This thesis provides an analytical case study of Huerta del Valle Community Garden as a successful model of redefining social capital through not only providing healthy, affordable, high quality produce to a community subjected to the disproportionate consequences of systemic inequality, but also in incorporating a food justice education framework to underlie all development at the garden. Located in the city of Ontario, Southern California – the heart of the Inland Empire, known for its prominence within the nation’s goods movement industry and its landscape of sprawling warehouses – local residents face high rates of poverty, obesity, and a lack of food access. This research identifies the socio-economic, historical factors that led to Ontario as we know it today. I argue that Ontario was founded upon institutionally racist principles, which set the region up for a future of economic disparity. It is through ‘bottom-up,’ grassroots community organizing that deeply engrained structural barriers are most successfully challenged.

Understanding the short-and long-term impacts of a biomonitoring and exposure project and reporting personal results back to study participants is critical for guiding future efforts, especially in the context of environmental justice. The purpose of this study was to evaluate learning outcomes from environmental communication efforts and whether environmental health literacy goals were met in an environmental justice community. We conducted 14 interviews with parents who had participated in the University of Arizona's Metals Exposure Study in Homes and analyzed their responses using NVivo, a qualitative data management and analysis program. Key findings were that participants used the data to cope with their challenging circumstances, the majority of participants described changing their families' household behaviors, and participants reported specific interventions to reduce family exposures. The strength of this study is that it provides insight into what people learn and gain from such results communication efforts, what participants want to know, and what type of additional information participants need to advance their environmental health literacy. This information can help improve future report back efforts and advance environmental health and justice.

Thesis advisor: Brian J. Gareau / For my dissertation research, I am focused on the sociopolitical relations of electronics disposal, a less-considered but increasingly important stage in the life cycle of electronics. Although much has already been written on the global trade in hazardous wastes, the Basel Convention that regulates this trade, and the environmental injustice of the global waste trade--with wealthy countries dumping the "negative externalities" of their consumption on vulnerable communities in the global South--the reality today appears to be more complex. Regulators in the Basel Convention and the UN Environment Program, as well as civil society actors in industry and NGOs, have an increased interest in promoting the development of markets and infrastructure in high tech e-waste recycling. Historically, e-wastes have been both talked about, and treated as, a toxic and unwanted byproduct of the digital age. However, today key actors in the regulatory, industrial and civil society spheres are now discussing e-wastes as critical "resources" for economic and technological development. I hypothesize that uncovering the economic, technological and geopolitical drivers of this shift will reveal that the global trade in e-wastes can no longer be described as a clear-cut North/South, "perpetrator-victim," scenario, rather, it must be seen as a dynamic process where environmental inequalities are mitigated and reconstituted in new forms and at various sites. I identify two dominant paradigms that scholars, activists, policy makers and industry actors employ in evaluating the global trade in electronic wastes. I label these two paradigms the "environmental justice evaluation" and the "resource capture evaluation." By engaging concepts from global political economy and environmental sociology (particularly, O'Connor 1979; Harvey 2003; Pellow 2003) and applying them to my case, my dissertation attempts to bring a nuanced perspective to the e-waste debate. My initial findings suggest that both of these frameworks do not account for the key economic processes that are driving the e-waste trade. A better understanding of these processes will better illuminate the pathway to finding meaningful solutions to the persistent, presently illegal global trade in discarded electronics. My data consists of a comprehensive examination of meeting archives from the Basel Convention (where the experts and political decision makers on this issue implement policies that affect the global e-waste trade) spanning from 1992 to the present, as well as reviews of the proceedings of other relevant actors in e-waste policy (for example, annual meetings of the global organization StEP, and publications and pamphlets from trade organizations in the US and abroad and publications from the US government). In addition, I conducted semi-structured interviews with 25 key actors in the national regulatory, global regulatory, industry and NGO spheres in order to understand how the key decision makers in the e-waste trade understand the drivers and implications of the shift "from waste to resources." Finally, I draw on ethnographic observations conducted at a pivotal Basel Convention meeting in 2011, where a decision was made that has the potential to fundamentally reshape the Basel Convention and enable increased global trade in discarded electronics through the development of formalized recycling centers in less-developed countries. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

Planering kring markanvändning kan innefatta och påverka flera olika intressen vilket kan lyfta tankar kring rättvisa. Enligt tidigare forskning domineras ofta samiska intressen och perspektiv av andra diskurser och på så sätt reduceras även ett erkännande av det samiska förhållningsättet och samiska rättigheter. Syftet med denna studie har varit att utifrån det teoretiska perspektivet på miljörättvisa undersöka vad samisk miljörättvisa kan vara, för att därefter analysera huruvida samisk miljörättvisa förekommer inom kommunal översiktsplanering. Tidigare forskning pekar på att urfolks krav på miljörättvisa bottnar i behov av erkännande av det relationella synsättet på omgivningen och dess funktion för kultur och traditionella levnadssätt ur ett holistiskt perspektiv. Den samiska miljörättvisan har samma utgångspunkt och menar att landskapet och den icke-mänskliga naturen hänger samman med samisk kultur och näringar i stort, vilket därför kräver ett erkännande av samiska värden och behov tillsammans med välfungerande och bärkraftiga ekologiska miljöer för att säkerställa möjligheten till sociokulturell reproduktion. Undersökningen har baserats på en fallstudie av Gällivare kommuns översiktsplanering och dess centrala plandokument vilka ligger som grund för kommunens långsiktiga planering och förvaltning av mark- och vattenområden. Utifrån ett skapat teoretiskt ramverk på samisk miljörättvisa har en kvalitativ innehållsanalys tillämpats. Studiens resultat visar att delar ur den samiska miljörättvisan går att återfinna i olika sammanhang och kontexter i översiktsplanen, men att den framför allt framträder i relation till rennäringen. Slutsatsen är att det för samisk miljörättvisa i stort saknas flertalet aspekter, med följden av flera samiska värden och behov osynliggörs vilket på sikt enligt ett miljörättviseteoretiskt resonemang kan ha effekter både på proceduriella aspekter och distributiva utfall i ett senare skede vid planläggning kring markanvändning inom kommunens gränser.

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.

L’Ouest du Montana, écrin de nature sauvage dans les montagnes Rocheuses, est depuis les années 1990 au cœur de dynamiques de migrations d’aménités et de gentrification rurale : celles-ci s’appuient sur des récits multiples - fictionnels tout autant que biographiques - qui mettent en scène des trajectoires de vie intimement liées à l’environnement. Réinvesti au nom de nouvelles valeurs dominantes, il constitue aujourd’hui un champ puissant que les individus mobilisent à travers leurs pratiques et représentations. Devenu avant tout support d’activités récréatives plus ou moins distinctives, ou paysage à contempler, l’environnement est déterminant dans la mutation socio-territoriale de l’Old en New West. Or, les dynamiques migratoires contemporaines ne sont ni socialement ni spatialement homogènes, et les inégalités d’accès à l’environnement sont manifestes. Il s’agit alors d’interroger l’existence d’élus et d’exclus dans l’archipel du New West, et plus généralement de soulever l’enjeu des inégalités socio-environnementales dans l’Ouest du Montana. En les analysant au prisme de la grille de lecture « capital environnemental », cette thèse tend alors à saisir le rôle de l’environnement, pensé dans toutes ses dimensions, dans la fabrique socio-territoriale d’un Ouest du Montana en mutation et à interroger la manière dont il génère et entretient de profondes inégalités et injustices. Dans un contexte de fortes recompositions socio-territoriales, il est au cœur de nouveaux investissements stratégiques qui déterminent les rapports de force. / A shrine of wilderness amidst the Rocky Mountains, Western Montana has been at the heart of a dynamic of amenity migration and rural gentrification since the 1990's : fictional and biographical stories support that dynamic and tell of life paths that are intimately tied to the environment. Individuals are now compelled to determine themselves in regard to that powerful field that has been reinvested through prevailing new values. From Old West to New West, social and territorial change is in itself determined by the environment as a field for more and less distinctive recreational activities or as a landscape to contemplate. Nevertheless, contemporary migratory dynamics are neither socially nor spatially equally shared and nor is access to the environment. Let us question the existence of outcast and chosen few in the New West Archipelago and raise the issue of Western Montana social and environmental inequities in general. Using « environmental capital » as a framework to interpret these inequities, this thesis tends to focus on how the environment, in its multiple forms, plays its part in the transformation of Western Montana and how it creates and sustains deep inequities and injustice. In a time of strong social and territorial change the environment is at the heart of new strategic investments that determine the balance of power.

La Frise du Nord est une région de la mer des Wadden située en Allemagne, à la frontière avec le Danemark. Depuis 1991 des agriculteurs et des habitants se sont associés pour acheter et gérer eux-mêmes des éoliennes. Ils ont nommé leurs entreprises « parcs éoliens citoyens ». Elles représentent en 2018, 90% de la capacité éolienne installée en Frise, soit près de 2000MW. Cette thèse est une enquête avec ce, celles et ceux qui ont fabriqué ce paysage énergétique. L’enquête est prise comme méthode pragmatiste qui veut que la solution émerge au fur et à mesure que le problème se précise. Ce faisant, la thèse parcourt, depuis 1975, 40 années de l’expérience des parcs éoliens, qui propose une vision renouvelée des liens entre projets d’énergie et changements climatiques. Ces paysages de l’éolien citoyen, pensés comme une expérience d’habiter le climat, sont tour à tour observés dans leurs dimensions sensible (intensités relationnelles à l’environnement), pratique (processus sociotechniques des montages de projet) et politique (structurations collectives entre citoyens et administrations pour résoudre un problème). La thèse en propose une reformulation pragmatiste et écologiste (John Dewey, Daniel Céfaï et Tim Ingold) comme la fabrique collective des paysages climatiques. Dans cette voie, la thèse explore la notion d’assemblée paysagère, comme forme de paysage, au sens politique inspiré des anciens Landschaften (Kenneth Olwig), pour décrire une figure capable de mener cette expérience, dans ses ancrages, ses montées en échelle et ses ouvertures, et d’en rendre compte. Ce dernier aspect est également discuté en termes d’opportunités démocratiques (Joëlle Zask) et de responsabilité relationnelle (Joan Tronto) pour questionner les manières d’appréhender les changements climatiques. / Northern Friesland is a region on the Wadden Sea shores in Germany, on the border with Denmark. Since 1991 farmers and locals have partnered to buy and manage wind turbines themselves. They named their companies "citizens wind parks". In 2018, they represent 90% of the installed wind capacity in Friesland, ie around 2000 MW. This thesis is an inquiry with those who made this energy landscape. The “inquiry” is here conceived as method stating that the solution emerges as the problem be-comes clearer. In doing so, the thesis scours from 1975, 40 years of experience with collectively developing and managing wind farms, an experience which suggests renewing our understanding of the relations between energy projects and climate change. Taken as an experience of dwelling the climate, these citizen wind landscapes are successively observed along their sensitive (relational intensities to the environment), practical (socio-technical processes of project set-ups) and political dimensions (collective structuring between citizens and administrations to solve a problem). The thesis proposes a pragmatist and ecologist reformulation (together with John Dewey, Daniel Céfaï and Tim Ingold) of this experience as the collective making of climatic landscapes. The thesis also puts forward the concept of landscape assembly, as a form of landscape, in the political sense inspired by the ancient Landschaften (Kenneth Olwig), to describe a plastic figure, heterogeneous and situated, capable of conducting this experience and of giving an account of it. This last aspect is also discussed in terms of democratic opportunities (Joëlle Zask) and relational responsibility (Joan Tronto) to question the ways of apprehending climate changes.

In the postwar era of the United States, as military-industrial chemicals leak into airways, waterways, and foodways in unprecedented plumes and cancer clusters, comic art forms generate diverse environmental imaginations. Though historically disparaged as disposable ephemera, comics provide unique access to environmental expression in this critical period. This dissertation analyzes the formal registers of two independent newspaper strips and four graphic cancer narratives for an aesthetics of equity: a set of verbal-visual moves that chart awareness of environmental devastation as determined by privilege and power. The iconicity of the drawn body--its lines, shape, and movement--grapples with complex legacies of environmental harm and exclusion. Maps of environmental risk perception generated through game board motifs, collages, and icon repetition rely on the capacity of sequential art to engage readers in recognizing and analyzing postwar risk. In form and theme, an aesthetics of equity in comics deploys environmental knowledges subordinated and sharpened by interlocking social inequities. This aesthetics revises the elisions and assumptions of mainstream environmentalisms. Ultimately, comics demand a literacy particularly well suited to environmental justice (EJ) ecocriticsm. The dissertation comprises three chapters of analysis. The first examines competing environmental discourses in Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For (1982-2008). This newspaper strip coincides exactly with the start of the contemporary EJ movement. In examining three character arcs across a quarter of a century, I track the emergence of EJ discourse in Bechdel's distinctly lesbian environmental imagination. The second chapter examines the heteronormative limits of the EJ story arc in Jackie Ormes' midcentury romance strip Torchy in Heartbeats (1953-4). Published weekly in the Comic Section of the Black newspaper the Pittsburgh Courier, Torchy chronicles its eponymous heroine's quest to end environmental racism in the fictional small town of Southville. Torchy's affect and body language revise romance genre conventions and expose sexism and racism as intersecting environmental oppressions. The third chapter examines transcoporeal exchange in four contemporary graphic cancer narratives from the early 21st century. This chapter examines the extent to which graphic cancer narratives "move out," to use Diane Herndl's phrase, to form coalitions with disparate environmental communities. / 2015-10-17

abstract: This thesis examines perceptions of climate change in literature through the lens of the environmental humanities, an interdisciplinary field that brings history, ecocriticism, and anthropology together to consider the environmental past, present and future. The project began in Iceland, during the Svartárkot Culture-Nature Program called “Human Ecology and Culture at Lake Mývatn 1700-2000: Dimensions of Environmental and Cultural Change”. Over the course of 10 days, director of the program, Viðar Hreinsson, an acclaimed literary and Icelandic Saga scholar, brought in researchers from different fields of study in Iceland to give students a holistically academic approach to their own environmental research. In this thesis, texts under consideration include the Icelandic Sagas, My Antonia by Willa Cather, Tropic of Orange by Karen Tei Yamashita, and The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi. The thesis is supported by secondary works written by environmental humanists, including Andrew Ross, Steve Hartman, Ignacio Sanchez Cohen, and Joni Adamson, who specialize in archeological research on heritage sites in Iceland and/or study global weather patterns, prairie ecologies in the American Midwest, the history of water in the Southwest, and climate fiction. Chapter One, focusing on the Icelandic Sagas and My Antonia, argues that literature from different centuries, different cultures, and different parts of the world offers evidence that humans have been driving environmental degradation at the regional and planetary scales since at least the 1500s, especially as they have engaged in aggressive forms of settlement and colonization. Chapter Two, focused on Tropic of Orange, this argues that global environmental change leads to extreme weather and drought that is increasing climate migration from the Global South to the Global North. Chapter Three, focused on The Water Knife, argues that climate fiction gives readers the opportunity to think about and better prepare for a viable and sustainable future rather than wait for inevitable apocalypse. By exploring literature that depicts and represents climate change through time, environmental humanists have innovated new methods of analysis for teaching and thinking about what humans must understand about their impacts on ecosystems so that we can better prepare for the future. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis English 2019

This dissertation seeks to extend quantitative research on environmental justice and address methodological limitations of previous studies by: (a) using new indicators of exposure to air pollution and contemporary risk modeling techniques; (b) assessing disparities in human health risks, instead of focusing only on potential exposure or proximity to pollution sources; and (c) using multivariate regression models that consider the effects of spatial dependence. The case study examines racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in the geographic distribution of exposure to airborne toxic emissions from industrial point sources in the Houston-Galveston-Brazoria metropolitan statistical area. Industrial pollution sources for this study comprise facilities listed in the US EPA's Toxic Release Inventory (TRI). The Risk-Screening Environmental Indicator (RSEI) model is used to estimate potential human health risks from air pollutants based on data on toxicity and dispersion of chemical releases from TRI facilities. The analyses utilize four indicators of potential exposure to industrial pollution: (a) presence or absence of air emissions, (b) total quantities (pounds) of air emissions, (c) toxicity-weighted quantities of emissions and (d) modeled risk scores based on the cumulative health risk posed by air emissions. Traditional linear regression and spatial autoregressive techniques based on several neighborhood configurations are used to model the occurrence and magnitude of these four indicators, using relevant explanatory variables from the 2000 census, at the census tract and block groups levels of aggregation. Results indicate a disproportionate pattern of health risks from TRI facilities in the HGB-MSA, with the Hispanic population facing the highest exposure. The locations and magnitude of toxic pollution are significantly statistical effected by the presence of minority residents and population density. Additionally, key differences in the significance of explanatory variables between the spatial and conventional regression models demonstrate the importance of correcting for spatial dependence in environmental justice analysis. The analytical results for several variables are also sensitive to the choice of data resolution (tract or block group). Overall, this study indicates that more flexible spatial analytic techniques are required to improve the identification of environmental injustice and past studies utilizing conventional statistical methods should be revisited to explicitly account for spatial effects.