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Marine plastic pollution (MPP) has posed an unavoidable challenge to the conservation of marine ecosystems, escalating at an unprecedented rate. It extends beyond visible pollution, infiltrating the food chain and microcirculation, ultimately affecting the life and health of marine organisms. Of even greater concern is the fact that MPP has been found to penetrate human bloodstreams. The international community increasingly focuses on MPP, and has formulated a series of laws and regulations. This article analyses marine pollution prevention legislation within the context of international environmental resolutions and conventions, including those established by the United Nations, the European Union law and the domestic legislation of sovereign states. It is evident that the current legislation has played a pivotal role in the preventing MPP. However, global legislation on preventing MPP remains fragmented. The problems existing in the current legislation should be reviewed from the holistic systems perspective, and the integrity and systematicness of new plastics convention should be demonstrated. The proposed Marine Plastics Convention should emphasize environmental justice, protect the rights of vulnerable populations, lower the threshold for risk prevention, and focus on addressing residual risks. It must include clear provisions for regulating hydrosphere plastic pollution (HPP) to mitigate land-based pollution and scientifically define fundamental legal concepts to foster coordinated action among States. Moreover, the convention should establish standardized monitoring methodologies and assessment criteria to ensure accurate evaluation of the pollution status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to contribute to aligning the legal regimes for energy transition minerals with sustainability and justice. The focus of the article is on effectively embedding the human right to a healthy environment into the design of these regimes. The article distinguishes between two models of legal design for mineral extraction and argues that the present predominant model must evolve towards one that bridges the normative and enforcement gaps for exercising public authority. Legal regimes need therefore to be reorganised to protect the integrity and resilience of ecosystems while upholding the right to a healthy environment and interdependent human rights. The task of redesigning regimes in ways that are embedded in a thicker environmental rule of law is emerging through litigation and policy reform. The complexity of this task must be recognised and upscaled for transformative change. This article is based on a case study focusing on lithium found in brines (highly saline waters), and in the legal regime and judicial decisions in Argentina and policy initiatives in Chile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With planet-wide environmental unravelling ideas of multispecies and planetary justice are gaining multidisciplinary attention. They frame a set of ethical, moral and political obligations to life-on-Earth. While it is clear it is humans who bear the duties and obligations of justice, who or what is the subject of justice-beyond-human varies widely: Some limit the subject to sentient animals, others include all living things. We argue for a more expansive subject that includes both living and non-living matter. We claim that privileging living/life is an anthropocentric categorisation embedded in the foundational epistemologies and ontologies driving environmental damages, resource conflicts and mass extinction. An exclusion of matter from concerns of justice ignores multiple fundamental more-than-human relationships in humans' every-day material lives. We argue that the subject of planetary justice must be expansive – addressing sentient or not, living or not, animal, vegetable, mineral, and elemental – to be inclusive, applied, plural, and sustainable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

(1) Background: Colorado's (CO) Environmental Justice mapping tool, CO EnviroScreen, quantifies environmental injustices through "EnviroScreen Scores", highlighting areas likely affected by environmental health disparities. Identifying the specific scores most strongly associated with mortality could help prioritize interventions and allocate resources to address these issues. This study contributes to sustainable development goals by examining the relationship between environmental justice indicators and population health outcomes. By utilizing the CO EnviroScreen tool, we assess how cumulative environmental exposures and vulnerabilities impact mortality rates, providing insights for sustainable planning and public health policies. (2) Methods: We assessed the cross-sectional association between county-level all-cause mortality rates in CO, using 2019 data from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, and three county-level component scores obtained from CO EnviroScreen: sensitive populations (i.e., health-related outcomes), environmental exposures (e.g., from air, water, noise), and climate vulnerability (i.e., risk of drought, flood, extreme heat, wildfire). A quasi-Poisson generalized linear model was utilized, incorporating covariates (county-level metrics for insufficient sleep, alcohol overconsumption, physical inactivity, and smoking) to explore associations adjusted for behavioral risk factors (n = 64 counties). (3) Results: The analysis revealed that a 10% increase in the "Environmental Exposures" component score was associated with a 3% higher all-cause mortality rate (95% CI: 1.00, 1.05), highlighting the importance of addressing environmental determinants for sustainable community health. No significant associations were observed for the "Sensitive Populations" or "Climate Vulnerability" component scores. (4) Conclusions: This study provides novel evidence of an association between the CO EnviroScreen score, particularly the environmental exposure component, and all-cause mortality rates at the county level in Colorado in 2019. The findings suggest that cumulative environmental exposures may contribute to geographic disparities in mortality risk, even after adjusting for key behavioral risk factors. These results underscore the importance of integrating environmental justice considerations into sustainable development strategies to promote equitable health outcomes and resilient communities. While our study demonstrates the utility of CO EnviroScreen in identifying areas at risk due to environmental factors, it does not establish a direct link to broader environmental justice outcomes. Further research is needed to explore specific environmental exposures and their direct impacts on health disparities to provide a more complete picture of environmental justice in Colorado. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing importance of understanding the connection between sustainability and justice. We have conducted the first robust mixed-methods review of the burgeoning academic literature on sustainability justice. Our analysis spans literature from 2013 to 2023, drawn from the databases of Web of Science and Scopus. We use a scientometric approach to identify key literature for a more detailed qualitative analysis. This dual approach uncovers key trends and themes in sustainability justice. The review identifies works that delve into the themes of environmental, social, and economic justice, pinpointing a need to amplify Global South voices, narratives, and insights for a comprehensive understanding of sustainability justice. The findings indicate a pressing need for integrating economic aspects with social and environmental factors, advocating for more focus on transformative justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This conceptual manuscript presents a novel framework for positioning K-12 students as agentic learners taking action for sustainability through real work with real consequences. Drawing on our collective experience in K-12 and higher education STEM and sustainability teaching–learning environments as well as scholars from wide-ranging fields (i.e., transformative learning; environmental, science, and sustainability education), we introduce the action-oriented pedagogies (AOP) framework, which aims to inspire optimism in our collective ability to address interlocking sustainability crises and contribute to the advancement of cultural and social shifts necessary to achieve more ecologically attuned and socially just futures. After defining AOP, three necessary educational shifts to advance sustainability education are identified, along with their relationship to three key attributes of AOP: (a) imagining preferred futures where ecological and social justice prevail, (b) planning co-produced impact, and (c) taking agentic action. Finally, we present a cyclical model for enacting AOP in formal K-12 classrooms. Arguing that AOP can be a source of hope and agency for school-aged children and youth, we illustrate ways teachers can enact pedagogies that position students as agentic learners and actors, engaging alongside them in meaningful efforts to advance sustainability through real work with real consequences across multiple spheres of influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the global impacts of extractivism on human–nature bonds. To do so, we rely on socio-ecological conflict data from the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice. Over 1800 cases involving resistance to the destruction of nature, cultures, cosmologies, worldviews, ancestral origins, and sacred places are analyzed using log-linear regression compared to 1600 cases that do not report such loss. The impact is especially visible when mineral ores, plantation products, and crude oil are extracted. The results indicate that affected groups are Indigenous peoples, farmers, peasants, pastoralists, and religious groups. In conflict outcomes, 79% of cases with refusal of compensation indicate impacts on human–nature bonds. Furthermore, in those cases where assassinations of activists occurred, 68% have observed impacts on human–nature bonds. Protecting human–nature bonds is a critical component for achieving social, economic, and environmental sustainability and justice against extractivism embedded in colonial relations playing against such bonds and environmental protectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gas leaks in cities with older infrastructure are relatively common. The unburned methane which they release is a potent greenhouse gas with harmful health effects. Using administrative municipal data on gas leak reports, we provide a systematic analysis of residential gas leaks in New York City and their association with socioeconomic inequality. We find that both the reporting of gas leaks and the prevalence of resulting residential gas shutoffs is strongly structured by already existing inequalities across neighborhoods. Therefore, we argue that the gas infrastructure in urban areas is an important environmental justice issue as those communities who experience the brunt of failing gas infrastructure are the same communities who have faced decades of disinvestment and environmental racism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Climate hazards in the form of cyclones are projected to become more intense under the pressures of future climate change. These changes represent a growing hazard to low lying coastal cities like Beira, Mozambique. In 2019, Beira experienced the devastating impact of Cyclone Idai. One of the many impacts resulting from this Cyclone was disrupted drinking water access. This investigation explores the distribution of Cyclone Idai's impact on drinking water access via an environmental justice lens, exploring how preexisting water access characteristics may have predisposed households to the impacts of Cyclone Idai in Beria. Design/methodology/approach: Relying on household survey data collected in Beira, the investigation applied a decision tree algorithm to investigate how drinking water disruption was distributed across the household survey sample using these preexisting vulnerabilities. Findings: The investigation found that households that mainly relied upon piped water sources and experienced inconsistent access to water in the year prior to Cyclone Idai were more likely to experience disrupted drinking water access immediately after Cyclone Idai. The results indicate that residents in formal areas of Beira, largely reliant upon piped water supply, experienced higher rates of disrupted drinking water access following Cyclone Idai. Originality/value: These findings question a commonly held assumption that informal areas are more vulnerable to climate hazards, like cyclones, than formal areas of a city. The findings support the inclusion of informal settlements in the design of climate change adaptation strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We evaluate distributional and efficiency consequences of the bulk power clean electricity tax credits authorized by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. To do so, we link detailed electricity capacity expansion, computable general equilibrium, microsimulation, and air pollution models to estimate economic welfare and health incidence across demographic groups. We evaluate trade-offs between policy efficiency and income progressivity by comparing the tax credits to cap-and-trade policies. The tax credits encourage increased clean electricity investment, resulting in a reallocation of capital from elsewhere in the economy, higher prices for capital and other goods, lower power prices, and lower emissions. The tax credits yield progressive outcomes for economic welfare at the expense of efficiency while all modeled policies demonstrate progressivity in health impacts. The health benefits, absent climate benefits, exceed total policy costs and provide greater benefits for low-income and historically marginalized households given coincidence of household locations and emissions exposure intensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electric vehicles are subsidized at the federal, state, and local level. The design of these subsidies affects which consumers benefit most and where less-polluting vehicles are driven. We study these effects using a panel of new vehicle purchases at the zip-code level for seven US metro areas. We first describe patterns of neighborhood-level electric vehicle adoption and subsidy receipt. Adoption has been spatially uneven and concentrated in more advantaged and less polluted neighborhoods. We then pair a structural model of vehicle demand with a model of on-road emissions to study the effects of electric vehicle subsidy targeting for the Chicago metro area. A neighborhood income-targeted policy achieves lower overall reductions in carbon emissions but higher reductions in criteria pollution (NOx and PM2.5) in lower-income neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We quantify the potential impacts of carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) on local air pollution in the US Gulf region. We characterize pre-CCUS local air pollution emissions from fossil-fuel electricity generation and large industrial carbon emitters and compare these with projected post-CCUS local air pollution emissions, leveraging carbon capture quotient estimates from the engineering literature. We then analyze net emissions impacts on secondary particulate matter formation and damages via the AP3 integrated air pollution assessment model. An important aspect of the environmental impact of CCUS is increased ammonia emissions from CCUS technology, which we show can lead to net air pollution damages from CCUS deployment at natural gas power plants and most industrial facilities. Taken as a whole, our work suggests that CCUS may pose significant trade-offs between global climate benefits and costs to local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While some see carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) as crucial for cost-effective decarbonization, it faces opposition based on air pollution and equity concerns. To understand this cost–air pollution trade-off, we simulate the potential impacts of allowing CCUS deployment in the US power sector under plausible climate policies. We show that the existence of this trade-off critically depends on the underlying policy, which affects the type of generation CCUS could displace: under a policy that incentivizes coal generation, CCUS might improve health outcomes and reduce costs. When we disaggregate our results, we find that the air pollution (PM2.5) effects of allowing CCUS, positive or negative, are largest for Black and low-income populations. We show that allowing CCUS can yield energy-cost savings, particularly benefiting lower-income communities. Our sensitivity analyses highlight the effects of uncertainties on costs and benefits. Overall, this study contributes to our understanding of broader distributional consequences of allowing CCUS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shifting frontiers of air pollution emission sources contribute to stagnation or reversal of air quality gains across the United States (US). The frequency and possible duration of Exceptional Events – driven primarily by wildfires and dust storms – have significantly increased in the US over the past decade. Combined with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) final rule strengthening primary annual National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for PM2.5 by 25%, communities will need to reevaluate domestic and international sources of PM2.5. This study applies the Isolation Forest methodology to Exceptional Event demonstrations to flag and evaluate sources of anomalies in large PM2.5 measurement datasets. Focusing on a decade of hourly PM2.5 data measured in seven regions across Texas from 2012 to 2021 (>3 million data points), we present methods to efficiently flag hourly PM2.5 anomalies with compute times of ~minutes and characterize their spatial impacts as local or (multi-) regional; subsequent evaluation of potential sources of the increase can then be conducted more efficiently in a targeted manner. For a subset of anomalies, we incorporate air mass back trajectories, surface influences, and positive matrix factorization to evaluate potential sources. Our anomaly characterization method separated statistically normal PM2.5 data and enabled differentiation of localized versus larger-scale PM2.5 sources. In addition, our method successfully characterized the Summer 2020 severe Saharan dust intrusions into Texas, as well as the influence of international smoke from Mexico on El Paso's regional air quality. This anomaly flagging and characterization method is promising for assessing the relative importance of sources to anomalies in PM2.5 and other criteria air pollutants for multiple purposes; while this work focuses on its capacity for exceptional event demonstrations, the applicability includes long-term trend analyses from environmental justice analyses of air pollutant exposure to air quality attainment demonstrations. Implications: The shifting frontiers of air pollution emission sources contribute to stagnation or reversal of air quality gains across the United States (US). The frequency and possible duration of Exceptional Events – driven primarily by wildfires and dust storms – have significantly increased in the US over the past decade. Combined with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) final rule strengthening primary annual National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for PM2.5 by 25%, communities will need to reevaluate domestic and international sources of PM2.5. This study presents a robust methodology to rapidly flag and evaluate sources of anomalies in PM2.5 measurements. This anomaly flagging and characterization method is promising for assessing the relative importance of sources to anomalies in PM2.5 and other criteria air pollutants for multiple purposes; while this work focuses on its capacity for exceptional event demonstrations, the applicability includes long-term trend analyses from environmental justice analyses of air pollutant exposure to air quality attainment demonstrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The City of Baltimore, MD has a history of problems with environmental justice (EJ), air pollution, and the urban heat island (UHI) effect. Current chemical transport models lack the resolution to simulate concentrations on the scale needed, about 100 m, to identify the neighborhoods with anomalously high air pollution levels. In this paper we introduce the capabilities of a mobile laboratory and an initial survey of several pollutants in Baltimore to identify which communities are exposed to disproportionate concentrations of air pollution and to which species. High concentrations of black carbon (BC) stood out at some locations – near major highways, downtown, and in the Curtis Bay neighborhood of Baltimore. Results from the mobile lab are confirmed with longer-term, low-cost monitoring. In Curtis Bay, higher concentrations of BC were measured along Pennington Ave. (mean [5th to 95th percentiles] = 2.08 [2.0–10.9] μg m−3) than along Curtis Ave. just ~ 150 m away (0.67[0.1 – 1.8] μg m−3). Other species, including criteria pollutants ozone (O3), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and fine particulate matter (PM2.5), showed little gradient. Observations with high spatial and temporal resolution help isolate the mechanisms leading to locally high pollutant concentrations. The difference in BC appears to result not from heavier truck traffic or slower dispersion but from the interruptions in traffic flow. Pennington Ave. has three stoplights while Curtis Ave. has none. As heavy-duty diesel-powered vehicles accelerate, they experience turbo-lag and the resulting rich air-fuel mixture exacerbates BC emissions. Immediate mediation might be achieved through smoother traffic flow, and the long-term solution through replacing heavy-duty trucks with electric vehicles. Implications: We present results documenting the locations within Baltimore of high concentrations of Black Carbon pollution and identify the likely source – diesel exhaust emissions exacerbated by stop-and-go traffic and associated turbo-lag. This suggests solutions (smoother traffic, retrofit particulate filters, replacement of diesel with electric vehicles) that would enhance Environmental Justice (EJ) and could be applied to other cities with EJ problems. Synopsis: This paper presents observations of atmospheric black carbon aerosol showing impacts on environmental justice, then identifies causes and suggests solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article identifies and describes the connection between ecology, income, and commodification of animal life using the examples of macaques on social media. The exploitation of macaques for income has recently become an accessible social phenomenon through world-wide social media platforms: Facebook and YouTube, especially. This example of the commodification of animal life illustrates the interconnections among poverty, mental health, and animal rights, thus demonstrating the need for multiple layers of assessment and intervention for change to improve the lives of both vulnerable humans and monkeys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines the development, evolution, and implementation of an ecological justice advanced practice curriculum for Master of Social Work students at the University of Denver, USA. This work began in 2011 and continues to evolve to meet student needs and societal pressures. Key ingredients in the success of this program have been critical leadership support, gathering of expertise, maintaining a critical eye toward emerging social, natural, and physical sciences, and a university and profession that provides an implicit curriculum supportive of preparing university students for a precarious future. The social work profession is responding to global environmental change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes course-based projects in a Masters of Social Work class designed to explore the importance of environmental issues on the interactions between humans and animals. Three service-learning projects were implemented within a community "EarthFest" event to promote increased awareness of sustainability and actions to protect the environment while enhancing both welfare of animals and health and human well-being. Therapy and robotic animals were integrated into the projects to provide direct, hands-on benefits and interaction for participants. These projects reinforced social work values of service and social justice while developing student's skills in creating and facilitating an animal-assisted activity focused on sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay brings the analytic of abolition ecology into conversation with the critical rhetorical study of social movements, to emphasize the ecological dimensions of racialized violence, settler colonialism, and abolitionist liberation struggles. We do so by advancing the method of rhetorical powermapping, as one way to constellate the rhetorical labor of activists/protectors as they unearth the depth and textures of power temporally and spatially. Putting rhetorical powermapping into practice, we follow the contours of recent insurgent movements to "Stop Cop City" as they unsettle power from within the urban forests of Atlanta, Georgia to broader national and global regimes. Such a practice emphasizes the need for multi-scalar and multi-species systems thinking in any vision of an abolitionist future. Stop Cop City insists we contend more deeply with the ecological dimensions of violence and the indispensability of life amid climate chaos, global militarism, and racialized and gendered repression. It also demands, we argue, that rhetorical scholars adopt alternative methods and analytics to make sense of emerging, decentralized movements on their own terms, the histories and relations that ground them, and the human and more-than-human solidarities they require. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Joan Martínez-Alier and Goutam Karmakar engage in a conversation where they examine the discourses of the Anthropocene, the Capitalocene, political ecology, and the Entropocene, exploring environmental (in)justices and focussing on decolonial approaches to addressing them. This discussion, as Joan and Goutam believe, can inform readers about the inner workings of colonial capitalism and the extractivist economy, the involvement of environmental activists, and the incommensurability of values in ecological economics. In order to develop an equitable and environmentally sustainable society, this conversation aims to comprehend the dynamics linking environmental concerns, activism, and socio-economic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses political ecology and social and environmental justice frameworks to examine stakeholder attitudes towards tourism development and ecological restoration in a cross-border context. The purpose of this paper is to develop conceptual frameworks for understanding stakeholder attitudes towards cross-border tourism and ecological restoration that occur in the context of uneven power relations. Data were collected through personal observations, secondary sources such as legal documents and reports, and 56 in-depth interviews and two focus groups with tourism and conservation stakeholders from the US-Mexico border. The findings revealed how abundant social and environmental justice issues, such as unequal social and ecological mobility, access to resources, and power relations impact stakeholder attitudes. This study offers a new conceptual framework that considers socioeconomic, cultural, and religious/spiritual ties to a border landscape, aimed at understanding the injustices related to stakeholder in tourism development and ecological restoration initiatives. The equitable distribution of benefits derived from tourism and landscape restoration is further emphasized in the conceptual framework, as is the need for expanding social and ecological mobility. The paper contributes to the political ecology of cross-border tourism destinations by augmenting social and ecological mobility as a critical component of developing nature-based tourism in border areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examined the impact of an environmental justice class positioned against the backdrop of the Flint, Michigan, water crisis. Students questioned the link between the water crisis and environmental and racial injustice, as Flint citizens are largely African American and reside below the poverty line. The inquiry guiding this research centered on how students might use their voices to garner agency due to their participation in this class. The students' narratives became counter-stories; at the end of the course, their counter-stories highlighted a positive relationship between students' agency and their desire to become involved in the democratic process. The findings illustrate how participatory projects, ones that students direct themselves, can result in students' feelings of anxiety and complicate the role of the teacher in shaping the curriculum. The discussion examines curriculum design and place-based education adjacent to the complex undertaking of civic engagement with students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use novel information about fixture-specific water lead levels (WLLs) in Portland, Oregon schools to explore inequalities in students' potential for exposure to lead in drinking water at school. We find that Black and Hispanic students were in classrooms with higher WLLs than white students primarily because they attended different schools. The elevated exposure of students with non-English first languages was also largely driven by sorting into different schools, although there were marginally significant differences between students within the same school. Our findings underscore the importance of broadly targeted remediation efforts like those implemented in Portland to address environmental injustices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of rapid environmental change, restoration will need to emphasize innovative approaches that support the long‐term resilience of social and ecological systems. To this end, we highlight the critical, but often overlooked, role of adaptive capacity, which enables restoration practice, governance, and target ecosystems to adapt to directional environmental change. We identify three core attributes of adaptive capacity: (1) diversity, (2) connectivity, and (3) flexibility. For each attribute, we describe key strategies, including enhancing mechanisms of ecological memory, facilitating the generation of beneficial novelty, and developing governance structures that are flexible and anticipatory. These core attributes can also lead to maladaptive outcomes; careful consideration of a social‐ecological system's resilience and vulnerabilities to environmental change will likely be critical to avoid unwanted outcomes. Ultimately, implementing strategies that increase adaptive capacity can bolster restoration efficacy as it seeks to confront the global challenge of rapid environmental change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wildfire events have increased in frequency and severity across the United States in recent decades. While a growing literature has documented the effects of wildfire smoke exposure on a wide range of health and socioeconomic outcomes, little is known about its impact on consumer behavior and household demand for adaptation in healthcare. We combine a newly developed and digitized dataset on daily wildfire smoke PM2.5 concentrations across the contiguous United States from 2006 to 2019 with weekly NielsenIQ retail scanner data to quantify how wildfire smoke exposure affects retail sales of air purifiers, bottled water, cold remedies, nasal products, cough products, and nutritional products. We find a positive and statistically significant impact of wildfire smoke exposure on the retail sales of these products. Dynamic effects are evident as wildfire smoke exposure in previous weeks also increases current sales. Nonlinear effects arising from the varying intensity of wildfire smoke exposure also reveal distinct patterns of demand for adaptation. We further explore how the effects of wildfire smoke exposure vary with socio-demographic characteristics, focusing on social vulnerability and highlighting the implications of environmental justice. Our results underscore the need for proactive policies to address the increased demand for emergency supplies and healthcare products as household adaptive measures during the wildfire season, particularly targeting socioeconomically vulnerable populations who may be prone to limited access to preventive measures against wildfire smoke. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mary Evelyn Tucker, Co-Director of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, shares her journey from teaching in Japan to founding the Harvard Conference series on World Religions and Ecology, which led to the establishment of the Yale Forum. She discusses the impact of Pope Francis's Encyclical Laudato Si' on environmental and human concerns, emphasizing the importance of integrating moral values and ethics into environmental studies. The field of religion and ecology has seen significant growth over the past 25 years, with an increasing focus on graduate programs, ecojustice initiatives, and grassroots projects. The Yale Center for Environmental Justice addresses environmental inequities, drawing on religious influences to advocate for marginalized communities. [Extracted from the article]

This article presents the findings of the People's Tribunal on Pesticide Use and Civil Rights (Lindsay, California, September 2023) which provides a nuanced account of the mechanisms by which the state perpetuates/organizes limited response to environmental harms. We apply a "slow violence" lens to community testimony, further informed by interviews and focus groups in English and Spanish, which included officials, scientists focusing on pesticide use and exposure, community leaders, and farmworkers. "Slow violence" illuminates practices and institutions that sustain, routinize, and normalize suffering over time. Ongoing and pervasive civil rights violations on farms and in agricultural communities are only identifiable via slow observation and differ from the "disparate impact" frame of civil rights practice in environmental law. Our results call for social scientists and legal scholars to revisit claims of intentional discrimination rather than disparate impact and point to the potential for civil rights enforcement by state agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Youth engagement in urban planning research and practice can help reveal their distinct experiences, priorities, and provide direction for future action. Environmental justice scholarship has documented critical insights learned from youth co-researchers. This article adds to this tradition by exploring how youth in Austin, Texas, experience environmental injustice within the context of gentrification. Using photovoice methods, youth researchers identify and discuss these dual challenges. We illustrate how their emphasis on brokenness links and builds on environmental justice, repair and maintenance, and reparative literatures. Findings also highlight how youth actively work to improve their communities, challenging planning scholarship's tendency to frame youth action as aspirational or as happening in structured, programmatic ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community science has increased in popularity in communities where residents hope to investigate the relationship between environmental issues and personal health. This study partnered with neighborhoods in the most polluted residential zip code in the US to conduct community science air quality monitoring. We conducted 60 semi-structured interviews after two monitoring deployments to understand participants' subjective experiences of pollution exposure, their engagement with low-cost air quality monitors, and their data interpretation. We utilize the environmental health concept 'exposure experience' to analyze how participants use personal monitors, understand their data, and reinterpret their pollution exposure as a result. We further explore how participants' understandings are circumscribed by the technological features of low-cost monitors. We find that participants adopt both protective and mitigating behavioral changes based on information gained from personal experiments and hypothesis testing while using the monitors. Of their own accord, 40% of participants in this study adopted mitigation behaviors after identifying sources that impacted their personal air quality. Our analysis reveals that real-time data accessibility through low-cost monitors builds exposure awareness and enables residents of environmental justice communities to test, validate, or invalidate sensory experiences and challenge existing assumptions. These findings point to specific pathways for using low-cost monitors to support individual decisionmaking and contribute to behavioral change. Findings also identify some limitations of low-cost monitors; designers of low-cost monitors should consider how composite Air Quality Scores may encourage community scientists to equally value scientifically-established pollutants (e.g., PM) with less scientifically-established pollutants (e.g., TVOCs), without additional scientific training and health-related information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines Imbolo Mbue's How Beautiful We Were from the scant critical attention to the question of reading Oil Culture in the light of Climate Change within the context of ecocriticism and narratology. This novel is a powerful commentary on the environmental, social, and epistemic injustices inflicted upon the Kosawa people, whose lives hung between the crossfire of corporate greed and governmental corruption. Employing eco-narratology as a critical lens, this article delves into how Mbue's storytelling reflects and critiques environmental injustices while advocating for collective resistance. By examining the interplay of narrative techniques and ecological themes, this article fills the gap of engaging with the detrimental effects of oil extraction on the environment in the context of climate change, which have been under the radar and considered as a form of spatial amnesia within the realm of oil fiction studies. By intertwining a cluster of concepts, including chronotope, memory, and environmental justice, this analysis enhances our understanding of contemporary petroculture and advocates for a shift in energy consumption and ecological responsibility discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental justice is an important part of the environmental governance system. We use the exogenous shock of the environmental public interest litigation (EPIL) pilot implemented by the Chinese government in 2015 to construct a quasi-natural experiment and employ the difference-in-differences (DID) model to examine the impact and its mechanisms of environmental judicial protection on urban green technology innovation (GTI) with the help of the panel data of 274 cities in China from 2011 to 2019. The results show that the EPIL policy can significantly promote urban GTI. Mechanism tests reveal that the EPIL policy can induce urban GTI by raising public environmental attention (PEA) and strengthening the application of digital technology (DE). Heterogeneous analyses indicate that the promoting effect is more significant in eastern cities, southern cities, cities with higher administrative levels, larger cities, and cities with higher economic development levels. Our study not only enriches the relevant literature in the field of 'law and economics', but also provides a reference for policymakers to scientifically implement EPIL policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Greater Fifth Ward (GFW) is a Northeast Houston, Texas, neighborhood with a legacy of industrial contamination and a confirmed cancer cluster. To understand self-rated health in the GFW, community-based participatory research (CBPR), was used to promote the inclusion of all partners. CBPR involves the community during each stage of the research process from design to research dissemination. A complete census was conducted, and 114 surveys were obtained in the environmental justice (EJ) community from July to November 2021. EJ communities shoulder an unfair burden of environmental exposures, pollution, and poor built environments. Mental and physical health were measured using the validated 12-item Short Form Health Survey (SF-12v2). We posited that the Black or African American (Black/AA) community would have lower mental composite scores (MCS) and physical composite scores (PCS) compared to the nation and their White counterparts. The MCS and PCS were calculated and compared against the national mean. Overall, participants had higher MCS and lower PCS than the national mean. Black/AA males and females had lower MCS compared to their White counterparts. White females had the lowest PCS among all respondents, significantly lower than the national average. MCS was lower among those who lived in the neighborhood longer. Burdens from pollution may impact residents' health and perceived health. Targeted interventions or programs that improve mental or physical health would benefit this community and other inequitably burdened neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community science has increased in popularity in communities where residents hope to investigate the relationship between environmental issues and personal health. This study partnered with neighborhoods in the most polluted residential zip code in the US to conduct community science air quality monitoring. We conducted 60 semi-structured interviews after two monitoring deployments to understand participants’ subjective experiences of pollution exposure, their engagement with low-cost air quality monitors, and their data interpretation. We utilize the environmental health concept ‘exposure experience’ to analyze how participants use personal monitors, understand their data, and reinterpret their pollution exposure as a result. We further explore how participants’ understandings are circumscribed by the technological features of low-cost monitors. We find that participants adopt both protective and mitigating behavioral changes based on information gained from personal experiments and hypothesis testing while using the monitors. Of their own accord, 40% of participants in this study adopted mitigation behaviors after identifying sources that impacted their personal air quality. Our analysis reveals that real-time data accessibility through low-cost monitors builds exposure awareness and enables residents of environmental justice communities to test, validate, or invalidate sensory experiences and challenge existing assumptions. These findings point to specific pathways for using low-cost monitors to support individual decisionmaking and contribute to behavioral change. Findings also identify some limitations of low-cost monitors; designers of low-cost monitors should consider how composite Air Quality Scores may encourage community scientists to equally value scientifically-established pollutants (e.g., PM) with less scientifically-established pollutants (e.g., TVOCs), without additional scientific training and health-related information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this editorial, we discuss the need for a new, long-term strategy for managing human excrement (feces and urine) to facilitate health equity and promote environmental sustainability. Human excrement composting (HEC), a human-directed process driven by highly variable and diverse microbiomes, provides a means to advance this need and we discuss how microbiome science can help to advance HEC research. We argue that the technological advancements that have driven the growth of microbiome science, including microbiome and untargeted metabolome profiling, can be leveraged to enhance our understanding of safe and efficient HEC. We conclude by presenting our perspective on how we can begin applying these technologies to develop accessible procedures for safe HEC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban greening is not a neutral intervention on the social fabric. Critical analyses of the green city often concentrate on greening's top-down, hegemonic, and large-scale manifestations while neglecting the role of social movements. Aiming to address this gap, we ground discussions of "urbanized nature" within discussions of radical spatial imaginaries, concentrating on their performativity. We propose "counter-mapping" as an engaged methodology, developed with local activists, to illuminate radical green imaginaries. Examining 13 environmental justice struggles in Barcelona, we find place imaginaries to be tied to preserving unique sites, linking historical trauma to fears of future spatial fixes, and projecting inclusive, liveable neighborhoods as ideal futures. This study underscores the importance of comprehending how resistance to the prevailing "green-paradox" manifests in local contexts. Through this exercise, we might help make clearer the axes of common/divergent imaginaries and forge alliances, dialogues, and reflection among local movements and decision makers in Barcelona and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a content analysis of 147 picturebooks published from 2016 to 2022 this article examines whose and which stories are told regarding environmental justice and how educators can honor multiple identities in their instruction advocacy and actions toward climate justice. The study begins with findings from the analysis across the larger text set of environmental texts in response to the focal questions of environmentalism and environmental justice. It continues with an analysis of three focal picturebooks spanning various global settings. This article advocates for educators caregivers and librarians to foster a critical lens with young readers as they engage with environmental texts to raise critique envision hope and promote action. We highlight the value of diverse children's literature around environmentalism and environmental justice to support children to delve into the existing breadth of experiences and narratives in known and lesser-known texts. We argue for the need to read across environmentalism picturebooks broadly to foster a more inclusive view of what environmental stewardship is and can be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Actualidad Jurídica Ambiental is the property of CIEMAT, through its Centro Internacional de Estudios de Derecho Ambiental (CIEDA) 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.)

Recent rapid and unexpected cost reductions in decarbonization technologies have accelerated the cost-effective decarbonization of the US economy, with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions falling by 20% from 2005 to 2020. The literature on US economy-wide decarbonization focuses on maximizing long-term GHG emissions reduction strategies that rely mostly on renewable energy expansion, electrification, and efficiency improvements to achieve net-zero GHG emissions by 2050. While these studies provide a valuable foundation, further research is needed to properly support decarbonization policy development and implementation. In this review, we identify key decarbonization analysis gaps and opportunities, including issues related to cross-sectoral linkages, spatial and temporal granularity, consumer behavior, emerging technologies, equity and environmental justice, and political economy. We conclude by discussing the implications of these analysis gaps for US decarbonization pathways and how they relate to challenges facing major global emitters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facing the world's ecological, economic, and social challenges requires us to connect the concepts of justice, sustainability, and transitions. Bridging and discussing heterogeneous fields, we argue that these concepts need to complement each other, and we present just sustainability transitions (JUSTRAs) to do so. To define JUSTRAs, we review the state-of-the-art literature, focusing on the understanding of these three concepts and their pairings in various disciplinary fields and empirical settings (e.g., environmental justice, just transitions, sustainability transitions, energy justice, food justice, urban justice). We center marginalized voices to highlight the processes of radical transformative change that JUSTRAs seek. We offer three analytical lenses that further the understanding of JUSTRAs: politics, power, and prefiguration. We argue that these complementary lenses are necessary to remake the world in both critical and pragmatic ways. Finally, we present a research agenda on JUSTRAs, foregrounding three complementary modes of inquiry: analyzing, critiquing, designing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This symposium explores the intersection of environmental justice and rhetoric, focusing on the impacts of industrial pollution on marginalized communities and the importance of engagement and collaboration with communities. It discusses the challenges of balancing academic accountability with community needs and offers case studies and insights into engaged environmental justice research. The text also discusses the potential of urban parks to promote spatial justice and the importance of inclusivity and justice in park design. It emphasizes the need to center indigenous perspectives and knowledge in understanding and addressing environmental issues. The text also explores the use of storytelling and archival research in engaging students with environmental justice and promoting civic participation. It discusses two separate projects, one on place-based pedagogy and the other on a transdisciplinary community science initiative. Both projects emphasize the importance of diverse perspectives and challenging colonial power relations. The text also discusses the Urban Bird Project, which aims to engage with local and migratory birds and foster community engagement and social action. It emphasizes the importance of pluralizing knowledge and practices and recognizing diverse perspectives. The text concludes by discussing the concept of relational accountability and the importance of genuine care, respect, and responsibility for others in environmental justice work. It calls for breaking academic rhythms and rethinking collaboration. The text also addresses the need to address inequalities in access to parks and advocates for policy change. Overall, it encourages readers to consider coalitions that can protect sacred places, precarious people, and the shared planet. [Extracted from the article]

The article explores the concept of engaged scholarship and its significance in addressing challenges in humanities fields at universities. Engaged scholarship involves collaborating with organizations and activists to produce socially impactful research. It acknowledges the need for inclusivity and diversity in public discourse and governance, while cautioning against assuming the inherent justice of community-based organizations. The article also highlights the importance of critical transparency and accountability, as well as the need to disrupt dominant institutions and power relations for greater equity, justice, and planetary wellbeing. It discusses the challenges faced by scholars in engaged scholarship and emphasizes the importance of building relationships and engaging in relational organizing for effective social change. The article provides examples of engaged scholarship and calls for increased engagement in response to ongoing crises. [Extracted from the article]

The formal engagement of diverse stakeholder groups in policy design and implementation has become a mainstay governance strategy. While much has been learned about collaborative governance arrangements in terms of their structure, processes, and participant dynamics, one particularly salient dynamic has been relatively underexplored: the factors contributing to sustained participation in collaborative venues. Public administration and policy have developed a variety of conceptual theories which draw attention to interpersonal interactions and the ability of stakeholders to garner political wins as important contributing factors to sustained participation. In this article, we test four theoretically rooted hypotheses to investigate stakeholder attendance in the collaborative governance case of an environmental justice council. We analyze council meeting minute data using computational text analysis tools and a Stochastic Actor-Oriented Model to assess: (1) conflict and concord, measured in terms of repeated (dis)agreement with others and (2) interest advancement, or the extent to which a stakeholder makes positive, neutral, and negative comments toward topics which become the council's annual objectives in relation to an individual's attendance. Our interpersonal interaction results show that increased positive relationships are associated with increased attendance, and increased negative relationships are associated with decreased attendance, but, for both cases, only when interactions are repeated and not one-off. Our interest advancement results show: (1) an increase in supported annual objectives is associated with decreases in attendance for an individual stakeholder, but (2) increased oppositional and neutral annual topics are associated with a greater likelihood of attendance. This article contributes to existing scholarship on collaborative governance by offering additional insights into individual factors associated with sustained engagement in the collaborative venue. Furthermore, the article offers a generalizable methodological approach for analyzing these dynamics drawing on computational text analysis of meeting minute data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this theoretical paper is to provide a praxis oriented example of a qualitative methodology called portraiture for environmental justice and critical environmental education. The five essential elements for a portraiture study are context, voice, relationship, emergent themes, and aesthetic whole. Context is the frame, thus environmental exclusion and the field's exclusionary past is first examined. Portraiture gives back power and voice to people with marginalized identities in the environmental space, which includes the researcher's voice as a fourth-generation Japanese American woman, and the voices of other diverse environmental educators and activists. The aesthetic whole demonstrates the importance of attending to voice in environmental education and shows portraiture is fundamental to understanding diverse educators' perceptions of their environmental science agency, which is defined as "learning science while doing science, which can foster environmental stewardship, civic participation, and meaningful science learning" (Ballard et al., 2018, p. 6). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although urban greenspace enhances ecological functioning and human well-being through ecosystem services (ES), it is oftentimes inequitably distributed. Environmental justice (EJ) encompasses aspects of distributive, procedural, and interactive justice related to accessibility and allocation of environmental benefits. Vacant land in shrinking cities has the potential to address greenspace inequalities and provide ES. This study investigated the perceptions of residents regarding urban ES and EJ in their communities in St. Louis (MO, USA)—a shrinking city that was undergoing green development, through semi-structured interviews. Altogether, 27 residents were selected from socio-economically disadvantaged neighborhoods characterized by high levels of vacancy due to legacies of redlining and systemic racism. Interview analysis revealed four themes: green benefits (including recreation opportunities), green costs (e.g., concerns for increased crime and nuisance animals), injustice issues (e.g., access to community greenspaces), and changes in the community (e.g., higher property taxes). Results revealed that residents perceived ES as closely connected with EJ when it comes to urban greening projects in their city. This study helps inform the process of urban greening projects, particularly in shrinking cities at risk of inequities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Olmsted was an influential landscape architect whose works include many parks, recreation grounds and more. Inspired by Romantic and transcendentalist thinkers, he developed 'pastoral transcendentalism', a style of designing parks that mimicked natural spaces to reproduce their values within cities. Although environmental justice scholars have pointed out how these designs limit access to parks, I argue that environmental philosophers have not adequately discussed Olmsted, particularly his axiology of nature. Reflecting on it reveals how environmental injustice consists not only of restricting access to nature to protect its essential value – for Olmsted, scenery that could induce a contemplative mindset – but in delimiting nature's value without consideration of how people actually appreciate it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Environmental & Social Management Journal / Revista de Gestão Social e Ambiental is the property of Environmental & Social Management Journal 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.)

Global environmental crises demand scaled-up investment in education about planetary health. We identified college and university programs in the United States that focus on the human-animal-ecosystem nexus by systematically searching the 2023–2024 catalogs of more than 1000 schools. We identified four frequently-used curricular models: (1) One Health programs offered by universities with veterinary and agriculture schools that emphasize zoonotic diseases, antimicrobial resistance, food safety, and wildlife conservation; (2) climate change and health (climate medicine) programs for graduate and professional students at large universities with medical and public health schools; (3) global environmental public health programs focused on pollution and other exposures; and (4) sustainability and health programs emphasizing food security, environmental justice, and other health issues that can be improved with ethical design and engineering. Highlighting the shared goals of these distinct academic models may help make planetary health a more visible area of teaching, research, and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]