater proximity to railroads and heavily trafficked roadways. Children with asthma residing in high injustice census tracts had a longer duration of asthma, greater historical asthma-related healthcare utilization, poorer asthma symptom control and quality of life, and more impaired lung function. By 12 months, children from high injustice census tracts also had more asthma exacerbations with a shorter time to exacerbation and persistently more symptoms, poorer asthma control, and reduced lung function. ConclusionDisparities in environmental justice are present in metropolitan Atlanta that may contribute to asthma outcomes in children. These findings require additional study and action to improve health equity.

The Devil's Fruit: Farmworkers, Health, and Environmental Justice

The Devil's Fruit: Farmworkers, Health, and Environmental Justice

Updates in Air Pollution: Current Research and Future Challenges.

The United Nations has declared that humans have a right to clean air. Despite this, many deaths and disability-adjusted life years are attributed to air pollution exposure each year. We face both challenges to air quality and opportunities to improve, but several areas need to be addressed with urgency. This paper summarises the recent research presented at the Pacific Basin Consortium for Environment and Health Symposium and focuses on three key areas of air pollution that are important to human health and require more research. Indoor spaces are commonly places of exposure to poor air quality and are difficult to monitor and regulate. Global climate change risks worsening air quality in a bi-directional fashion. The rising use of electric vehicles may offer opportunities to improve air quality, but it also presents new challenges. Government policies and initiatives could lead to improved air and environmental justice. Several populations, such as older people and children, face increased harm from air pollution and should become priority groups for action.

Mitigating allocative tradeoffs and harms in an environmental justice data tool

Neighbourhood-level screening algorithms are increasingly being deployed to inform policy decisions. However, their potential for harm remains unclear: algorithmic decision-making has broadly fallen under scrutiny for disproportionate harm to marginalized groups, yet opaque methodology and proprietary data limit the generalizability of algorithmic audits. Here we leverage publicly available data to fully reproduce and audit a large-scale algorithm known as CalEnviroScreen, designed to promote environmental justice and guide public funding by identifying disadvantaged neighbourhoods. We observe the model to be both highly sensitive to subjective model specifications and financially consequential, estimating the effect of its positive designations as a 104% (62–145%) increase in funding, equivalent to US$2.08 billion (US$1.56–2.41 billion) over four years. We further observe allocative tradeoffs and susceptibility to manipulation, raising ethical concerns. We recommend incorporating technical strategies to mitigate allocative harm and accountability mechanisms to prevent misuse.

Advancing environmental justice in cities through the Mosaic Governance of nature-based solutions

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are championed for providing co-benefits to cities and residents, yet their environmental justice impacts are increasingly debated. In this paper, we explore whether and how hybrid governance approaches, such as Mosaic Governance, may contribute to just transformations and sustainable cities through fostering long-term collaborations between local governments, local communities, and grassroots initiatives. Based on case studies in three major European cities, we propose and then exemplify six possible pathways to increase environmental justice: greening the neighborhood, diversifying values and practices, empowering people, bridging across communities, linking to institutions, and scaling of inclusive discourses and practices. Despite the diversity of environmental justice outcomes across cases, our results consistently show that Mosaic Governance particularly contributes to recognition justice through diversifying NBS practices in alignment with community values and aspirations. The results demonstrate the importance of a wider framing of justice in the development of NBS, sensitive to social, cultural, economic and political inequities as well understanding potential pathways to enhance not only environmental justice, but also social justice at large. Especially in marginalised communities, Mosaic Governance holds much potential to advance social justice by enabling empowering, bridging, and linking pathways across diverse communities and NBS practices.

Environmental Justice Index and adverse pregnancy outcomes

The Environmental Justice Index is a tool released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that quantifies and ranks the environmental burden and social vulnerability of each census tract. Racial and ethnic disparities in adverse pregnancy outcomes are well established. The relative contributions of individual (person-level) and environmental (neighborhood-level) risk factors to disease prevalence remain poorly understood. This study aimed to determine whether the Environmental Justice Index is associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes after adjustment for individual clinical and sociodemographic risk factors. This was a retrospective cross-sectional study of all patients who delivered a singleton newborn at ≥23 weeks of gestation between January 2019 and February 2022 at 7 hospitals within a large academic health system in New York. Patients were excluded if their home address was not available, if the address could not be geocoded to a census tract, or if the census tract did not have corresponding Environmental Justice Index data. Patients were also excluded if they had preexisting diabetes or hypertension. For patients who had multiple pregnancies during the study period, only the first pregnancy was included for analysis. Clinical and demographic data were obtained from the electronic medical record. Environmental Justice Index score, the primary independent variable, ranges from 0 to 1. Higher Environmental Justice Index scores indicate communities with increased cumulative environmental burden and increased social vulnerability. The primary outcome was adverse pregnancy outcome, defined as the presence of ≥1 of any of the following conditions: hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, gestational diabetes, preterm birth, fetal growth restriction, low birthweight, small for gestational age newborn, placental abruption, and stillbirth. Multivariable logistic regression was performed to investigate the relationship between Environmental Justice Index score and adverse pregnancy outcome, adjusting for potential confounding variables, including body mass index group, race and ethnicity group, advanced maternal age, nulliparity, public health insurance, and English as the preferred language. A total of 65,273 pregnancies were included for analysis. Overall, adverse pregnancy outcomes occurred in 37.6% of pregnancies (n=24,545); hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (13.4%) and gestational diabetes (12.2%) were the most common adverse pregnancy outcome conditions. On unadjusted analysis, the strongest associations between Environmental Justice Index score and individual adverse pregnancy outcome conditions were observed for stillbirth (odds ratio, 1.079; 95% confidence interval, 1.025-1.135) and hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (odds ratio, 1.052; 95% confidence interval, 1.042-1.061). On multivariable logistic regression, every 0.1 increase in Environmental Justice Index score was associated with 1.4% higher odds of adverse pregnancy outcome (adjusted odds ratio, 1.014; 95% confidence interval, 1.007-1.021). The strongest associations with adverse pregnancy outcomes were observed with well-established clinical and social risk factors, including class 3 obesity (adjusted odds ratio, 1.710; 95% confidence interval, 1.580-1.849; reference: body mass index <25 kg/m2) and certain race and ethnicity groups (reference: non-Hispanic White), particularly Asian and Pacific Islander (adjusted odds ratio, 1.817; 95% confidence interval, 1.729-1.910), and non-Hispanic Black (adjusted odds ratio, 1.668; 95% confidence interval, 1.581-1.760) people. Environmental Justice Index score is positively associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes, and most strongly associated with stillbirth and hypertensive disorders of pregnancy. Geospatial analysis with Environmental Justice Index may help to improve our understanding of health inequities by identifying neighborhood characteristics that increase the risk of pregnancy complications.

Abstract B084: Association between race and ethnicity, area deprivation, and exposure to environmental toxins in the WISDOM clinical trial population

Abstract Background: Women Informed to Screen Depending on Measures of risk (WISDOM) is a preference-tolerant, pragmatic clinical trial comparing the safety and morbidity of personalized risk-based and annual breast cancer screening. Environmental risk factors are not considered in WISDOM’s risk assessment. Geocoded residential addresses were used to understand whether a relationship between area deprivation, exposure to environmental toxins, and race and ethnicity exists within the cohort. Methods: The residential addresses at time of study entry of consented WISDOM participants were geocoded to latitude/longitude coordinates and assigned census tract and/or Zip Code Tabulation Area IDs from the US Census Bureau. Each census tract was assigned an Area Deprivation Index (ADI). The ADI comprises 17 indicators of poverty, housing, education, and employment which classifies a census tract on a scale from 1 (least deprived) to 10 (most deprived). ADI was grouped into highest deprivation (ADIs 8-10), middle deprivation (ADIs 4-7), and least deprivation (ADIs 1-3). Census tracts were also mapped to data from the Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Justice Screen (EJS) on the national percentile rank of 12 toxic exposures such as proximity to hazardous waste sites, air particulate matter and ozone concentrations. Each EJS exposure variable was categorized into quartiles. The cohort was limited to self-reported White, Asian, Black African American, and Mixed participants. The Kruskal-Wallis rank sum test and the Dunn’s test of multiple comparison using Bonferroni adjustment were used to test the association between race and ethnicity, ADI, and EJS variables. Results: The analysis cohort had 42,388 women. Most WISDOM participants were White (85%), followed by Asian (5%), Black or African American (5%), and Mixed (5%) race and ethnicity. Most lived in the least deprivation areas (57%) while a minority lived in the highest deprivation areas (12%). Black or African American women were significantly more likely to live in the highest deprivation areas compared to all other races and ethnicities (p&amp;lt;0.001). The highest deprivation areas where more likely to rank in the highest quartile of exposure to ozone (p&amp;lt;0.001), proximity to hazadous waste sites (p&amp;lt;0.001), and concentration of cancer risk air toxins (p=0.017) compared to the middle and least deprivation areas. White and Asian women were more likely to live in the least deprived areas that were more likely to rank in the highest quartile of exposure to particulate matter 2.5 compared to the most deprived areas (p&amp;lt;0.001). Conclusions: Black and African American women in the WISDOM study were more likely to live in the most deprived areas which have higher exposure to several environmental toxins. Given that exposure to some environmental toxins are known to increase breast cancer risk, investigation on how environmental factors can be encorporated in risk estimation is warranted. WISDOM should also direct targeted recruitment efforts to women who live in the most deprived areas. Citation Format: Katherine E Leggat-Barr, Kimberly Badal, Allison Stover-Fiscalini, Dan Meltzer, Mindy Hebert-DeRouen, Laura Van 'T Veer, Laura Esserman. Association between race and ethnicity, area deprivation, and exposure to environmental toxins in the WISDOM clinical trial population [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference in Cancer Research: Advances in Breast Cancer Research; 2023 Oct 19-22; San Diego, California. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(3 Suppl_1):Abstract nr B084.

Addressing Environmental Justice through In-Kind Court Settlements

In US environmental court cases, a cash penalty can be mitigated if a defendant volunteers to undertake an in-kind project, such as retrofitting school buses or building a public park. A goal of the policy is to address environmental justice concerns for low-income and minority populations, yet the historical record shows in-kind settlements most likely occur in cases involving high-income, majority-White communities. A choice experiment reveals that the public prefers in-kind settlements over cash, and a randomized survey reveals in-kind settlements improve the public’s view of a violating firm, consistent with our finding of positive stock market reactions to in-kind settlements. (JEL D63, H23, J15, K32, Q53, Q58)

Ecological Justice in the Framework of Pancasila: Problems and Challenges

This paper examines the concept of ecological justice within the framework of Pancasila, the philosophical foundation of the Indonesian state. While Pancasila emphasizes socio-cultural harmony and collective welfare, its application to ecological issues poses significant challenges. This analysis delves into the complexities of achieving ecological justice within the Pancasila framework, identifying key problems and challenges. Beginning with an exploration of Pancasila's core principles, the paper highlights its emphasis on social justice, democracy, and collective responsibility. It then discusses the intersection between Pancasila and environmental concerns, emphasizing the need for ecological justice to address issues such as environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, and climate change. Drawing on case studies and theoretical perspectives, the paper identifies several challenges in applying Pancasila to ecological justice. These challenges include reconciling traditional values with modern environmental imperatives, balancing economic development with environmental sustainability, and addressing power disparities in environmental decision-making. Furthermore, the paper examines the role of governance structures, policy frameworks, and civil society in promoting ecological justice within the Pancasila framework. It discusses potential pathways for integrating environmental considerations into Pancasila-based policies and practices. Through this analysis, the paper contributes to the discourse on ecological justice by exploring its intersection with indigenous philosophical frameworks like Pancasila. It underscores the importance of incorporating environmental concerns into Pancasila-based governance to ensure a more sustainable and equitable future for Indonesia and beyond.&#x0D;  

Extrajudicial Dispute Resolution in Handling Environmental Cases in Indonesia (Case Study: River Water Pollution by PT Sugar Labinta in South Lampung)

This paper examines extrajudicial dispute resolution mechanisms utilized in addressing environmental cases in Indonesia, with a focus on a specific case involving the alleged pollution of river water by PT Sugar Labinta in South Lampung. It delves into the legal frameworks, stakeholder engagement processes, and outcomes of extrajudicial dispute resolution efforts in environmental matters. Drawing on a case study approach, the paper analyzes the effectiveness and challenges of extrajudicial mechanisms in resolving environmental disputes, particularly in cases of alleged pollution by industrial entities. It explores the roles of various stakeholders, including government agencies, industry representatives, affected communities, and non-governmental organizations, in the resolution process. Furthermore, the paper evaluates the implications of extrajudicial dispute resolution on environmental protection, legal accountability, and community rights. It examines the extent to which such mechanisms contribute to the realization of environmental justice, sustainable development, and corporate responsibility in Indonesia. In conclusion, the paper offers insights into the strengths and limitations of extrajudicial dispute resolution in handling environmental cases, using the PT Sugar Labinta case as a lens. It suggests recommendations for improving the effectiveness and fairness of extrajudicial mechanisms, enhancing transparency, accountability, and community participation in environmental decision-making processes.

Exposure to particulate matter and ozone, locations of regulatory monitors, and sociodemographic disparities in the city of Rio de Janeiro: Based on local air pollution estimates generated from machine learning models

South America is underrepresented in research on air pollution exposure disparities by sociodemographic factors, although such disparities have been observed in other parts of the world. We investigated whether exposure to and information about air pollution differs by sociodemographic factors in the city of Rio de Janeiro, the second most populous city in Brazil with dense urban areas, for 2012–2017. We developed machine learning-based models to estimate daily levels of O3, PM10, and PM2.5 using high-dimensional datasets from satellite remote sensing, atmospheric and land variables, and land use information. Cross-validations demonstrated good agreement between the estimated levels and measurements from ground-based monitoring stations: overall R2 of 76.8 %, 63.9 %, and 69.1 % for O3, PM2.5, and PM10, respectively. We conducted univariate regression analyses to investigate whether long-term exposure to O3, PM2.5, PM10 and distance to regulatory monitors differs by socioeconomic indicators, the percentages of residents who were children (0-17 years) or age 65+ years in 154 neighborhoods. We also examined the number of days exceeding the Brazilian National Air Quality Standard (BNAQS). Long-term exposures to O3 and PM2.5 were higher in more socially deprived neighborhoods. An interquartile range (IQR) increment of the social development index (SDI) was associated with a 3.6 μg/m3 (95 % confidence interval [CI]: 2.9, 4.4; p-value≤0.001) decrease in O3, and 0.3 μg/m3 (95 % CI: 0.2, 0.5; p-value = 0.010) decrease in PM2.5. An IQR increase in the percentage of residents who are children was associated with a 4.1 μg/m3 (95 % CI: 3.1, 5.0; p-value≤0.001) increase in O3, and 0.4 μg/m3 (95 % CI: 0.3, 0.6; p-value = 0.009) increase in PM2.5. An IQR increase in the percentage of residents age ≥65was associated with a 3.3 μg/m3 (95 % CI: 2.4, 4.3; p-value=<0.001) decrease in O3, and 0.3 μg/m3 (95 % CI: 0.1, 0.5; p-value = 0.058) decrease in PM2.5. There were no apparent associations for PM10. The association for daily O3 levels exceeding the BNAQS daily standard was 0.4 %p–0.8 %p different by the IQR of variables, indicating a 7–15 days difference in the six-year period. The association for daily PM2.5 levels exceeding the BNAQS daily standard showed a 0.7–1.5 %p difference by the IQR, meaning a 13–27 days difference in the period. We did not find statistically significant associations between the distance to monitors and neighborhood characteristics but some indication regarding SDI. We found that O3 levels were higher in neighborhoods situated farther from monitoring stations, suggesting that elevated levels of air pollution may not be routinely measured. Exposure disparity patterns may vary by pollutants, suggesting a complex interplay between environmental and socioeconomic factors in environmental justice.

Creating pathways to just and sustainable food systems with citizen assemblies

Food systems affect and are affected by the interrelated crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion and health, amongst others. Transforming to sustainable approaches is vital, yet entangled with uncertainties, complexity and a great value diversion with stakeholders. Deliberative processes such as citizen assemblies offer a valuable contribution to such a transformation, since the crises and their responses affect everyday life, and therefore inviting individual and collective action. Still, who is included and whose knowledge counts affects outcomes. Theoretically anchored in concepts of environmental justice, our study analyses three nation-wide citizens’ assemblies on climate change and food systems from Western Europe. It assesses (a) how citizens’ assemblies can incorporate a broad set of viewpoints and design more substantive political answers to current crises, and (b) whether citizens’ assemblies include environmental justice aspects to facilitate social change. The paper argues that systematic and methodologically reflected inclusion of various positionalities can inspire decision-making processes in that they incorporate procedural, recognition, and distributional justice to address problems of climate change or modern food systems. It concludes with offering further approaches to include more than scientific knowledge in deliberative processes for a just transformation towards sustainability.

Scientific activism to protect the world's primates and their environments from extinction: Introduction to the special issue.

Nonhuman primates and their habitats are facing an impending extinction crisis. Approximately 69% of primate species are listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as threatened and 93% have declining populations. Human population growth (expected to reach 10.9 billion by the year 2100), the unsustainable demands of a small number of consumer nations for forest-risk commodities, deforestation and habitat conversion, the expansion of roads and rail networks, cattle ranching, the hunting and trapping of wild primate populations, and the potential spread of infectious diseases are among the primary drivers of primate population decline. Climate change will only exacerbate the current situation. The time to act to protect primate populations is now! In this special issue of the American Journal of Primatology, we present a series of commentaries, formulated as "Action Letters."These are designed to educate and inform primatologists, conservation biologists, wildlife ecologists, political leaders, and global citizens about the conservation challenges faced by particular primate taxa and particular world regions, and present examples of specific actions that one can take, individually and collectively, to promote the persistence of wild primate populations and environmental justice for local human populations and impacted ecological communities. As scientists, researchers, and educators, primatologists are in a unique position to lead local, national, and international efforts to protect biodiversity. In this special issue, we focus on primates of the Brazilian Amazon, lemurs of northeast Madagascar, Temminck's red colobus monkey (Piliocolobus badius temminckii), night monkeys (Aotus spp.), long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis), the primate pet trade, and professional capacity building to foster conservation awareness and action. We encourage primatologists, regardless of their research focus, to engage in both advocacy and activism to protect wild primate populations worldwide.

Reversing the Gaze: Developing Indigenous and Western Media Frames to Compare Coverage of Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples in the News Media*

AbstractThe news media is an important force shaping societal views of the socio‐politics of climate change. International scholarship finds it not uncommon for Indigenous cultures, communities, and perspectives to be underrepresented and misrepresented in Western media, especially on climate change issues. Research also indicates that accurate Indigenous representation occurs when Indigenous peoples are the authors of news articles themselves. We developed a Holistic Media Coding Protocol informed by Indigenous and Western perspectives to guide our content analysis of media coverage of climate change, environmental issues, and Indigenous peoples. We examined news articles from two Indigenous news publications, Indian Country Today and Navajo Times, and two Western news publications, The New York Times and The Salt Lake Tribune. Our findings indicate that creating and utilizing a theory‐informed Holistic Media Coding Protocol challenges the recurrent Western gaze on Indigenous peoples. This Holistic Media Coding Protocol contributes to our understandings of the media, settler colonialism, and climate change from Indigenous and Western perspectives. Overall, this research responds to a critical call for sociologists to engage more deeply with settler colonialism, Indigenous issues, and intersectional environmental justice.

Blame and Responsibility Assignments in Fast Fashion-Triggered Environmental Injustice: A Case Study of Eco-Documentaries

ABSTRACT This study deconstructs the representations of fast fashion-triggered environmental injustice in three widely viewed eco-documentaries produced by public service media in regard to causal responsibility and treatment responsibility attributions from a multimodal critical discourse analytical perspective. Discursive practices associated with causal responsibility attributions include reinforcing the racialized perpetrator-victim dichotomy between the North and the South, redirecting blame to the generic consumers, and paradoxically justifying the problematized status quo. Discursive practices associated with treatment responsibility ascriptions include portraying individual actions as the solution, presupposing technology as the solution, picturing the Northern actors as the problem-solvers, and legitimizing business-as-usual approaches as the best compromise. These findings suggest that the three eco-documentaries reflect and perpetuate the wider discourse of neoliberal and neocolonial environmentalism, arguably rendering the meaning-making of environmental justice shallow and undermining possibilities of empowerment and radical change. Suggestions for media practitioners and environmental communicators informed by the analysis are offered.

Exploring risk-scapes in Oklahoma: institutional trust, environmental justice, climate change, and infrastructure

Purpose Across the USA, local municipalities and providers struggle to reliably supply water and electricity when faced with severe weather events induced by climate change. Previous research suggests those at higher risk for experiencing the detrimental effects of climate change have higher climate-related concerns. Additionally, research demonstrates variation in trust in institutions and perceptions of environmental justice along racial lines, which can influence concern for access to resources. Informed by this research, the authors ask two questions: how do Oklahomans’ trust in institutions, environmental justice perceptions and global climate change risk perceptions differ based on race, and how do these factors influence concern for water and electrical infrastructure? The purpose of this study is to better understand Oklahomans’ trust in information from institutions, environmental justice perceptions, global climate change risk perceptions and concern for water and electrical infrastructure. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a series of nested regression models to analyze the survey responses of 2,687 Oklahoman adults. The data were pulled from Wave 3 of the Oklahoma Meso-scale Integrated Socio-geographic Network survey, which is part of the National Science Foundation EPSCoR S3OK project. Findings The findings demonstrate the complex interplay of riskscapes – or risk landscapes – that encompass institutional trust, perceptions of environmental justice, climate change and infrastructure in Oklahoma. The authors find evidence that education and income are better predictors of institutional trust and environmental justice than race among our respondents. Political ideology emerges as a significant predictor across all hypotheses. Originality/value This study contributes to the understanding of complex dynamics involving race, perceptions of environmental justice, trust in information from institutions, risk perceptions of climate change and concerns for water and electrical infrastructure in Oklahoma.

Sustainable Marketing Initiatives and Consumer Perception of Fast Fashion Brands

The fast fashion industry has been criticized for negatively impacting the economy, environment, and social justice. Consequently, many brands adopt sustainable marketing practices to promote eco-friendly manufacturing and encourage sustainable purchase behaviour. To explore this trend, a cross-sectional survey was conducted among fashion brand consumers using a quantitative research design. The survey data was analyzed using variance-based partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The results showed that sustainable marketing practices can be supported by creating a positive brand image and building trust. Such practices can positively influence consumers' perception of sustainability and promote brand loyalty, which can lead to sustainable purchasing behaviour. The study provides valuable insights into sustainable marketing strategies that fashion brands can adopt to promote sustainable practices and policies in local markets.

A River Runs Through It: Reading the Text and Context of a River

This article is framed and inspired by Jacklyn Cock’s Writing the Ancestral River (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2018), which traces the history of the Kowie river in the Eastern Cape and its significance both in her own life and in shaping a specific geographical area. We set out to “read” the Kromme river through the lens of Cock’s “biography-of-a-river” approach, which is both an evocative personal account and a social and environmental history of a river. Like the Kowie, the story of the Kromme river raises issues of competing interests; environmental, economic, and social justice concerns; and the tension between a river viewed in instrumentalist terms or as a complex, precious wetland and estuary. We consider questions such as whether the natural world in itself has inalienable rights, and whether rivers—even minor ones such as the Kromme—should have the right to be protected.