Electric power system (EPS) is an integral part of infrastructure systems. Ensuring its resiliency to extreme weather events and natural hazards is crucial to protect the safety, economy and public health. Recorded and projected data show an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events and natural hazards attributed to a changing climate. It is critical to ensure the integrity of the aging infrastructure systems and to promote environmental justice by shrinking the energy-equity gap to lower power outages in disadvantaged communities. An important aspect is the resiliency interdependency of EPS to other critical infrastructure systems, an aspect that has been escalating due to rapid urbanization and technological developments. The main objective of this research is to quantitatively evaluate the resilience of levee-protected power grid to flooding in a changing climate and adapting a strategy to enhance the resilience of power grid. Thus, this study first establishes a methodological and multi-disciplinary framework by integrating climate science, hydrology, and EPS analysis to study (I) how climate change affects recurrence intervals of flooding, (II) how the integrity of levees will be affected by changes in flooding patterns, (III) how these changes affect the resilience of an EPS located in levee-protected areas, and (IV) how to improve the resilience of the EPS while reducing the energy-equity gap. The proposed framework is applied to some IEEE standard test systems overlaid on a levee-protected area in Northern California. First, a link-based resiliency analysis is performed using the direct current optimal power flow (dc-OPF) method applied to the IEEE-24 standard test system. Then, a node-based resiliency analysis is carried out employing the IEEE 118-bus test system. The system resiliency is assessed for pre-flooding, historic flooding, and projected future flooding scenarios using two representative climate pathways (RCP). Finally, an optimal adaptation strategy using the placement of distributed energy resources (DERs) is delineated using a modified IEEE 30-bus test system to reduce flooding-induced power outages, prioritizing disadvantaged communities by minimizing energy inequity among the communities. Results of this study reveal that the adaptation plan can reduce the risk of power outages, improve environmental justice and the resilience of power networks. The findings of this study can contribute towards more resilient EPS under a changing climate.

Nigeria is at a crossroad - how to balance developmental needs with environmental protection. The challenge is exacerbated because Nigeria operates a mono-economy which overwhelmingly depends on the crude oil resources from the Niger Delta for its economic survival. As a result, the protection of the Niger Delta environment has not been accorded the priority it deserves. The thesis aims to investigate the potentials of Constitutional Environmental Rights (CERs) to assist in resolving the environmental sustainability crisis in the Niger Delta. The thesis will utilize insights developed by environmental justice scholarship as the theoretical framework to investigate the main causes of the sustainability crisis in the Niger Delta and to propose ways to tackle these environmental challenges. The thesis draws inspiration from the research carried out by David Boyd on the efficacy of CERs for environmental sustainability for its analytical framework. Although Trans-National Corporations (TNCs) and international trade contribute to the sustainability crisis in the Niger Delta, the thesis will not focus on these. Instead, it will focus on the internal legal causes of the sustainability crisis in the Niger Delta, because the external causes of the sustainability crisis have been addressed at length by other researchers. Moreover, addressing the internal causes of the sustainability crisis could also address some of the impacts of the external causes of the sustainability crisis in the Niger Delta. As such, the thesis uses 3 of Boyd's CERs performance indices in analyzing the suitability of CERs to tackle the 3 identified major internal causes of the sustainability crisis in the Niger Delta. Specifically, Boyd's index 1 (impetus for the enactment of stronger environmental laws) could address gaps in Nigeria's environmental regulatory framework. Index 4 (improvement in the implementation and enforcement of environmental laws) could address the non-implementation and non-enforcement problems with the existing environmental regulatory framework in Nigeria. Lastly, index 6 (increased public participation in environmental governance) could address the marginalization of the Niger Delta in resource governance in Nigeria. These indices will not only help to uncover the weaknesses in Nigerian laws and their enforcement but will also identify potential barriers to CERs within the current legal and policy architecture and suggest solutions on how CERs would be implemented if recognized in Nigeria to avoid these barriers. The main contribution of the thesis is a detailed case study of how CERs may work in Nigeria to tackle the environmental crisis in the Niger Delta, and a detailed and specific analysis of what would be required in terms of domestic political, structural and legal change to ensure that CERs could contribute to the sustainability of the Niger Delta as much as they have in other countries. The research makes specific recommendations for changes to Nigerian law, policy and institutions, such as adoption of CERs in the enforceable part of the Constitution, ownership and control by federating units of natural resources found in their territories, and elimination of barriers to access to justice. This would come about through strategically crafted constitutional provisions and laws to address the underlying factors that would limit the effectiveness of CERs in Nigeria. The thesis argues that addressing these fundamentals and constitutionalizing environmental rights will lead to improved environmental outcomes for the Niger Delta.

Over the past several decades, flooding events in the United States have become the most frequent and costliest natural disaster. In the US, city and regional leaders are planning new water and flood mitigation infrastructure in response to the challenges of flooding, uneven urbanization, and racialized exclusion. Historically, projects to keep water out have never been universal or evenly applied. Yet, ‘learning to live’ with water, a key tagline in current sustainable development paradigms, masks how histories of racialized land development are entangled with contemporary water infrastructure projects and are productive of regional planning power. This dissertation centers racial capitalism in analysis of how contemporary water infrastructure projects are entangled with, and informed by, histories of racialized land development in the mid-Mississippi River Region. Through two case studies on flood mitigation infrastructure in eastern Missouri, I trace the historic development of infrastructures that shape the ongoing racialization of space, infrastructure (re)development and community vulnerability to flooding today. The case studies draw from a range of data, including archival research on histories of land and infrastructure development, participant observation of planning meetings, professional conferences, and local neighborhood initiatives, and field observations of the built environment. I argue that 1) scholarship concerned with social-environmental inequities should engage racial capitalism as a framework to “provincialize” urban theory and environmental racism as a means to theorize uneven infrastructural provisioning as a mode of urbanization that (re)produces social difference and value creation under racial capitalism, 2) the historical development of flood control in the Mississippi region was fundamental to the development of racial capitalism because it consolidated regional planning power through methods of social and environmental domination, and 3) contemporary infrastructural redevelopment and flood mitigation projects must contend with the path dependencies of structural racism to disrupt existing cycles of marginalization across social differences to deliver meaningfully on equity goals. Ultimately, this study finds that flood-mitigation infrastructures, including levees, floodways, and dams, on the Missouri River and gray and green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) in the City of St. Louis are embedded in broader social-environmental networks and regional power blocs, whose regional history and dynamics have created distinct patterns of uneven urbanization and vulnerability to flooding disasters. Because infrastructure projects are embedded in the built environment for decades, the social relations comprising their implementation, or lack thereof, reach into present and future development considerations. Thus, when planning projects fail to grapple with path dependencies of past infrastructure projects, they may reproduce structural racism and re-create patterns of uneven urbanization and vulnerability to flooding disasters. / Geography

Thesis advisor: Kristin E. Heyer / Discourse about climate change has the potential to empower moral agency toward sustainable praxis or arrest action by furthering moral oblivion. This dissertation analyzes sources for moral narratives about climate change—in theology and ethics, in public discourse and the news media, and in social movements—to determine their relative influence on agency. Because climate change and environmental degradation are wicked problems, there are always multiple ways to understand the problems and propose solutions that influence agential action. This dissertation promotes a pragmatic approach to environmental ethics, which analyzes the particularities of each problem to mediate the interconnected impact of historic injustice, social sin, and lived experiences of harm. Social movements provide new moral visions for enacting social change opposing structural injustice. The environmental justice movement, generated from experiences of environmental racism in the disposal of toxic waste, provides both a corrective moral vision and normative metrics by which sustainable action can be measured: recognition, participation, and distributive justice. Application of these normative principles makes it possible to analyze the extent to which environmental action pursues redress for structural injustice or continues to perpetuate social and environmental harm. Rooted in a social praxis of Christian hope, environmental ethics ought to stimulate the moral imagination to sustain action pursuant to tangible and lasting social change. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

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