Environmental Justice for Minority and Low-Income Populations Next to Goods Movement Corridors in Southern California

2013 ◽  
Vol 2357 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jung H. Seo ◽  
Frank Wen ◽  
Javier Minjares ◽  
Simon Choi
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Southern California ◽  
Goods Movement

Toward the Development of a Unified Process and Methodology Guide for Environmental Justice Analysis in Planning and Programming

2021 ◽  
pp. 036119812110288
Author(s):  
Eliot Benman ◽  
David Aimen
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Transportation Planning ◽  
Technical Assistance ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Metropolitan Planning Organizations ◽  
South Central ◽  
Planning Organizations ◽  
Analytical Approaches

Federal Environmental Justice directives require transportation agencies responsible for planning and programming federal funds, including state departments of transportation and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), to identify and address disproportionately high and adverse human health and environmental impacts on minority and low-income populations. Despite issuance of federal and state guidance and training programs, many MPOs nationwide continue to seek clarity on effective environmental justice (EJ) approaches and procedural considerations. The South Central Pennsylvania Unified EJ Process and Methodology study was a year-long effort undertaken by a consortium of MPOs in Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) District 8 to identify a unified and replicable approach to implementing EJ in transportation planning. PennDOT, Federal Highway Administration PA Division, and Federal Transit Administration Region III provided technical assistance and support to the effort. The consortium engaged a technical assistance consultant to facilitate a collaborative process to identify a process framework, a set of analytical methodologies, and effective strategies for advancing EJ in the regional transportation planning process. The study demonstrated a model for convening regional, state, and federal partners to reach consensus around an effective EJ process and methodology. This paper provides an overview of the study process, findings related to the concerns of the participating MPOs, and a brief description of the recommended analytical approaches. The paper discusses lessons learned during the course of the study and considers additional work required to further enhance the EJ process.

Conclusion

Inland Shift ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan D. De Lara
Keyword(s):  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Southern California ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
Premature Death ◽  
Collateral Damage ◽  
Medical Problems ◽  
Safety Nets ◽  
Inland Empire ◽  
Goods Movement ◽  
The Many

THERE HAS BEEN A PROFOUND lack of political leadership in inland Southern California. The region’s low-skilled and undereducated workers have had to fend for themselves against the devastating flows of speculative capital while the evangelists of neoliberalism have cut back the safety nets of the Keynesian state. Members of the logistics regime were complicit in this. They convinced themselves and tried to convince everyone else that goods movement represented economic salvation for a region suffering through the job losses of deindustrialization. A sense of economic crisis justified spending on roads, bridges, and rail. At the same time, low wages and cancer-causing diesel pollution were written off as collateral damage. Yet the 2,339 estimated people who get cancer from diesel exposure every year in the Inland Empire and the many more who suffer medical problems that lead to premature death cannot be written off as unfortunate consequences of development; premature deathis an “intolerable failure,” not an unfortunate happenstance....

Application of Environmental Justice Analysis in a Statewide Freight Plan

2017 ◽  
Vol 2654 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-36
Author(s):  
Christopher Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Policy Framework ◽  
Minority Populations ◽  
Department Of Transportation ◽  
Analysis Techniques ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Surface Transportation ◽  
Freight Planning ◽  
Develop State

Executive Order 12898 and subsequent U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) orders require all state DOTs to complete environmental justice analyses to identify disproportionately high and adverse effects of programs, polices, and activities on minority populations and low-income populations. Many analysis techniques have emerged in practice and academic literature, but no official guidance has designated a preferred analysis approach. The passage of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act introduced a number of new freight provisions for state DOTs, including a requirement to develop state freight plans to be eligible for funding through the National Highway Freight Program. This paper reviews the existing guidance for environmental justice analyses and documents the application of this guidance to an environmental justice analysis for the Minnesota Statewide Freight System Plan. The plan provides strategies and a policy framework for statewide freight stakeholders to guide planning efforts and investments in the state freight system. The paper concludes with a discussion of further considerations, strategies, and challenges facing freight planning practitioners in future freight environmental justice analyses.

Traffic Calming and Environmental Justice: New York City’s Neighborhood Slow Zones

2018 ◽  
Vol 2672 (3) ◽  
pp. 175-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonas Xaver Hagen
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Risk Exposure ◽  
Minority Communities ◽  
Traffic Calming ◽  
Traffic Injury ◽  
Planning Processes ◽  
Quantitative Analyses ◽  
Quantitative And Qualitative Methods

This paper examines New York City’s Neighborhood Slow Zones (NSZ) program in terms of environmental justice. The paper uses both quantitative and qualitative methods. Quantitative analyses show that the areas where the zones are implemented are well represented in regarding environmental justice (low-income and minority) populations, and that risk exposure to traffic injury and traffic casualty counts are similar in NSZ and non-NSZ areas. The qualitative analysis shows that the program was structured in a way that included the participation of environmental justice communities and led to the siting of zones in such neighborhoods. These findings suggest that the NSZ program can address environmental justice’s goals of distributing environmental risk more equitably and including low-income and minority communities in planning processes.

scholarly journals A Comparison of Major Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tools

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lakshika Nishadhi Kuruppuarachchi ◽  
Ashok Kumar ◽  
Matthew Franchetti
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Environmental Policies ◽  
Environmental Pollutant ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Disadvantaged Communities ◽  
The World ◽  
Environmental Burdens

The concept of Environmental Justice (EJ) has evolved in United Sates for more than 30 years. Since then most empirical studies have shown that low-income and minority neighborhoods are disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards. Across the world, communities are struggling to protect their land, air, water, forests, and their livelihoods from damaging projects and activities with heavy environmental and social impacts. A Number of tools already exist to identify and map those areas with potential environmental justice concerns. This paper presents a comparison of the three major EJ tools; EJSCREEN (version 2016), CalEnviroScreen 2.0, EJ Atlas and their methodologies. There are some common parameters across these tools in presenting Environmental Justice and in identifying environmentally burdened communities, socially burdened communities, or both. Environmental burdens can include any environmental pollutant, hazard or disadvantage that compromises the health of a community. The tools are expected to help in understanding and studying the distribution of environmental benefits and burdens, decision making for disadvantaged communities in certain areas and in setting up environmental policies and planning.

scholarly journals An Environmental Justice Perspective on Air Quality Offsets

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristy Langerman
Keyword(s):  
Air Quality ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Procedural Justice ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Ambient Air ◽  
Institutional Processes ◽  
Emission Standards ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Polluting Emissions

Air quality offsets in South Africa are intended to counterbalance the harm caused by atmospheric emissions and deliver a net ambient air quality benefit in the affected airshed. In practice, they are implemented as a condition of leniency from compliance with the Minimum Emission Standards, and they focus on converting solid fuel burning households in low-income communities to cleaner forms of energy. Air quality offsets are not supported by all stakeholders, with non-governmental organisations in particular voicing vociferous objections. To date, there have only been very limited analyses of the ethical dimensions of air quality offsets. In this paper, air quality offsets and the Minimum Emission Standards are examined and compared from the perspective of three notions of environmental justice: distributive justice, which focuses on the distribution of environmental burdens and benefits; procedural justice, which considers inclusion and exclusion in decision- and policy-making processes; and justice as recognition, which focuses on the cultural and institutional processes that determine recognition, misrecognition and non-recognition of various groups. It is found that air quality offsets should guide action which promotes distributive justice because they are focussed on reducing polluting emissions in vulnerable, low-income communities that are exposed to the highest levels of ambient pollution. From a procedural justice perspective, South Africa’s legislative processes provide for involving most stakeholders in decision-making processes. Air quality offset initiatives should be evaluated once they have been implemented at scale to determine whether they have indeed aided in redressing injustices. Assessment criteria could include whether the air quality-related health risk of vulnerable communities has been reduced, whether community members have participated in the design and implementation of interventions, and whether marginalised members of the community have benefitted from the interventions.

scholarly journals Rethinking environmental justice: capability building, public knowledge and the struggle against traffic-related air pollution

2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110428
Author(s):  
Maarten Loopmans ◽  
Linde Smits ◽  
Anneleen Kenis
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Public Knowledge ◽  
Public Pedagogy ◽  
Ring Road ◽  
Social Composition ◽  
The Social ◽  
Capability Building ◽  
Justice Movements

For more than a decade, a broad social movement has organised significant opposition to the expansion of the Antwerp ring road. By linking the very mobile, intangible and unplaceable problem of traffic-related air pollution to the highly local, concrete, immobile issue of the highway, they succeeded in creating the largest mobilization against air pollution ever in Belgium. A distributive justice discourse which portrayed Antwerp residents as being unfairly affected has played a crucial role in this endeavour. At the same time, the movement has struggled to involve and represent those who will be most affected by the ring road extension. Low income and ethnic minority residents living close to the ring road are strikingly absent from the movements’ ranks and tend to be silenced in its discourse. In this paper, we scrutinise this disparity between the social composition of the most affected areas and the social composition of the movement dealing with the issue, and reflect on the movement’s practices of knowledge production and dissemination from an environmental justice perspective. We highlight the need for expanding environmental justice beyond a merely distributive approach and argue that environmental justice movements need to see knowledge dissemination and public pedagogy as more than just a mobilizing strategy. Without pursuing equity in the distribution of networks, capabilities and knowledge, enhancing the possibilities of those who are most affected to develop their own strategies, environmental justice is difficult to realize.

Sacred Sites as a Threat to Environmental Justice?

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark S. Cladis
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
Sacred Sites ◽  
Special Power

AbstractI explore the intersection of environmental spirituality and environmental justice with special attention given to indigenous ecologies. Indigenous communities often employ the language of discrete “sacred sites” to protect portions of their lands from environmental harm. However, the concept of the sacred in Western traditions is typically accompanied by its binary opposite, the profane. Do protected sacred sites implicitly license harm to such “profane” sites as low-income sacrifice zones? Is environmental spirituality in tension with environmental justice? After explicating this problem, I resolve it by exploring indigenous notions of the sacred—notions that are not binary. Indigenous notions allow for treating some discrete lands as places of special power and healing while still maintaining that all lands are sacred and worthy of environmental protection. These are not hierarchical notions of the sacred but variegated ones (or what I call hózhó sacred weaves).

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