Increasing the capacity of community development corporations for brownfield redevelopment: an inside-out approach

While the redevelopment of brownfield sites has been the mainstay of public agencies and private developers, this paper argues that in order to promote just redevelopment that encourages participation and targets weak market sites, a community-based approach to brownfield redevelopment should be encouraged. Furthermore, this paper maintains that community development corporations (CDCs) could be the ideal agents to spur community development and address environmental justice concerns through their increased involvement in brownfield redevelopment projects. In order to promote these positions, we first describe this new approach, which focuses on building the capacity of CDCs to meaningfully participate in brownfield redevelopment. We then offer four proposals designed to increase this capacity. We conclude with a discussion of how community-based brownfield redevelopment connects to larger issues of democratic decision-making, environmental justice, and urban revitalisation.     

Lead astray: scale,environmental justice and the El Paso smelter

Residents in Paso del Norte (El Paso, Texas; Sunland Park, New Mexico; and Juárez, Mexico) have been concerned about heavy metal contamination in their communities since the 1970s, when high blood lead levels were found in children living in Smeltertown – a company town for the local metals smelter. After the smelter's closure in 1999, and throughout onsite and offsite cleanup efforts, residents have continued to express concerns about these contamination issues. Using a politics of scale framework and analysing ethnographic data and government, media and scientific documents, this paper identifies a set of major disjunctures between the scales of heavy metal contamination and the scales at which that contamination is regulated. These disjunctures exacerbate regional environmental injustice by complicating public participation, neglecting vulnerability and displacing hazards to new communities. Consequently, applying a politics of scale framework to this case study highlights regulatory and policy failures to address environmental justice.     

Exploring the lay/expert divide: the attribution of responsibilities for coal ash pollution in Tuzla,Bosnia and Herzegovina

Invoking expert knowledge is a common strategy in attempts to settle environmental disputes. However, the validity of expertise is contingent upon the context in which an actor is recognised as an expert. In complex environmental conflicts the distinction between lay and expert knowledge is not always fixed a priori. However, as conflicts unfold, intervening parties tend to present their cases in ways that reinforce this distinction. This is apparent in the attribution of environmental responsibilities. This paper presents an empirical case of an environmental conflict related to land contamination due to coal ash disposal in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The analysis revealed two polar positions in the conflict: the first one, mainly held by scientists and industry representatives, invoked expert knowledge and presented a distributed approach to the attribution of responsibilities; the second one, mainly held by local residents and municipal officials, presented an experiential understanding of pollution, as lay knowledge, and attributed direct responsibilities to the local energy industry. The paper concludes that the persistence of the distinction between expert and lay knowledge is a manifestation of the social structures that underlie the conflict.     

Sustainability and social inclusion? Examining the frames of Canadian English-speaking environmental movement organisations

Some scholars and activists have suggested that discourses of environmental sustainability do not include sufficient attention to social issues or environmental justice. Since social inclusion is a prevalent masterframe among activists and in social policy circles in Canada and elsewhere, our research explored the extent that English-speaking Canadian environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGOs) incorporate discursive aspects of social inclusion into their website communication. Social inclusion includes such issues as multiculturalism, gender inequality, low income and racialisation. We analysed mission statements, programmes and policy analysis presented by a sample of ENGOs drawn from the membership of the Canadian Environmental Network for evidence of a variety of indicators of attention to social inclusion. We conclude that environmental groups remain locked into an “environmentalist” frame that often ignores such issues. This has major implications for partnerships with other Canadian social movements.     

A protracted age of oil: pipelines,refineries and quiet conflict

This article examines the relevance of environmental justice (EJ) and climate change debates as points of articulation and mobilisation among community groups responding to a proposed refinery. It then compares media coverage of the refinery project, a bi-national pipeline and other energy and climate-related news events. The analytical frame joins the EJ paradigm with citizen mobilisation on issues of climate change and energy projects that emit greenhouse gases and that discourage development of renewable sources. Data were collected and analysed from websites, public message boards and media documents. Findings indicate that a community-based anti-refinery campaign combined local EJ struggles with climate activism, while challenging fossil fuel dependencies and calling for renewable regional energy. A climate justice community formed – yet their voices were in their blogs and websites, not in local or national media.     

Leveraging foodways for health and justice

ABSTRACT

The global industrial food system is increasingly recognised as a source of poor health that deepens social and economic inequity. Health advocates, policy makers, and food activists strive to improve nutrition and food access across racial and ethnic divides; however, given established approaches, they may miss fundamental pathways for improving health and justice comprehensively. While food access and nutrition are often identified as primary concerns for marginalised communities and the reason for food insecurity and food-related illness, critical food justice scholars use a more expansive lens to suggest a democratised food system is needed, and that solutions based solely in access to healthy food can undermine more systemic approaches. Our research extends this analysis, highlighting the importance of endemic food culture (foodways) as a tool for retaining identity, building community, and maintaining health among refugee populations in one community in Salt Lake City, Utah. Further, this work suggests that community engagement and expertise is essential in leveraging foodways such that marginalised communities can effectively resist cheap, unhealthy, and placeless calories.     

Metabolisms of injustice: municipal solid-waste management and environmental equity in Barcelona's Metropolitan Region

Environmental justice studies that focus on the management of municipal solid waste (MSW) typically examine the unequal distribution of associated health and environmental risks in minority social groups and the political processes that generate these inequalities. With the aim to complement current views on the field, in this work, we explore whether there is an issue of environmental justice in municipal systems' grade of self-sufficiency in treating the MSW that they generate and in their effort to close their material cycles. The methodology used is based on the concept of urban metabolism and is applied to 12 coastal municipalities of Barcelona's Metropolitan Region in Spain. The metabolism of the MSW flows of each system is analysed to examine (i) the system's efficiency to close its MSW cycles, corresponding to an indicator of environmental sustainability, and (ii) the MSW export and import flows, as an indicator of social sustainability. The results demonstrate a positive correlation between socioeconomic status and the externalisation of MSW treatment-related hazards. The proposed indicator proves to be an excellent tool for the evaluation of both the environmental and social performance of a system considering MSW management.     

Transformative climate change adaptation: bridging existing approaches with post-foundational insights on justice

ABSTRACT

Climate adaptation is a complex policy domain, spanning multiple sectors, scales and actors, and wherein those most at risk have the least power. The influence of linear positivist models of science uptake are proving ineffective in a world with increasingly concentrated wealth and power, institutional barriers, and rapidly growing risks facing the many. A plurality of approaches is needed to better examine those dynamics of climate adaptation which are often invisible in models of science uptake – equity, the value of contestation, path dependency – and to consider how to empower communities to find solutions. In this conceptual paper, we argue that bridging existing positivist and interpretivist methods with insights from post-foundational theory so as to underpin pluralism and re-orient ethical principles of justice, strengthens the capacity of social research to support transformative climate adaptation. Principles are proposed to facilitate such bridging.     

Advocates for environmental justice: the role of the champion in public participation implementation

That segment of the community I would say is just in general pretty disenfranchised. We found that if you want participation you have to go to them. I mean there are days when you just need to go knock on the door.

Brownfields developer in a poor urban neighbourhood

This article considers the role that champions play as advocates for socioeconomically disadvantaged community member involvement in environmental management decision-making. Six case studies of brownfields redevelopment projects located in poor urban neighbourhoods are examined. Analysis of these case studies reveals how champion behaviour, which has typically been studied only in the context of technological innovation, is enacted in public participation efforts in the service of environmental justice. The study finds that champions who emerge in these settings lead the development and implementation of non-standard public participation process innovations.     

我国规划环评相关技术问题探析

中国是立法认可规划环评并作为促进环境保护和可持续发展重要手段的亚洲国家之一。由于我国环评法2003年9月1日才施行,可以说我国规划环评技术尚处于探索中。文章回顾了国际上和我国规划(战略)环评的主流概念、主要任务、基本型式和总体技术路线,提出了我国规划环评的主要任务及适宜的基本型式和总体技术路线。