Sustainable development assistance organizations (SDAOs) are designed to help interested producers conduct market research, identify clients and more effectively manage the process of moving products to market. Producers of sustainable products are often small business owners and grassroots entrepreneurs that produce and sell natural resource-based goods and services. The broad research question this dissertation explored was whether the decision-making processes employed by producers, staff and board members in an SDAO hold implications for their collective achievement of sustainability. Data collection focused on understanding the various frames through which producers, staff and board members approach their work with, and decision making within, the SDAO as well as how they conceptualize sustainability. This research employed semi-structured, in-depth interviews with growers, staff members and board members involved in one SDAO. The analysis found that producers, staff and board members held a number of competing frames regarding the purposes and objectives of the SDAO as well as concerning the meaning of sustainability. Frames influence the ways that each stakeholder group perceived and participated in decision-making and lead to the institutionalization of tacitly supported decision-making practices. These routines, when viewed through an efficiency lens, lead to quick decision-making, avoided conflict and allowed the SDAO to make decisions with consistency and clarity. When viewed through an environmental justice lens, however, these practices proved exclusionary, favored some elements of sustainability rather than others, and supported some participants more than others. Taken together, the decision-making practices used by Blue Mountain Organic Vegetables limited the organization's capacity to develop a learning culture, created divisions among stakeholders and did not empower stakeholders with commitment to, and responsibility for SDAO decision-making. Consequently, Blue Mountain Organic Vegetables now faces organizational challenges related to the development of commitment, trust and ultimately, resilience, within the organization. The analysis concludes these concerns are potentially critical as these elements are essential for achieving sustainability, as they are also central to the organization's ability to respond to, and overcome, challenges. / Ph. D.

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Over the past decades, the environmental justice movement has developed growing concerns about the unequal distribution of environmental harms and the uneven access to environmental amenities. The movement rapidly became an academic field that has criticised diverse urban sustainability strategies for failing to address environmental justice issues in its three dimensions: recognition, procedure and distribution. Hence, this thesis aims to explore how this concept could be integrated into the planning of Nature-based solutions in cities through advancing conceptual and methodological contributions. Through an extensive revision of academic literature, several setbacks in the inclusion of environmental justice for urban Nature-based solutions are addressed. This information helped operationalise a distributive environmental justice index that could identify intra-urban injustices related to existing and compounding issues such as the overburdening of environmental risk for socially disadvantaged communities and a lack of access to multifunctional green space benefits. Once these injustices are identified, alternative scenarios for implementing Nature-based solutions are assessed by considering relevant urban planning and policy goals. The last part of this thesis focuses on the level of integration of environmental justice in the context of climate change adaptation and mitigation. An extensive review of Urban Climate Action Plans in Latin America reveals that environmental justice concerns are rarely translated into concrete climate actions. Moreover, the transformative potential of Nature-based solutions for ameliorating environmental justice conditions in cities is not fully explored. With these results, potential opportunities and recommendations that could enable environmental justice are discussed, especially highlighting that the integration of diverse social perspectives and realities is integral to the process of giving rise to just and sustainable urban futures.

Environmental justice activists defined an environmental justice, or community-led, research practice as an alternative conception of science to guide epidemiological investigations of the human health effects of hazardous wastes. Activists inserted their position into an ongoing scientific controversy where multiple epidemiologies existed--environmental, dumpsite, and popular--reflecting various understandings and interests of federal and academic epidemiologists, state public health officials, and anti-toxics activists. A 1991 national symposium on health research needs and the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, established in 1993 to advise the Environmental Protection Agency, provided important locations through which activists advocated an environmental justice research approach and pressed for its adoption by relevant governmental public health institutions. The shaping of environmental justice research by activists raises intriguing issues about the role of science and expertise in political protest and the importance of democratic participation in the making of environmental policy. / Ph. D.

Obesity is a growing issue in the United States, and it affects millions of people. Obesity-related illness accounts for billions of dollars in medical expenses each year, heightening the need for prevention and intervention strategies. Physical activity is essential in maintaining a healthy weight, yet population groups have unequal access to physical activity opportunities. This research utilizes an environmental justice framework to examine variations in access and quality of recreational facilities among different socio-demographic groups in Danville, VA. Data for this research include secondary and primary sources. Race data were obtained from the 2010 U.S. Census. The Physical Activity Resource Assessment (PARA) tool was utilized to audit all recreational facilities within the City of Danville for features, amenities, and incivilities. Telephone survey data provided individual level-BMI, physical activity minutes per week, and variables of socioeconomic status, including income, education attainment, employment status, and gender. Analysis included ANOVAs, linear, and bivariate logistic regression. Predominant block group race was a significant predictor of incivilities at physical activity outlets. Proximity to recreational facilities was not a predictor of physical activity or BMI. Interventions must be made to improve the quality of recreational facilities in black or African American block groups. / Master of Science

<p>Claims of injustice in global forest governance are prolific: assertions of colonization, marginalization and disenfranchisement of forest-dependent people, and privatization of common resources are some of the most severe allegations of injustice resulting from globally-driven forest conservation initiatives. At its core, the debate over the future of the world's forests is fraught with ethical concerns. Policy makers are not only deciding how forests should be governed, but also who will be winners, losers, and who should have a voice in the decision-making processes. For 30 years, policy makers have sought to redress the concerns of the world's 1.6 billion forest-dependent poor by introducing rights-based and participatory approaches to conservation. Despite these efforts, however, claims of injustice persist. This research examines possible explanations for continued claims of injustice by asking: What are the barriers to delivering justice to forest-dependent communities? Using data collected through surveys, interviews, and collaborative event ethnography in Laos and at the Tenth Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, this dissertation examines the pursuit of justice in global forest governance across multiple scales of governance. The findings reveal that particular conceptualizations of justice have become a central part of the metanormative fabric of global environmental governance, inhibiting institutional evolution and therewith perpetuating the justice gap in global forest governance.</p> / Dissertation

Despite the fact that women make up a large proportion of participants in the environmental justice movement, the movement is still framed in terms of race and class. This thesis investigates the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, class, and environmental justice. I explore the prominent rolls that women play in grassroots environmental justice movements and the look at the discourses that surround gender and environmental justice through a queer studies and ecofeminist lens. I argue that motherhood narratives—while powerful motivators for activists and effective tools for creating resistance—can create a rhetoric that is exclusionary to people with non-normative sexualities and support heteronormative structures which ultimately hurts the movement. I suggest a new rhetoric that embraces plurality of voices including voices of motherhood—one that is based on an understanding of the connection between the oppression of many groups of people, and that of the environment.