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Extreme weather events are becoming more severe due to climate change, increasing the risk of contaminant releases from hazardous sites disproportionately located in low-income communities of color. We evaluated contaminant releases during Hurricanes Rita, Ike, and Harvey in Texas and used regression models to estimate associations between neighborhood racial/ethnic composition and residential proximity to hurricane-related contaminant releases. Two-to-three times as many excess releases were reported during hurricanes compared to business-as-usual periods. Petrochemical manufacturing and refineries were responsible for most air emissions events. Multivariable models revealed sociodemographic disparities in likelihood of releases; compared to neighborhoods near regulated facilities without a release, a one-percent increase in Hispanic residents was associated with a 5 and 10% increase in the likelihood of an air emissions event downwind and within 2 km during Hurricanes Rita and Ike (odds ratio and 95% credible interval= 1.05 [1.00, 1.13], combined model) and Harvey (1.10 [1.00, 1.23]), respectively. Higher percentages of renters (1.07 [1.03, 1.11], combined Rita and Ike model) and rates of poverty (1.06 [1.01, 1.12], Harvey model) were associated with a higher likelihood of a release to land or water, while the percentage of Black residents (0.94 [0.89, 1.00], Harvey model) was associated with a slightly lower likelihood. Population density was consistently associated with a decreased likelihood of a contaminant release to air, land, or water. Our findings highlight social inequalities in the risks posed by natural-technological disasters that disproportionately impact Hispanic, renter, low-income, and rural populations.

This capstone project tells the untold story of marine diamond mining, tracing its origins from the shores of Namibia to the fjords of Greenland. Despite the stark differences between these two locales, they share striking similarities in diamond potential. In Namibia, marine diamond mining flourished prior to the country's independence and the establishment of international mining laws, setting a precedent for potential challenges in Greenland's current political landscape. Through in-depth research, stakeholder interviews, and media production, this project fosters an informed storyline for a full-length documentary film. The capstone deliverables encompass a film treatment, budget, film plan, concise trailer, and transcribed interviews, strategically crafted towards securing future support of the project. The outcome of such seeking to advocate for greater transparency in the diamond industry and policies that prioritize both economic development and environmental integrity. The final film will engage audiences worldwide in considering the implications of marine diamond mining for Greenland's evolving climate and economy.CLARITY trailer can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/ClarityTrailer CLARITY film treatment can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/ClarityTreatment CLARITY interview transcriptions can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/ClarityTranscriptions

Legacy effects describe the persistent, long-term impacts on an ecosystem following the removal of an abiotic or biotic feature. Redlining, a policy that codified racial segregation and disinvestment in minoritized neighborhoods, has produced legacy effects with profound impacts on urban ecosystem structure and health. These legacies have detrimentally impacted public health outcomes, socioeconomic stability, and environmental health. However, the collateral impacts of redlining on wildlife communities are uncertain. Here, we investigated whether faunal biodiversity was associated with redlining. We used home-owner loan corporation (HOLC) maps [grades A (i.e., "best" and "greenlined"), B, C, and D (i.e., "hazardous" and "redlined")] across four cities in California and contributory science data (iNaturalist) to estimate alpha and beta diversity across six clades (mammals, birds, insects, arachnids, reptiles, and amphibians) as a function of HOLC grade. We found that in greenlined neighborhoods, unique species were detected with less sampling effort, with redlined neighborhoods needing over 8,000 observations to detect the same number of unique species. Historically redlined neighborhoods had lower native and nonnative species richness compared to greenlined neighborhoods across each city, with disparities remaining at the clade level. Further, community composition (i.e., beta diversity) consistently differed among HOLC grades for all cities, including large differences in species assemblage observed between green and redlined neighborhoods. Our work spotlights the lasting effects of social injustices on the community ecology of cities, emphasizing that urban conservation and management efforts must incorporate an antiracist, justice-informed lens to improve biodiversity in urban environments.

Contaminated drinking water from widespread environmental pollutants such as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) poses a rising threat to public health. PFAS monitoring in groundwater is limited and fails to consider pesticides found to contain PFAS as a potential contamination source. Given previous findings on the disproportionate exposure of communities of Color to both pesticides and PFAS, we investigated disparities in PFAS-contaminated pesticide applications in California based on community-level sociodemographic characteristics. We utilized statewide pesticide application data from the California Department of Pesticide Regulation and recently reported concentrations of PFAS chemicals detected in eight pesticide products to calculate the areal density of PFAS applied within 1 km of individual community water systems' (CWSs) supply wells. Spatial regression analyses suggest that statewide, CWSs that serve a greater proportion of Latinx and non-Latinx People of Color residents experience a greater areal density of PFAS applied and greater likelihood of PFAS application near their public supply wells. These results highlight agroecosystems as potentially important sources of PFAS in drinking water and identify areas that may be at risk of PFAS contamination and warrant additional PFAS monitoring and remediation.

Contemporary resource management is doubly burdened by high rates of organic material disposal in landfills, generating potent greenhouse gases (GHG), and globally degraded soils, which threaten future food security. Expansion of composting can provide a resilient alternative, by avoiding landfill GHG emissions, returning valuable nutrients to the soil to ensure continued agricultural production, and sequestering carbon while supporting local communities. Recognizing this opportunity, California has set ambitious organics diversion targets in the Short-Lived Climate Pollutant Law (SB1383) which will require significant increases (5 to 8 million tonnes per year) in organic material processing capacity. This paper develops a spatial optimization model to consider how to handle this flow of additional material while achieving myriad social and ecological benefits through compost production. We consider community-based and on-farm facilities alongside centralized, large-scale infrastructure to explore decentralized and diversified alternative futures of composting infrastructure in the state of California. We find using a diversity of facilities would provide opportunity for cost savings while achieving significant emissions reductions of approximately 3.4 ± 1 MMT CO2e and demonstrate that it is possible to incorporate community protection into compost infrastructure planning while meeting economic and environmental objectives.

BackgroundAlthough ~18 million people live within a mile from active oil and gas development (OGD) sites in the United States, epidemiological research on how OGD affects the health of nearby urban residents is sparse. Thousands of OGD sites are spread across Los Angeles (LA) County, California, home to the largest urban oil production in the country. Air pollution and noise from OGD may contribute to cardiovascular morbidity.ObjectiveWe examined the association between proximity to OGD and blood pressure in a diverse cohort of residents in LA.MethodsWe recruited residents in South LA who lived

Wildfire smoke fine particles (PM2.5) are a growing public health threat as wildfire events become more common and intense under climate change, especially in the Western United States. Studies assessing the association between wildfire PM2.5 exposure and health typically summarize the effects over the study area. However, health responses to wildfire PM2.5 may vary spatially. We evaluated spatially-varying respiratory acute care utilization risks associated with short-term exposure to wildfire PM2.5 and explored community characteristics possibly driving spatial heterogeneity. Using ensemble-modeled daily wildfire PM2.5, we defined a wildfire smoke day to have wildfire-specific PM2.5 concentration ≥15 μg/m3. We included daily respiratory emergency department visits and unplanned hospitalizations in 1,396 California ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs) and 15 census-derived community characteristics. Employing a case-crossover design and conditional logistic regression, we observed increased odds of respiratory acute care utilization on wildfire smoke days at the state level (odds ratio [OR] = 1.06, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.05, 1.07). Across air basins, ORs ranged from 0.88 to 1.57, with the highest effect estimate in San Diego. A within-community matching design and spatial Bayesian hierarchical model also revealed spatial heterogeneity in ZCTA-level rate differences. For example, communities with a higher percentage of Black or Pacific Islander residents had stronger wildfire PM2.5-outcome relationships, while more air conditioning and tree canopy attenuated associations. We found an important heterogeneity in wildfire smoke-related health impacts across air basins, counties, and ZCTAs, and we identified characteristics of vulnerable communities, providing evidence to guide policy development and resource allocation.

Wildfires have become more frequent and intense due to climate change and outdoor wildfire fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations differ from relatively smoothly varying total PM2.5. Thus, we introduced a conceptual model for computing long-term wildfire PM2.5 and assessed disproportionate exposures among marginalized communities. We used monitoring data and statistical techniques to characterize annual wildfire PM2.5 exposure based on intermittent and extreme daily wildfire PM2.5 concentrations in California census tracts (2006 to 2020). Metrics included: 1) weeks with wildfire PM2.5 < 5 μg/m3; 2) days with non-zero wildfire PM2.5; 3) mean wildfire PM2.5 during peak exposure week; 4) smoke waves (≥2 consecutive days with

Historical policies have been shown to underpin environmental quality. In the 1930s, the federal Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) developed the most comprehensive archive of neighborhoods that would have been redlined by local lenders and the Federal Housing Administration, often applying racist criteria. Our study explored how redlining is associated with environmental quality across eight California cities. We integrated HOLC's graded maps [grades A (i.e., "best" and "greenlined"), B, C, and D (i.e., "hazardous" and "redlined")] with 10 environmental hazards using data from 2018 to 2021 to quantify the spatial overlap among redlined neighborhoods and environmental hazards. We found that formerly redlined neighborhoods have poorer environmental quality relative to those of other HOLC grades via higher pollution, more noise, less vegetation, and elevated temperatures. Additionally, we found that intraurban disparities were consistently worse for formerly redlined neighborhoods across environmental hazards, with redlined neighborhoods having higher pollution burdens (77% of redlined neighborhoods vs 18% of greenlined neighborhoods), more noise (72% vs 18%), less vegetation (86% vs 12%), and elevated temperature (72% vs 20%), than their respective city's average. Our findings highlight that redlining, a policy abolished in 1968, remains an environmental justice concern by shaping the environmental quality of Californian urban neighborhoods.

Water, weather, and climate affect everyone. However, their impacts on various communities can be very different based on who has access to essential services and environmental knowledge. Structural discrimination, including racism and other forms of privileging and exclusion, affects peoples lives and health, with ripples across all sectors of society. In the United States, the need to equitably provide weather, water, and climate services is uplifted by the Justice40 Initiative (Executive Order 14008), which mandates 40% of the benefits of certain federal climate and clean energy investments flow to disadvantaged communities. To effectively provide such services while centering equity, systemic reform is required. Reform is imperative given increasing weather-related disasters, public health impacts of climate change, and disparities in infrastructure, vulnerabilities, and outcomes. It is imperative that those with positional authority and resources manifest responsibility through (1) recognition, inclusion, and prioritization of community expertise; (2) the development of a stronger and more representative and equitable workforce; (3) communication about climate risk in equitable, relevant, timely, and culturally responsive ways; and (4) the development and implementation of new models of relationships between communities and the academic sector.

Abstract: Water diversions for agriculture reduce ecosystem services provided by saline lakes around the world. Exposed lakebed surfaces are major sources of dust emissions that may exacerbate existing environmental inequities. This paper studies the effects of water diversions and their impacts on particulate pollution arising from reduced inflows to the Salton Sea in California via a spatially explicit particle transport model and changing lakebed exposure. We demonstrate that lakebed dust emissions increased ambient and concentrations and worsened environmental inequalities, with historically disadvantaged communities receiving a disproportionate increase in pollution. Water diversion decisions are often determined by political processes; our findings demonstrate the need for distributional analysis of such decisions to ensure equitable compensation.

We examine the barrier effects of freeways in California. We analyze the association between freeways and nearby street network connectivity and quantify the frequency and quality of crossings—underpasses or bridges that enable pedestrians and cyclists to cross the freeway. We find that barrier effects are most pronounced in communities of color. We also find that even where crossings exist, they are unpleasant or even hazardous for pedestrians and cyclists because of high-speed traffic on on- and off-ramps, and because large volumes of traffic are funneled through a small number of crossings rather than being distributed over a wider network.

Environmental justice research has focused on the distribution of environmental inequalities, such as proximity to landfills, across the U.S. and globally.BackgroundPublic health research and environmental health research, specifically, have focused on toxic exposure-encompassing individuals or communities that are disproportionately exposed to contaminants that are harmful or potentially harmful to them. Yet, little research has applied critical environmental justice theory-characterized by the idea that marginalized communities need to be treated as indispensable rather than disposable-to the study of toxic exposure. To fill this gap, the current paper offers a case study approach applying critical environmental justice theory to the study of disproportionate and unequal exposure to toxic contaminants.MethodsThis case study is of Kettleman City, a rural, unincorporated community in the heart of California's Central Valley (USA). This community experiences the co-location of environmental hazards, including residing at the intersection of two major highways and hosting a class I hazardous-waste landfill, which is one of the few licensed to accept PCBs. PCBs are a contaminant that has been linked with several adverse health outcomes, including cancers and low birthweight. Residents may also experience poor air quality from proximity to the highways.ResultsThis case highlights the uneven distribution of pollution and environmental degradation that may be shouldered by the community, along with their experiences of adverse health and social impacts. This analysis reveals the importance of incorporating a critical environmental justice perspective to unpack experiences of not only disproportionate exposure but also disproportionate procedural and recognitional inequality.ConclusionsThis research highlights the untapped potential of environmental justice to catalyze exposure science in challenging the unequal distribution of contaminants.

In this paper, we are situated in postcolonial, decolonial, and feminist epistemologies to study environmental racism in the Anthropocene—a new geological epoch where human activity has changed the functioning of the earth. Drawing from critiques of the Anthropocene, the concept of racial capitalism, as well as environmental justice and racism scholarship, we show how proposed solutions to the climate crisis overlook and may even exacerbate racial injustices faced by communities of color. We contend that a climate justice agenda that is grounded on racial justice is necessary for our scholarship to develop a racially just management and organization studies (MOS). To accomplish this agenda, we propose three shifts: from studying elite institutions to researching grassroots organizations concerned with climate and racial justice, from uncritical endorsement of global technologies to studying local adaptation by communities of color, and from offering decontextualized climate solutions to unraveling racial histories that can help us address racial and climate injustices. We discuss the implications of these shifts for management research and education and argue that MOS cannot afford to ignore climate justice and racial justice—they are both inextricably linked, and one cannot be achieved without the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heatwaves pose a serious threat and are projected to amplify with changing climate and social demographics. A comprehensive understanding of heatwave exposure to the communities is imperative for the development of effective strategies and mitigation plans. This study explores spatiotemporal characterization of heatwaves across the historically vulnerable communities in Mississippi, United States. We derive multiple heatwave metrics including frequency, duration, and magnitude based on temperature data for urban-specific daytime, nighttime, and day–night combined conditions. Our analysis depicts a rising heatwave trend across all counties, with the most extreme shifts observed in prolonged day–night events lacking overnight relief. We integrate physical heatwave hazards with a socioeconomic vulnerability index to develop an integrated urban heatwave risk index. Integrated metric identifies the counties in northwest Mississippi as heat-prone areas, exhibiting an urgent need to prioritize heat resilience and adaptive strategies in these regions. The compounding urban heatwave and vulnerability risks in these communities highlights an environmental justice imperative to implement equitable policies that protect disadvantaged populations. Although this study is focused on Mississippi, our framework is scalable and can be employed to urban regions globally. This study provides a solid foundation for developing timely heatwave preparedness and mitigation to avert preventable heat-related tragedies as extremes intensify with climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deployment of public electric vehicle charging stations (EVCS) is a critical component of transportation electrification. Recent studies have highlighted growing concerns about disparities in accessibility to public chargers between different demographic groups. This research expands ongoing equity concerns by contextualizing existing transportation equity discourse and analyzing public charger access disparities in Austin, Texas. Using threshold equity toolkits, we investigated public EVCS access disparity across different races and income groups. We conducted a generalized additive model regression to measure and visualize the effects of possible determinants on public EVCS access. The analysis results revealed that a public EVCS access disparity exists in Austin, with most chargers being installed in areas where the majority of the population is Non-Hispanic White. There was a more equal distribution of public EVCSs across income quartiles when compared with race. However, middle- and high-income groups had better access than lower-income communities in terms of distance to the nearest public EVCSs. Our regression analysis found that regional and socio-demographic factors, such as race and income, have a statistically significant impact on public charger access. The regression analysis also revealed that Austin's current public EVCS deployment seems to favor communities above the poverty level and with higher numbers of registered electric vehicles. Local policymakers should reflect on the findings of this study to develop an equitable transportation electrification plan. Federal environmental justice plans such as the Justice40 initiative can benefit from incorporating more local contexts to better invest in disadvantaged communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the differential effect of the US-Mexico border on the lived experience of children exposed to flooding risk in an urbanized transborder watershed. The central argument is that this geopolitical border is an institution generative of social and spatial processes that create and thrive on differences and expose children on both sides of the border to high but unequal hazard levels. We pose that children’s bifurcated experiences with rain evince the border’s structuring power as a supra institution producing a socio-spatial regime that enables environmental inequities producing disparate representations of place. Understanding children’s lived experiences is critical to reducing their vulnerability in a highly integrated cross-border urbanization. Framed as a case study based on qualitative data obtained through narratives and visual elicitation techniques, the analysis reveals children’s experiences with flooding and associated hazards that have not been exposed in prior border research and have important implications for integrated disaster management, environmental justice, and resilience in border regions and cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Green Deal (EGD) represents the most ambitious environmental policy framework in European history, aimed at improving the health and well-being of citizens and future generations through climate action and becoming the first climate-neutral region in the world by 2050. The EC has initiated the European Democracy Action Plan and the European Climate Pact to include the participation of citizens in a meaningful way to help achieve these goals (i.e. not simply a tokenistic gesture or box-ticking exercise). While these efforts to ensure greater citizen participation and deliberation in environmental policy are good first steps, there is still a lack of clarity about what meaningful citizen engagement should look like. This paper will propose that for such efforts to be successful, we need to assess different perspectives in the debate and provide recommendations based on this. This paper provides a systematic review of various approaches within the academic literature on citizen participation and deliberation in environmental policy (ecocentrism, biocentrism, ecomodernism, ecofeminism, environmental pragmatism, environmental citizenship, environmental rights, and environmental justice). Following this, we provide a list of 16 criteria (in five thematic sections) for policymakers, civil society organisations (CSOs), and society, to ensure meaningful citizen participation and deliberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of social infrastructure and its role in building disaster resilience has garnered significant attention in recent years. Defined as physical spaces that foster social connections and vibrant communities, social infrastructure has been recognized as a crucial element in providing support and resources during disasters. The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has further emphasized the importance of enhancing social infrastructure. However, divergent perspectives exist regarding the relationship between social infrastructure and socioeconomic factors in terms of distribution. Some studies suggest that the disproportionate distribution of social infrastructure may disadvantage certain racial and socioeconomic groups. Conversely, other research highlights instances where marginalized communities with robust social infrastructure exhibit resilience despite facing social and economic challenges. This discrepancy underscores the need for further investigation to reconcile these differing descriptions. Addressing this gap, this study aims to examine the relationship between social infrastructure, socioeconomic factors, and environmental justice. Specifically, the research question guiding this study is: Is the distribution of social infrastructure in a city related to specific racial or class factors from an environmental justice perspective? Utilizing the ordinary least squares regression, this study reveals that communities with a higher proportion of the non-White population have a greater number of social infrastructures, challenging expectations based on the environmental justice literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Specific domains of modern life—social, ecological, legal—involve distinct issues of justice that often lead to a single-focused political-philosophical engagement with justice. Such engagements, argues Marianna Papastephanou, risk turning issues of justice that lie beyond the adopted perspective into discursive injustices (i.e. of silencing the Other's voice) and condemning them to invisibility. To address this risk, Papastephanou proposes a stereoscopic approach that better illuminates the many facets of justice and, concomitantly, the many instances of injustice that escape the dominant political-philosophical perspectives on justice. In the present article, I discuss Papastephanou's theory of a stereoscopic approach to justice along with Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's discourse theory and notion of "nodal points." I suggest that the synergy between the two approaches enhances their efficacy: Papastephanou's theorization concretizes the implications of establishing nodal points, which, in turn, reveal how the reduction of justice to one of its facets occurs at the discursive level. Enriched by Papastephanou's theorization, discourse theory makes more visible how a stereoscopic approach to justice can unveil discursive injustices of selective and partial outlooks on (in)justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate action threatens to exacerbate existing social inequities, so it is important for justice to be at the heart of national responses to climate change. Based on an understanding of climate change as a manifestation of severed relationships and exploitative dynamics that are produced and reproduced through colonial, capitalist, patriarchal systems, we argue that the ways in which we conceptualize and enact climate justice must be decolonial, ecocentric, relational and integrative. Consistent with this positioning, we sought to develop an Indigenous climate justice policy analysis tool to assess and inform policy development. We drew on elements of existing frameworks and tools to develop a tool, which was progressively refined following external advisory group review and piloting. The tool addresses five dimensions of justice (relational, procedural, distributive, recognition and restorative), each of which comprises individual criteria assessed according to three levels of achievement. This rating system acknowledges progress within existing social, political and economic systems, but also identifies system transformation as a prerequisite for achieving genuine justice. Application of the tool focuses attention on issues well beyond typical climate policy considerations, such as the capacity of all human and non-human entities to express political agency. The tool has been developed for use in analysing national climate policy in Aotearoa New Zealand, but we have endeavoured to make it adaptable for use in other settings. Key policy insights: Climate injustice is rooted in colonialism; Indigenous decolonial conceptions of climate justice provide a critical grounding for policy responses to climate change. Climate justice is not attainable within existing colonial political systems. It can only be achieved through reform of governance and constitutional arrangements to re-establish Indigenous natural law. Analysis of climate policy must consider not only how to optimize justice within existing social, political and economic systems, but also how policy can disrupt those systems to create transformative change. Our policy analysis tool, grounded in relational epistemologies, extends beyond the scope of conventional analyses to examine critical issues across five dimensions of justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document reflects on the 14-year tenure of the authors as editors of the Urban Affairs Review (UAR) journal. The document highlights the journal's focus on various urban issues, including governance, sustainability, environmental justice, race, ethnicity, poverty, economic development, and fiscal architecture. It emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary and multi-scalar approaches to understanding urban dynamics and acknowledges the challenges posed by the centralization of government authority and the nationalization of politics. The document also discusses the measurement of journal impact and the editorial responsibilities of promoting emergent ideas and responding to disruptive events. Overall, the authors express gratitude for their role as journal editors and the impact they have had on the urban scholarly community. [Extracted from the article]

This paper analyzes a case of environmental activism after one of the largest oil spills in Peruvian Amazonia, the 2014 Cuninico oil spill. A relatively more independent judiciary, environmental legislation, and weak though autonomous regulatory agencies led to a shift in institutional opportunity structure over the previous 20 years. The embryonic environmental state produced evidence of environmental harm and sanctioned state-owned oil enterprise Petroperú. However, that was not enough to produce timely measures to protect the affected communities. Indigenous peoples affected by the spill worked with human rights lawyers and civil society coalitions to bring the company to court. Almost a decade of high court activism has meant a burdensome process of 'lawfare' with important legal triumphs for plaintiffs. In 2020, a historic ruling mandated financial compensation for affected communities. Despite these triumphs, the long wait for the restitution of justice hints at an uncertain future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public administration is poised to recognize that race is constitutive of bureaucratic hierarchies, processes, and outcomes and, as such, to ground our work in a more critical and progressive conceptual framework. In this exploratory analysis, we center Critical Race Theory (CRT) around practice, or praxis, a process that is self-reflexive and race-conscious to address root causes of racism, on the role of public sector leaders. This paper applies leadership research to demonstrate how public leaders, particularly career bureaucrats, can help to eliminate institutional racism. We specifically explore how critical race praxis (CRP) can apply to environmental justice and the movement against environmental racism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Technology Readiness Level (TRL) scale was initially developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the 1970s and is now widely used in space, nuclear, and other complex technology sectors in the United States and beyond. The TRL scale is particularly useful for determining where the extrapolation of untested subsystems or features could produce technical risk, cause expensive redesigns, or act as a roadblock to technology development. In this paper, we propose the development of a sociotechnical readiness level or SRL, premised on the understanding that the successful development and eventual use of a technology requires achieving not only full technological readiness but also anticipating, prioritizing, and addressing societal concerns that may arise during the course of development of a technology. Failures to anticipate and address societal factors in the early stages of technology development have led to high-profile delays, and in some cases, ultimate failures of nuclear technology projects. The sociotechnical readiness scale, which conceptually draws on the design research and science and technology studies scholarship, centers on the principles of equity and environmental justice in technology design and emphasizes the need for social engagement during the process of technology development. Nowhere is such an approach to technology development more vital or needed than for the long-term management of spent nuclear fuel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green gentrification is a potential side effect of the temporal change of green spaces via various improvements. This paper suggests that green gentrification may occur even when green spaces remain unchanged. Spatially-explicit datasets and econometric models were used for this purpose. We found that in the case study city, Lodz (Poland), residential change is linked to the housing market (i.e., the number of property transactions and their prices). However, the strength of this association depends on the proximity to temporarily unchanged parks. We also found that the value of park proximity among housing buyers rises, suggesting the increased desirability of living close to parks, resulting in more intense residential change close to parks than in other locations. Therefore, scholars should consider green gentrification as a process that may be induced by time (in)variant green spaces. More emphasis is needed in housing studies to explore how changing residential preferences are related to gentrification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through in‐depth interviews, this study explored US youth climate justice activists' views and experiences of climate change education (CCE) and their recommendations for alternative educational approaches to advance climate justice. Youth activists (N = 16; ages 15 to 17) viewed education as critical to spurring societal transformation, however, most described narrowly focused (e.g., depoliticized; science‐centric) or inadequate (e.g., sparse, absent) school‐based CCE. Youths' recommendations emphasized the need for justice‐driven and action‐oriented CCE for all ages to equip all learners with the knowledge and skills to actively contribute to urgently needed, justice‐minded, systems‐level change. Findings have implications for curricular and policy change that enable education for climate justice action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community health workers (CHWs) have been playing a crucial role in improving community health for over a century. Their roles have evolved to address changing community needs, and now they must also address environmental injustice to mitigate health and population damage. CHWs, who have deep ties to the communities they serve, can contribute to environmental justice work by improving environmental health outcomes and addressing the healthcare worker shortage. By involving CHWs in community-based participatory environmental health research, they can strengthen environmental health literacy and collaborate with residents to inform environmental health and justice policy. CHWs can also promote pro-environmental health behaviors and act as trusted peer listeners for community members who have experienced environmental injustices. Incorporating environmental justice into CHWs' agendas can help community members understand the impact of environmental injustice on their health and provide them with tools to cope with traumatic experiences. Additionally, increasing reliance on CHWs in environmental health and justice endeavors can help address the deepening health workforce shortage in the US. Overall, CHWs can serve as a multi-purpose solution for healthcare and environmental justice by addressing social, structural, and environmental determinants of health. [Extracted from the article]

The paper undertakes the eco-spatial re-reading of two Malayalam movies, Kumbalangi Nights (2019) and Malik (2021), using the framework of solastalgia. Solastalgia is an environmental philosophy developed by Glenn Albrecht that refers to the feeling of abandonment and isolation in relation to a drastically transformed spatial circumstance. It is the paradoxical sense of homelessness while still being home. The paper argues that solastalgia is a heuristic framework to analyse unjust geographies and reimagine them as forums for creative resilience, collective strength, and political action. The movies explore the ramifications of lived space on the life of people living in it and its coalescing with other social, political, and economic categories of injustice. Kumbalangi tells the story of four brothers living on a stranded island in the neighbourhood of a city and how they creatively resist the solastalgic distress caused by the neoliberal social order. Malik, set in a densely populated coastal village, delineates how solastalgia is instrumental in excessive criminalisation and breakage of the social fabric. The discussion of the movies seeks to show how cultural narratives such as films can be seen as important tools to represent unjust geographies, and resist them through rebellious re-imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Biomédica: Revista del Instituto Nacional de Salud is the property of Instituto Nacional de Salud of Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Key Takeaways: Community water systems (CWSs) underpin the US water supply network; the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) made historic investments to improve CWS regulatory compliance. Recognizing the need for a nationwide assessment of regulatory compliance to inform BIL funding priorities, two policy organization partners released a "Roadmap" report. The Roadmap projects the needs of such a local system assessment at a national scale and offers solutions; its layered, feasible, and effective recommendations support equitable water access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Planning Education & Research is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a voluminous literature on resource availability and the implications for organizational performance, little is known about how changes in government agencies' resources impact their policy implementation activities and goal prioritization. This article explores how changes in resources affect regulatory enforcement activities by types of resources and policy implementation activities, and whether resource cutbacks prompt a tradeoff of the effectiveness‐equity goals. Using the block‐group level data on the Clean Air Act (CAA) implementation from 2012 to 2019, we find that state environmental agencies prioritize regulatory effectiveness over environmental justice by concentrating their resources on communities where task demands correspond to organizations' core missions. They also promote social equity to some extent when facing spending cutbacks but not staffing cuts. Spending cutbacks had a less severe impact on compliance inspections for more socially vulnerable communities, while those exposed to more imminent environmental harms received more inspections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes the modern temporalities by using the ocean as the site. Topics mentioned include the science of oceanic time, the genealogies of national time, the emergence of a spatial historicity of the Pacific Ocean, the geospatial dimensions of the Pacific, and the use of integrative geo-anthropological time to find evidence about the macroscopic correlations in earth history.

The article discusses the concept of "planetary health" and its potential to change our understanding of global challenges. It criticizes the rise of "climate security" as a dominant framework, which prioritizes militarization and national security over the health of the planet and its inhabitants. The article argues that a planetary health approach, rooted in eco-social justice, can challenge militarized conceptions of global challenges and promote non-military action and systemic change. It highlights examples of ecosystemic care practices, such as eco-sumud, buen vivir, and mutual aid, as alternatives to militarized approaches. The article concludes by emphasizing the need for policy and action that prioritize the interconnectedness of security, health, and justice. [Extracted from the article]

Since the early 1980s, the environmental justice (EJ) movement was critical in drawing much needed attention on how Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC), and low-income groups have experienced a disproportionate burden of environmental harms. This movement eventually formed the field of environmental justice, a multidisciplinary area of study that attempts to identify environmental injustices and provide theory and practice for their resolution. Despite the expansion of the EJ field and recent public attention, research shows that both EJ content knowledge and BIPOC students are isolated and excluded from Interdisciplinary, Environmental, and Sustainability (IES) programs within higher education. In addition, these studies have shown a relationship between EJ content and community-engaged practices with the inclusion of BIPOC students. This study sought to examine how and why EJ teaching and community-engaged pedagogies may be associated with inclusive or anti-racist practices by examining four faculty members teaching undergraduate EJ courses at four institutions. Using a multi-case study design, primary findings showed that faculty members held activist course objectives, which led to distinct community-engaged practices, such as the invitation of diverse guest educators, inclusion of readings from diverse authors, field experiences with EJ communities, and the integration of alternative ways of knowing that resist Eurocentric biases. The discussion and implications explore how these practices intersect with inclusive and anti-racist pedagogies, and provide recommendations for their implementation within the context of Environmental Studies and Sciences (ESS) in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a collection, this Special Issue includes examinations of changes to teaching frameworks that can be a tool to disrupt epistemic privilege, how integrated and immersive environmental justice and community engaged coursework can foster more inclusive learning experiences for students, discussions of how to effect curriculum and academic program change, and multiple case studies with practical takeaways related to pedagogical innovations and best practices for creating more equitable academic/co-curricular programs. These examples and their calls for change are couched within an understanding of the precarious nature of academic labor and the often-inequitable load carried by staff and faculty who are untenured, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color), women, and/or LBGTQIA+ (Misra et al., 2021). Emphasis must be placed on institutional initiatives and structural change/networks of support, rather than individualized actions of faculty and staff. Overall, these collected articles demonstrate the theoretical and practical importance of DEIJ efforts to the field of Environmental Studies and Sciences (ESS). Critical reflection of how we teach, who we teach, and the ways in which unquestioned institutional practices reinforce racial and privileged hierarchies is needed to for our discipline to become ready for the diverse student communities who will enact just environmental futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The environment and natural resource fields have traditionally centered western science, the scholarship of white men, and land conservation strategies that neglect historical inhabitants. These tenets have led to a narrow view of how conservation is defined and created challenges for BIPOC students and professionals to see themselves as full and equal participants in the environmental sciences. The Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources has worked to address these shortcomings through courses designed to address issues of systemic racism and exclusion in the environmental field. In our student's first year, we pair a fall course focused on communication skills with a spring course that addresses issues of racism and social justice in the environmental fields. We use the fall semester to create a learning community where students build relationships of trust, mutual regard, and care and develop a deeper understanding of their relationship with the environment. In the spring, we present students with a variety of frameworks to think critically about equity, inclusion, positionality, privilege, racism, and diversity. A key learning outcome is to help students consider how historical and present-day dynamics of race and racism have shaped the environmental field. Importantly, we focus on the voices and messages of environmental leaders who have historically been left out of popular environmental narratives. We outline lessons learned in the integration of diversity, equity, and inclusion into our environment and natural resources curriculum and ways to further enhance our centering of equity and inclusion in the curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]