abstract: Decades of research confirms that urban green spaces in the form of parks, gardens, and urban forests provide numerous environmental and social services including microclimate regulation, noise reduction, rainwater drainage, stress amelioration, etc. In post-industrial megacities of the twenty-first century, densely populated, violent and heavily polluted such as Mexico City, having access to safe and well-maintained green public space is in all respects necessary for people to maintain or improve their quality of life. However, according to recent reports by the Mexican Ministry of Environment, green public spaces in Mexico City are insufficient and unevenly distributed across the sixteen boroughs of the Mexican Distrito Federal. If it is known that parks are essential urban amenities, why are green public spaces in Mexico City scarce and so unevenly distributed? As a suite of theoretical frameworks, Urban Political Ecology (UPE) has been used to study uneven urban development and its resulting unequal socio-ecological relations. UPE explores the complex relationship between environmental change, socio-economic urban characteristics and political processes. This research includes a detailed analysis of the distributive justice of green public space (who gets what and why) based on socio-spatial data sets provided by the Environment and Land Management Agency for the Federal District. Moreover, this work went beyond spatial data depicting available green space (m2/habitant) and explored the relation between green space distribution and other socio-demographic attributes, i.e. gender, socio-economic status, education and age that according to environmental justice theory, are usually correlated to an specific (biased) distribution of environmental burdens and amenities. Moreover, using archival resources complemented with qualitative data generated through in-depth interviews with key actors involved in the creation, planning, construction and management of green public spaces, this research explored the significant role of public and private institutions in the development of Mexico City's parks and green publics spaces, with a special focus on the effects of neoliberal capitalism as the current urban political economy in the city. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Geography 2015

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This research seeks to investigate the impact of equitable development strategies on urban environmental justice. I focused on the extent to which the processes that accompany the highly visible large-scale park planning projects promote equity and inclusion in the Rail Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the 11th Street Bridge Park in Washington D.C. This research focuses on natural urban environment settings, with attention given to the development of highly visible parks projects that take at least partial inspiration from New York City’s High Line Park. Park development in underserved neighborhoods can lead to green gentrification. Thus, equity concerns are raised, as the very residents that would benefit the most from environmental improvements such as green space remediation and expansion are more likely to be excluded due to their development. I employed a qualitative methodology utilizing content analysis and 33 in depth interviews were conducted at two park project sites in Philadelphia and Washington D.C. Based on grounded theory, I explored stakeholder attitudes, feelings, and perceptions tied to varied notions of equity and the engagement levels of planning processes connected to park project development. Trust capital emerged as a major theme in the perceived efficacy of development processes that pursue equitable goals. This factor fluctuates with stakeholder perceptions of equity and the legitimization of socioeconomic concerns expressed by the community in urban green infrastructure development. This research concludes that the inclusion of an equitable development (ED) process impacts greening project implementation and the individuals involved. / Geography

This thesis utilizes a lens of environmental justice to analyze the history of Portland, Oregon and the formation of the Albina neighborhood in North Portland to understand how this community became a space of environmental inequality. Portland has been a leader in sustainable development, and yet, even with its successes, the city either been unable or unwilling to address the disproportionate impacts of environmental hazardss on low-income and communities of color in Albina. Through an examination of Portland’s history of segregation, stigmatization of Albina and its residents, housing policies, and urban renewal as they relate to Albina, this thesis traces the processes of covert institutional racism that have resulted in Albina being targeted by environmental risks. The environmental inequality faced by the Albina community stems from a history rooted in segregation and the stigmatization of people and place, through blatant racism, conscious policy making, as well as more discrete and unacknowledged forms of racism that serves to perpetuate the social and environmental problems that confront the community. Furthermore, the city’s attempts to address these issues through urban renewal projects have led to the displacement and gentrification of Albina residents. To address these issues of environmental inequality, there must first be an understanding of the processes and institutions that formed and have perpetuated these inequalities.

This thesis employs participatory research in community urban food projects to understand not only what these projects can contribute towards environmental justice but also how the issues they raise influence the way that environmental justice is conceptualised. Following protests in 1970s USA, environmental justice has developed into a protest movement and an area of policy and research that appears to be reconceptualising sustainable development discourses around notions of social justice. In particular, concern has been raised about the inequitable distribution of exposure to environmental pollution and access to environmental resources, exclusion from democratic decision making, and lack of recognition of particular understandings of an experiences of the environment, not only in planning but in the environmental movement itself. Where food has been discussed, it has been almost exclusively in terms of food accessibility, yet the intimate relationship between food, health and the environment and social impacts of the food sector globally, means that it is an important theme in understanding environmental justice. The two main case studies are understood through four conceptual lenses: involvement, access, protection and recognition. Interviews with supplementary cases and representatives of the policy community in Greater Manchester put the case studies into context. The discussion that follows addresses crosscutting themes including the dilemma of relying on volunteers, the importance of recognising cultural differences, and the tensions between pursuing democratic involvement at the same time as adopting health promotion and sustainable development as normative frameworks. In doing so, the food sector is found to pose particular challenges to the development and operationalisation of the environmental just concept. The thesis therefore not only raises important issues and tensions in environmental justice, but also shows how urban food projects can contribute to addressing these.

<p> This dissertation is a collection of stories and experiences from the Tibetan nomads sur-rounding the DzaChu (Mekong River) of Kham, in Qinghai Province. The DzaChu is a sacred area that is threatened by climate change. The author uses mindful inquiry as the basis of this ethnographic study. Long term participatory observation and over thirty fo-cus groups within the DzaChu Watershed point to the thesis: Climate Change is one of the greatest threats to the Tibetan nomadic culture and to Asia&rsquo;s magnificent Mekong River. It is the aim of this dissertation to demonstrate the impact of climate change on the Tibetan nomads and the critical need for respectful global relations with this precious wa-ter source that provides life to millions of humans throughout Asia. Readers are encour-aged to click on the hyperlinks to the photo narrative on Instagram @thepurelandproject and follow the accompanying website www.purelandperspectives.org. The Pureland Pro-ject organization is a part of the action research component of this work, which will move forward from this research to try to implement some of the ideas expressed by the partic-ipants, such as protecting the region as a UNESCO cultural or ecological heritage site.</p>

This thesis investigates the concept of environmental justice (EJ) by tracing its origins, the process of its shaping and reshaping, and its adoption in Taiwan. EJ addresses the phenomenon of disproportionate distribution of environmental risks among social groups. As no one can actually “see” how risks are distributed, one has no choice but to rely on scientific (or other) techniques to visualise and then conceptualise these risks. After so doing, EJ has been turned into specific indicators to gauge EJ/injustice and the technical methods to measure it, even though the scope of these concerns is much broader and goes far beyond the technical. Using detailed historical exposition in tandem with interviews, this thesis seeks to demonstrate the processes that have led to the dominant constructions of environmental justice. The main argument of this thesis is that the phenomenon of EJ/injustice is a condensation of power relations/struggle, and the discourses that describe and the measures that gauge it are an expression of this struggle. Specifically, in this thesis I attempt to show that EJ is being constructed through the very process of debate among EJ supporters and with their challengers. Seen from this angle, this thesis shows that the conceptions of EJ differ and are mutable. To say that these conceptions change is not to deny that there is environmental injustice, but to recognise that the key characteristics can be categorised or explained differently. This research discloses that claims about EJ can be framed in much greater variety in terms of identity, difference, territory and governance. This thesis suggests that although understanding EJ through specific indicators and some sorts of techniques are necessary, a just society cannot be achieved through scientific research alone. The question of how much or what sort of data is sufficient to prove the existence of (in)justice is not a scientific one, but a social one. Our research could become much more meaningful if we recognise the specificity and limitations of the dominant approach and if the phenomenon of EJ/injustice is put in context. To achieve this, our intellectual endeavours should be properly conceived as being about a theory of endless political struggles over the issue, rather than simply about “discovering” EJ.