Environmental Justice and Environmental Sustainability: Beyond Environment and Beyond Law
This post was co-authored with Shannon Roesler, a Professor of Law at the University of Oklahoma City School of Law. Before joining the law school faculty, she served as a law clerk to the Honorable Deanell Reece Tacha on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. She was also a staff attorney and teaching fellow in the International Women’s Human Rights Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center and a visiting faculty member at the University of Kansas School of Law. Read her University bio. This post is part of a series of essays from the Environmental Law Collaborative on the theme "Environmental Law. Disrupted." It was originally published on Environmental Law Prof Blog.
Since the dawn of the environmental justice movement, we have heard the stories of individuals and communities left unprotected by our environmental laws and policies. Their stories reveal the deep-seated structures of racism and inequality that determine what resources and which people environmental law will protect. Despite risks to the cultural and natural resources of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, the federal government allowed the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline. When officials in Flint, Michigan, a majority-minority city where 40 percent …
Originally published in The Regulatory Review as part of a series on social justice and the green economy. Reprinted with permission.
The reactions to our article, Inequality, Social Resilience, and the Green Economy, have a clear message: We, environmentalists, have our work cut out for us.
We wrote our article to start an overdue conversation about environmental policy and social and economic well-being, and we thank our commentators for joining us in starting this conservation. In response, we would note that, although protecting the environment and achieving justice has never been easy, the United States has made progress over time. We are persuaded, despite the caveats our commentators have identified, that the country can do so again.
Michael P. Vandenbergh warns of the political danger of tying the environmental agenda to social well-being in our current political state, and we agree with this warning for all of …
Originally published in The Regulatory Review as part of a series on social justice and the green economy. Reprinted with permission.
A recent study tells us that Hurricane Maria, which struck Puerto Rico in September 2017, may have caused as many as 4,600 deaths, far exceeding the initial official death toll of 64. In contrast, contemporaneous hurricanes in Texas and Florida appear to have caused far fewer deaths: 88 in Texas and 75 in Florida.
The differing outcomes bring home the importance of Sidney A. Shapiro and Robert R. M. Verchick’s recent article, which explores the way that underlying social vulnerability determines the impacts of major environmental transitions.
Just as a hurricane’s consequences differ dramatically depending on many socioeconomic factors—including infrastructure, access to medical care, and financial resources—the consequences of a shift to a green economy will differ based on the impacted …
This post is part of CPR's From Surviving to Thriving: Equity in Disaster Planning and Recovery report.
On October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy made landfall on the New Jersey shore, claiming dozens of lives and destroying or damaging more than 300,000 homes. Properties along the shore were especially hard hit, with many oceanfront homes lifted off their foundations and tossed inland. All told, business losses were estimated at more than $30 billion. While no single storm event can be entirely attributed to climate change, Hurricane Sandy is precisely the kind of severe storm event that scientists predict will become more frequent in the era of climate change.
One issue raised by Hurricane Sandy — and the prospect of other, potentially even more severe storms in the future — is how to keep residents and businesses (and their occupants) out of harm’s way. This question in turn implicates …
This is the first in a series of posts from CPR's new From Surviving to Thriving: Equity in Disaster Planning and Recovery report and provides a preview of the preface and executive summary. From September 6-26, CPR will post a new chapter from the report each weekday on CPRBlog. The full report, including a downloadable PDF, will also be available on CPR's website.
Preface: An Ounce of Prevention
The story is now familiar. An area of the United States is battered by a superstorm, hurricane, or other climate disaster, resulting in a calamity for the people who live and work there. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) offers emergency assistance, but since it is not enough to address the harms that occurred, Congress acts to provide hundreds of millions of dollars of additional assistance.
But imagine a counter-narrative, with a significantly better outcome. In that story, we …
