abstract: Low-income communities of color in the U.S. today are often vulnerable to displacement, forced relocation away from the places they call home. Displacement takes many forms, including immigration enforcement, mass incarceration, gentrification, and unwanted development. This dissertation juxtaposes two different examples of displacement, emphasizing similarities in lived experiences. Mixed methods including document-based research, map-making, visual ethnography, participant observation, and interviews were used to examine two case studies in Phoenix, Arizona: (1) workplace immigration raids, which overwhelmingly target Latino migrant workers; and (2) the Loop 202 freeway, which would disproportionately impact Akimel O'odham land. Drawing on critical geography, critical ethnic studies, feminist theory, carceral studies, and decolonial theory, this research considers: the social, economic, and political causes of displacement, its impact on the cultural and social meanings of space, the everyday practices that allow people to survive economically and emotionally, and the strategies used to organize against relocation. Although raids are often represented as momentary spectacles of danger and containment, from a worker's perspective, raids are long trajectories through multiple sites of domination. Raids' racial geographies reinforce urban segregation, while traumatization in carceral space reduces the power of Latino migrants in the workplace. Expressions of care among raided workers and others in jail and detention make carceral spaces more livable, and contribute to movement building and abolitionist sentiments outside detention. The Loop 202 would result in a loss of native land and sovereignty, including clean air and a mountain sacred to O'odham people. While the proposal originated with corporate desire for a transnational trade corridor, it has been sustained by local industry, the perceived inevitability of development, and colonial narratives about native people and land. O'odham artists, mothers, and elders counter the freeway's colonial logics through stories that emphasize balance, collective care over individual profit, and historical consciousness. Both raids and the freeway have been contested by local grassroots movements. Through political education, base-building, advocacy, lawsuits, and protest strategies, community organizations have achieved changes in state practice. These movements have also worked to create alternative spaces of safety and home, rooted in interpersonal care and Latino and O'odham culture. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Environmental Social Science 2014

abstract: Residents of the United States increasingly support organic and local food systems. New Social Movement theorists have described alternative agriculture as a social movement that transcends social class. Other scholars have critiqued alternative agriculture for catering to a middle-class, white public. Simultaneously, geographers have identified communities across the United States that struggle with reduced access to healthy fruits and vegetables. In some of these neighborhoods, known as “food deserts,” local groups are redefining an inequitable distribution of healthy food as a social injustice, and they have begun initiatives to practice “food justice.” The overarching research questions of this study are: 1) How do communities become food deserts? 2) How do food justice movements crystallize and communities practice food justice? 3) What are the social outcomes of food justice movements? Using an Ecology of Actors framework, this study analyzes the actors and operational scales of three food justice movements in Phoenix, Arizona. A narrative analysis of historical scholarly materials and other artifacts reveals that, for more than a century, some communities have tried to create minority-operated local food systems. However, they were thwarted by racist policies and market penetration of the conventional US food system. Interviews with residents, garden organizers and food justice advocates living and working in the city create a narrative of the present day struggle for food justice. Results of this work show that contemporary residents describe their foodscape as one of struggle, and carless residents rely upon social networks to access healthy food. Garden organizers and gardeners are creating networks of community gardens, market gardens, and informal farmers’ markets. They are actively transforming their communities’ landscapes with sophisticated garden ecology in an intense urban heat island. However, the movement’s continued success may be threatened. Many new Phoenix-based local food coalitions and national alternative agriculture social movements are now working to alter Phoenix’s foodscape. Composed of well-educated professionals, who have adopted a justice-based language around food, these organizations may unintentionally co-opt the local food justice movements. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Anthropology 2015

Equal accessibility to green space for urban residents is not a given. This thesis research has aimed to identify how urban residents that move using a wheelchair organise their visits to various types of green space located at different distances, focussing on the use value and synergy between such green spaces. A qualitative approach has been applied to address this aim, using the yet rather unestablished photo elicitation method to explore the experience of wheelchair users in green space. The data demonstrated that wheelchair users have a standard set of green spaces that are frequently visited, which can be organised in the portfolio of natural places framework. Furthermore, the findings identify the accessibility of green space for wheelchair users as an environmental justice issue, proposing implications for inclusive green spaces of varying type and located at different distances. This study forms a way forward to the integration of disability studies and environmental justice literature, has generated a better understanding of the accessibility and use value of green space for wheelchair users and can serve as a springboard for further studies in urban planning that consider an integrated approach to green space, shifting the focus beyond people’s direct residential environment.

How do transitions to sustainability emerge? Save Rosia Montana Campaign is a representative socio-environmental movement, that cancelled an open-cast gold mining project in the urban-village of Rosia Montana, Romania. After almost 20 years of conflict with the mining project initiators, the people that oppose mining are now struggling for implementing tourism as an alternative development of the place, that could allow the possibility of sustainable development. The research aims to assess the extent that Rosia Montana represents an example of an environmental conflict that generates change towards sustainable development. The paper reconstructs the history of conflict around Rosia Montana by using the theoretical framework of ecological distribution conflict, while it's investigating the outcomes that this struggle produced. By revealing the visions of sustainable development and the challenges experienced by the opposition to mining, we can understand the notion of alternatives in conflict. The alternatives to development from Rosia Montana are questioning conventional perceptions of development and democracy, while requesting social transformation for meeting their needs and enhancing their quality of life.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-07T14:49:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 1902667 bytes, checksum: b53ea90e8a85053e1029051180b6d460 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-02-23 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This research focuses on the Theater of the Oppressed as a tool for Environmental Education. Although the initial motivation of this theater technique was to discuss the oppressive relationships between human beings, our work had the intention to understand how this methodology can be undertaken with a group of students in a public school to talk about the environmental crisis. Our research was made with a group of volunteer students from the Professor Antônio Gomes Middle and High School, located in the neighborhood of Mutirão-Bayuex/PB during the second semester of 2008 and the first semester of 2009. Throughout this time, we coordinated thirty workshops on the Theater of the Oppressed techniques and discussed themes connected to the environment on each acti vity. At the end of each semester , the group presented a play focusing on the garbage on the school grounds and class rooms and on the devastati on the Mata do Xém-xém State Park, located in the same neighborhood. At the beginning of our research and at the end of our workshops, we applied questionnaires with the Eighth, Ninth, Eleventh and Twelfth grade students to discover if there was an increase in the level of understanding of environmental problems and concepts like nature, environment and environmental education. Our research confirms that the Theater of the Oppressed can be a tool to facilitate a critical Environmental Education and promote Environmental Justice in a participatory method. / Este trabalho tem o seu foco na utilização do Teatro do Oprimido como instrumento para a Educação Ambiental. Embora a finalidade inicial desta técnica teatral fosse lidar com as relações de poder opressivas entre os seres humanos, a nossa pesquisa teve a intenção de compreender como esta metodologia pode ser levada aos alunos de uma escola pública para discutir a problemática ambiental. Nossa investigação foi realizada com um grupo de educandos voluntários da Escola Estadual de Ensino Fundamental e Médio Professor Antônio Gomes, localizada no Bairro do Mutirão-Bayeux/PB no segundo semestre de 2008 e no primeiro semestre de 2009. Durante este período, coordenamos trinta oficinas lúdico-pedagógicas e discutimos temas ligados a questão ambiental a cada atividade. Ao final de cada semestre, o grupo apresentou peças teatrais com a temática do lixo na escola e sobre a degradação do Parque Estadual da Mata do Xém-xém, localizado no mesmo bairro. Para averiguar o resultado da pesquisa, foram aplicados questionários com as turmas dos 8° e 9° Anos do Ensino Fundamental e das 1ª e 2ª Séries do Ensino Médio ao início e ao término do nosso trabalho, onde pudemos constatar um crescimento no nível de entendimento da maioria dos educandos das referidas turmas acerca da problemática ambiental e de conceitos como natureza, meio ambiente e educação ambiental, confirmando que o Teatro do Oprimido pode ser utilizado como ferramenta pedagógica para facilitar uma Educação Ambiental crítica e promover a Justiça Ambiental de forma participativa.

abstract: Following harsh economic and political reforms in the 1990s, Peru became a model of a neoliberal state based on natural resource extraction. Since then social and environmental conflicts between local communities and the extractive industry, particularly mining corporations, have multiplied resulting in violent clashes and a shared perception that the state is not guaranteeing people's rights. At the crossroads of the struggle between mining corporations and local communities lay different ways of living and relating to nature. This research concerns water conflict in an urban mining setting. More precisely, this research critically analyzes water conflict in the city of Arequipa as a backdrop for revealing what water injustices look like on the ground. With one million inhabitants, Arequipa is the second largest city in Peru. Arequipa is also home to the third largest copper mine in Peru. On June 2006, social organizations and political authorities marched in protest of the copper mine's acquisition of additional water rights and its use of a tax exemption program. In the aftermath of large protests, the conflict was resolved through a multi-actor negotiation in which the mine became, through a public-private partnership, co-provider of urban water services. Through a unique interdisciplinary theoretical approach and grounded on ethnographic methods I attempt to expose the complexity of water injustice in this particular case. My theoretical framework is based on three large fields of study, that of post-colonial studies, political ecology and critical studies of law. By mapping state-society-nature power relations, analyzing structures of oppression and unpacking the meaning of water rights, my research unveils serious water injustices. My first research finding points to the existence of a racist and classist system that excludes poor and marginal people from water services and from accessing the city. Second, although there are different social and cultural interpretations of water rights, some interpretations hold more power and become hegemonic. Water injustice, in this regard manifests by the rise in power of the economic view of water rights. Finally, neoliberal reforms prioritizing development based on the extractive industries and the commodification of nature are conducive to water injustices. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Justice Studies 2012

abstract: Cordon pricing strategies attempt to charge motorists for the marginal social costs of driving in heavily congested areas, lure them out of their vehicles and into other modes, and thereby reduce vehicle miles traveled and congestion-related externalities. These strategies are gaining policy-makers` attention worldwide. The benefits and costs of such strategies can potentially lead to a disproportionate and inequitable burden on lower income commuters, particularly those commuters with poor accessibility to alternative modes of transportation. Strategies designed to mitigate the impacts of cordon pricing for disadvantaged travelers, such as discount and exemptions, can reduce the effectiveness of the pricing strategy. Transit improvements using pricing fee revenues are another mitigation strategy, but can be wasteful and inefficient if not properly targeted toward those most disadvantaged and in need. This research examines these considerations and explores the implications for transportation planners working to balance goals of system effectiveness, efficiency, and equity. First, a theoretical conceptual model for analyzing the justice implications of cordon pricing is presented. Next, the Mobility Access and Pricing Study, a cordon pricing strategy examined by the San Francisco County Transportation Authority is analyzed utilizing a neighborhood-level accessibility-based approach. The fee-payment impacts for low-income transportation-disadvantaged commuters within the San Francisco Bay area are examined, utilizing Geographic Information Systems coupled with data from the Longitudinal Employment and Household Dynamics program of the US Census Bureau. This research questions whether the recommended blanket 50% discount for low-income travelers would unnecessarily reduce the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the cordon pricing system. It is proposed that reinvestment of revenue in transportation-improvement projects targeted at those most disproportionately impacted by tolling fees, low-income automobile-dependent peak-period commuters in areas with poor access to alternative modes, would be a more suitable mitigation strategy. This would not only help maintain the efficiency and effectiveness of the cordon pricing system, but would better address income, modal and spatial equity issues. The results of this study demonstrate how the spatial distribution of the toll-payment impacts may burden low-income residents in quite different ways, thereby warranting the inclusion of such analysis in transportation planning and practice. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Environmental Design and Planning 2013

abstract: The act of moving water across basins is a recent phenomenon in Arizona water policy. This thesis creates a narrative arc for understanding the long-term issues that set precedents for interbasin water transportation and the immediate causes--namely the passage of the seminal Groundwater Management Act (GMA) in 1980--that motivated Scottsdale, Mesa, and Phoenix to acquire rural farmlands in the mid-1980s with the intent of transporting the underlying groundwater back to their respective service areas in the immediate future. Residents of rural areas were active participants in not only the sales of these farmlands, but also in how municipalities would economically develop these properties in the years to come. Their role made these municipal "water farm" purchases function as exchanges. Fears about the impact of these properties and the water transportation they anticipated on communities-of-origin; the limited nature of economic, fiscal, and hydrologic data at the time; and the rise of private water speculators turned water farms into a major political controversy. The six years it took the legislature to wrestle with the problem at the heart this issue--the value of water to rural communities--were among its most tumultuous. The loss of key lawmakers involved in GMA negotiations, the impeachment of Governor Evan Mecham, and a bribery scandal called AZScam collectively sidetracked negotiations. Even more critical was the absence of a mutual recognition that these water farms posed a problem and the external pressure that had forced all parties involved in earlier groundwater-related negotiations to craft compromise. After cities and speculators failed to force a bill favorable to their interests in 1989, a re-alignment among blocs occurred: cities joined with rural interests to craft legislation that grandfathered in existing urban water farms and limited future water farms to several basins. In exchange, rural interests supported a bill to create a Phoenix-area groundwater replenishment district that enabled cooperative management of water supplies. These two bills, which were jointly signed into law in June 1991, tentatively resolved the water farm issue. The creation of a groundwater replenishment district that has subsidized growth in Maricopa, Pinal, and Pima Counties, the creation water bank to store unused Central Arizona Project water for times of drought, and a host of water conservation measures and water leases enabled by the passage of several tribal water rights settlements have set favorable conditions such that Scottsdale, Mesa, and Phoenix never had any reason to transport any water from their water farms. The legacy of these properties then is that they were the product of the intense urgency and uncertainty in urban planning premised on assumptions of growing populations and complementary, inelastic demand. But even as per capita water consumption has declined throughout the Phoenix-area, continued growth has increased demand, beyond the capacity of available supplies so that there will likely be a new push for rural water farms in the foreseeable future. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. History 2013

No description available.

Com base nas contribuições de (MARTÍNEZ-ALIER, 2009), (SEN,2009), (ACSELRAD,2009) e (RIBEIRO, 2008), este trabalho investigou o modelo de intervenção promovido pelo Programa Social e Ambiental dos Igarapés de Manaus PROSAMIM realizado com recursos do Governo do Estado do Amazonas e empréstimos contraídos com o Banco Interamericano de Desenvolvimento BID, para intervenções urbanísticas, habitacionais e ambientais em cursos dágua localizados na bacia hidrográfica do Educandos, decretadas, pelo município, como Área de Especial Interesse Social. Projeto urbanístico que se não fosse os 77,26% de deslocamentos, por indenizações, impactando outros cursos dágua, seria um modelo inovador de abordagem socioambiental. Neste contexto a proposta da investigação foi espacializar o fenômeno dos deslocamentos e o pós-reassentamento na dimensão da casa e do urbano para os remanejados em unidades habitacionais no Parque Residencial Manaus e na dimensão do urbano para os reassentados em casas populares nos Conjuntos Habitacionais João Paulo II, Cidadão V, Nova Cidade e Presidente Lula. Cujos resultados, fundamentados em oficinas diagnósticas e dados georreferenciados sinalizaram para as áreas remanescentes fragilidade quanto à adequação do modelo habitacional às especificidades de uma cidade sobre as águas, como é Manaus e à cultura e clima local, impondo novos hábitos de consumo e adequação nas relações sociais, com o novo entorno. Para os reassentados nos quatro Conjuntos Habitacionais, se identificou com as variáveis que as principais ameaças advêm da falta de equipamentos e serviços urbanos mínimos necessários à dignidade humana. Associado aos efeitos adversos ocasionados pela falta de proteção dos recursos hídricos levando ao comprometimento a fauna aquática, a sociedade e os ecossistemas. O método DRUP, orientou as técnicas de pesquisa com as oficinas diagnósticas, pesquisa documental, entrevistas, e registro fotográfico para o recorte temporal do ano de 2003 a 2012. / Based on contributions (MARTÍNEZ-ALIER, 2009), (SEN, 2009), (ACSELRAD,2009) and (RIBEIRO, 2008), this study investigated the intervention model promoted by the Social and Environmental Stream Program of Manaus PROSAMIM, and it was accomplished with resources from Amazonass governement and loans from the Inter-American Development Bank IDB, to urban interventions, housing and environmental in watercourses located in the water basin of Educandos, proclaimed by the town as a Special Area of Social Interest. Urban project that if it werent for the 77.26% of displacements, for indemnities, impacting other watercourses, it would be an innovative model of socio-environmental approach. In this context the proposal of the research was spatialize the phenomenon of displacement and post- resettlement in the dimension of the houses to the relocation of housing units in Parque Residencial Manaus and dimension of the urban people to the resettled citizens in popular houses in the Housing Complexes João Paulo II , Cidadão V, Nova Cidade and President Lula, whose results, based on diagnostic workshops and georeferenced data signaled to remaining weaknesses areas, in relation to the adequacy of housing model to the specifications of a city on the water, such as Manaus and the culture and local climate, imposing new consumption habits and adequacy to social relations, with the new surroundings. For the resettled citizens in the four Housing Complexes, it has been identified, with the variables, that the main threats come from the lack of equipment and minimum urban services necessary for human dignity. Associated with adverse effects caused by the lack of protection of water resources leading to commitment with the aquatic fauna, society and ecosystems. The method DRUP, guided search techniques with diagnostic workshops, data research interviews, and photographic record for the time frame of 2003 to 2012.