The Making of Local Agenda 21: An interview with Jeb Brugmann

In the overlaps between the academic and policy fields of disability and the environment lie a myriad of issues, both complementary and conflicting, which have to date received little attention. This paper aims to draw together the small amount of literature – both academic and non-academic – which has addressed such issues and begins to map both the nature and extent of the overlaps. It discusses key themes that have emerged from the literature analysed and points to a number of areas and issues which may well benefit from further research. In particular, it highlights the invisibility of disabled people, and the consequences which arise, in many areas of environmental concern.     

Some more polluted than others: unequal cumulative industrial hazard burdens in the Philadelphia MSA,USA

The aim of this study was to quantify inequities in environmental hazard burdening in the 357 towns and 12 city planning analysis areas in the nine-county Philadelphia Metropolitan Statistical Area. Points were assigned to 14 types of hazards, including Superfund sites, hazardous waste facilities, landfills, trash transfer stations, waste tyres, incinerators, power plants, polluting factories, and sewage and sludge treatment facilities. When points were summed, 39 communities were in the 90th percentile for total hazard points. Risk ratios were calculated for community characteristics. The risk of extensive hazard burdening was significantly greater for communities bordering the Delaware River and for communities with more than 3% minority residents, more vacant housing units, and adults without a high school diploma. Risks were significantly lower for the most affluent communities. Results point to the need to reform environmental laws at the state level to prevent the concentration of environmental hazards in vulnerable communities.     

Open space index: a GIS-based tool for assessing human penetration of a landscape

In light of the rapid and continuous growth of the built environment worldwide and its attendant ecological impact, increasing the size and distribution of open space in urban areas is recognised as one effective way to reconcile the social and ecological objectives of society. However, there is no simple and objective indicator to measure open space that can be used for creating and maintaining sustainable landscapes. The paper introduces a metric, open space index (OSI), that measures the amount of space unpenetrated by the built environment. The metric is calculated by measuring the shortest distance between any location and the nearest built environment using a Geographic Information System. The metric is illustrated using two counties of the greater Twin Cities Metropolitan Region of Minnesota. The sensitivity of OSI to the size, shape, and spatial configuration of the built environment suggests that the metric can serve as an important planning tool for reconciling conservation and development in a wide range of contexts.     

Urban sustainability and environmental justice: evaluating the linkages in public planning/policy discourse

Many cities' municipal governments have made some version of “sustainability” an explicit policy goal over the past two decades. Previous research has documented how the operationalisation and conceptualisation of sustainability in urban sustainability plans vary greatly among cities, particularly with respect to environmental justice. This article reports on whether and how large American cities incorporate environmental justice into their urban sustainability indicator projects. Our findings suggest that while there has been an increase in the number of cities incorporating environmental justice elements into sustainability plans since the early 2000s, their conceptualizations and implementations of sustainability remain highly constrained. The paucity of evaluative tools suggests that environmental justice efforts are potentially losing traction in public debate over macro-scale sustainability concerns (e.g. climate change) or the need for regionally competitive environmental amenities (e.g. parks). This paper concludes with suggestions for revising existing sustainability plans to better reflect environmental justice concerns.     

Mobilisation and protest: environmental justice in Durban,South Africa

This paper examines the ability of civil society actors to champion environmental justice in an industrial risk society in South Africa by way of mobilisation and protest action. This paper presents viewpoints from key stakeholders at the Durban city level and three local case study sites to examine social capital relations to achieve environmental justice. It explores how civil society engages in social capital for mobilisation with itself and subsequent protest actions to engage with government and industry. The paper highlights that social actor response to engage in social capital for mobilisation and protests is best understood in relation to the socio-economic and political positioning of individuals or organisations.     

Community knowledge networks: an action-orientated approach to energy research

The Climate Change Act 2008 commits the UK to reducing carbon emissions by 80% of 1990 levels by 2050. With household emissions constituting more than a quarter of current total energy use in the UK, energy practices in the home have taken on increased policy attention. In this paper, we argue that the UK government's approach is founded upon a variant of methodological individualism that assumes that providing greater energy information to individuals will effect behaviour change in relation to energy use. Such an approach is potentially limited in its effectiveness and does not afford appropriate recognition to all those affected by energy policy. In contrast to this approach, we set out an alternative perspective, a community knowledge networks approach to energy and justice which recognises the contexts and relationships in which people live and use energy. Such an approach emphasises situated knowledge and practices in order to gain a greater understanding of how individuals and communities use energy, but, importantly, offers a means for affording greater recognitional justice to different social groups.     

Urban environmental justice through the camera: understanding the politics of space and the right to the city

Using the lens of Lefebvre's spatial trialectics, we assess the utility of photo-elicited interviewing for environmental justice, recognising that a view to social spatial analysis is essential to engaging with the historical processes of exclusion and discrimination that are crucial to explaining why unequal distributions of environmental injustice are systemic and not random. Drawing on insights from our own photo-elicited interviewing-based work in the neighbourhood called Parkdale in Toronto, we make two main recommendations for future environmental justice work using photo-elicited interviewing. First, researchers must be open to a broader epistemology, one that draws on a more spatially nuanced and temporally evolving knowledge of the full range of environmental influences on communities. Second, in order to arrive at a more robust critical analysis of social space, researchers should complement photo-elicited interviewing with historical research about the relevant communities and include participants from other comparative communities.     

Economic,ecological, and equity dimensions of brownfield redevelopment plans for environmental justice communities in the USA

ABSTRACT

This paper employs qualitative content analysis to assess 28 brownfield redevelopment plans produced as part of a US Environmental Protection Agency programme. The analysis framework followed the economic, ecological, and social equity dimensions of sustainable development. The findings illustrate that, in terms of economic dimensions, most plans discussed financing the overall project, but few mentioned site values or the pivotal cost of remediating brownfield sites or addressed questions related to liability, the transfer of ownership of sites, or the end use of remediated sites. In terms of ecological dimensions, while many plans suggested “green” uses of existing brownfields, few discussed the impacts of the plans on urban ecological issues or offered technical feasibility of remediating the sites. In terms of social equity dimensions, half of the plans described potential local jobs stemming from the proposed redevelopment, but many did not discuss the human impacts of remediating contaminated sites or the costs of doing nothing. Most plans mentioned community engagement methods but not their outcomes, making the degree to which the lessons gleaned from such engagement influenced the plans totally unclear. Despite the programme’s explicit focus on the nexus of environmental justice and local environments, many plans struggled to address the topic in favour of tackling broader economic, environmental, and equity issues. Overall, this paper contributes to the understanding of brownfield redevelopment planning by not only summarising and synthesising the tendencies of existing plans but also suggesting strategies to address areas in which current planning efforts fall short.     

Engaged Communication Scholarship for Environmental Justice: A Research Agenda

ABSTRACT

As a discipline of crisis and care, environmental communication needs to address questions of environmental justice. This article argues that the most appropriate approach to studying environmental justice communication is engaged scholarship, in which academics collaborate with community partners, advocates, and others to conduct research. The article reviews prior engaged communication scholarship on environmental justice, and proposes four streams of future research, focused on news and information, deliberation and participation, campaigns and movements, and education and literacy.