2018 Conference

Individual Paper Presentation

Cities and states are central sites of locational conflict involving environmental justice communities. Over the last two decades environmental justice researchers focused intense attention on empirical evidence of disparate, disproportionate and cumulative impacts of environmental burdens which are the heart of distributive injustice claims put forth by the environmental justice movement. While the understanding of these cumulative impacts has improved over time, the regulatory, procedural and planning responses to these complex impacts are less developed. This research focuses on advances that environmental justice movement activists and scholars have made to address cumulative impacts at the local and state levels including municipal ordinances, state regulatory policies and movement organizing tactics. Case studies of Newark, New Jersey's Environmental Justice & Cumulative Impacts ordinance and California's Cumulative Impacts Screening Tools will be highlighted to showcase the potential for local and state interventions led by frontline communities. These municipal ordinances, planning and policy tools and organizing strategies focused on cumulative impacts go beyond distributive claims of injustice and begin to chip away at the structural underpinnings that entrench racially segregated and polluted spaces through seemingly neutral zoning, regulatory and development practices. Absent affirmative federal action on environmental justice, state and local actions led by those most impacted will be critical to advancing the goals of environmental justice. Model ordinances, policy tools and cases will be shared for wide dessimination.