Free Environmental Justice Research publications
Environmental Justice in the Americas and Europe
By Götz Kaufmann, 2016-05-10
The journal Environmental Justice (jEJ) is one of the most relevant pioneers in the field of Environmental Justice Research. The peer-review journal is published bimonthly, covering the impacts and environmental burdens that affect marginalized populations all over the world. Interdisciplinary reports on communities, industry, academia, government, and nonprofit organizations are considered in its editions including human health and the environment, natural science, technology, land use and urban planning, public and environmental policy, environmental history, legal history as it pertains to environmental justice, environmental sociology, anthropology of environmental, health disparities, and grassroots activities.

The jEJ is under the editorial leadership of Editor-in-Chief Sylvia Hood Washington, PhD, MSE, MPH, and senior Editor Kenneth Olden, PhD, ScD, LHD, among others. For the period of until 16 May 2016, the jEJ gives free online access to the following research pubications.

Original Articles

1. Clark, Karen: Implementation of Public Land Policy as a Stimulant to Collective Rejection of Governance

2. Partridge, Tristan: Water Justice and Food Sovereignty in Cotopaxi, Ecuador

3. Kaufmann, Götz; Seidel, Johanna; Stößel, Bastian: The Climatological Environmental Justice Index-Brazil, Canada, and Germany

As for the first research contribution, the author, Dr. Clark, is an assistant professor at the College of Justice Studies and Public Policy at Auburn University, Montgomery in Montgomery, Alabama.

The abstract of the article reads as follows:

Social movements have been framed as collective responses to domestic governance and social stratification. Previous social movements were focused on a local issue relating usually to labor or other shared demands. In an era of globalization, social movements have modified to align dichotomous political groups into new allegiances as traditional social and economies have shifted. Large-scale, national non-profit environmental organizations have taken on regional concerns and applied their expertise in organizing political movements within smaller collectives. One prominent and recurring formation is that of Native American or First Nation tribes with non-indigenous groups. Surprisingly, these groups often include ranchers and miners, factions that have limited history of aligning with American Indians or environmentalists. Globalization has greatly accelerated asset transfer, political influences of corporations, and deregulation of domestic markets. In response, environmental organizations transformed conventional non-profit activities to generate and enhance non-traditional alliances. These new social movements have effectively confronted loss of environmental and labor protections along with impediments to Native American participation in governance. This has resulted in criminalization of dissent and targeting of environmental activists who align with newly formed collectives.

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Dr. Partridge is Visiting Scholar (Department of Anthropology) and Postdoctoral Scholar (CNS) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, California.

The abstract of the article reads as follows:

Cotopaxi province is home to some of the largest broccoli plantations in Ecuador, and this crop continues to be a focus of export efforts and agricultural policy in the country. These plantations tend to occupy the best land in the region, in areas that have fertile soil and are easy to irrigate—marginalizing smaller communities and perpetuating histories of dispossession. Industrial irrigation is facilitated by historic water rights that greatly limit the amount of water available to nearby indigenous and campesino farming communities. In response to these inequalities, some communities have mobilized and accessed external support enabling them to construct their own irrigation systems. Others, however, are without the facilities to do so and consequently continue to struggle with soil erosion and field desertification. This article documents unequal access to water in Cotopaxi's Alpamalag Valley and compares the experiences of two communities located close to the Selva Alegre broccoli plantation, including their collective responses to these environmental injustices. It outlines principles of "food sovereignty" as they appear in Ecuador's Constitution-including redistribution of productive resources such as land and water, promoting equity and solidarity among food producers and consumers, and impeding monopolistic practices - and examines their potential for environmental justice concerns among rural populations, especially those who face entrenched relations of domination and intersecting inequalities.

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Dr. Kaufmann is the founder of the Environmental Justice Institute (EJI) in Berlin, Germany, and the leader of the research project CC-VISAGES. Ms. Seidel and Dr. Stößel are research fellows at the EJI, and members of the CC-VISAGES research project.
The article summarizes the research results of the project on Climate Change Inferred through Social Analysis, Geography, and Environmental Systems, short CC-VISAGES, in the period of 2013 to 2015.

The abstract of the article reads as follows:

The perception of climate change impacts is strongly influenced by the underlying social realities. In order to develop a model for climate change adaptation policies, the CC-VISAGES project developed a Climatological Environmental Justice Index (CEJI) based on a developed Human Stress Index (HSI) and the Temperature Humidity Index (THI). Through a geographical information system (GIS) representation of HSI, THI, and CEJI, a vulnerability ranking of all communities in Germany, Canada, and Brazil could be revealed. The variables have been selected and measured in a country comparable manner allowing to proportion communities between the different countries. The data have been gathered from the nomenclature of territorial units for statistics (NUTS) level 3 (community level). This article will show how HSI has been developed and combined with the THI in order to develop the CEJI. A list of the vulnerable areas in each country according to HIS, THI, and ECJI will be presented as the findings and discussed.

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Image: © Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.