Rapid and unplanned urbanization has ushered in a variety of public health challenges, including exposure to traffic pollution and greater dependence on automobiles. Moreover, vulnerable population groups often bear the brunt of negative outcomes and are subject to disproportionate exposure and health effects. This makes it imperative for urban transportation engineers, land use planners, and public health professionals to work synergistically to understand both the relationship between urban design and population exposure to traffic pollution, and its social distribution. Researchers have started to pay close attention to this connection, mainly by conducting observational studies on the relationship between transportation, urban form, and air quality. However, research on this topic is still nascent. Further, most studies do not predict exposures under alternative urban design scenarios. Hence, to understand the relationship between urban design and population exposures, there is a need to build and apply integrated modeling tools that can predict exposures under alternative urban design scenarios. Within this context, the overarching goal of this dissertation is to understand how the transportation infrastructure of cities can be designed for improved urban air quality and mitigation of population exposure to traffic pollution. The study area is Hillsborough County, Florida, a sprawling region with limited transit availability and a diverse population along with a mix of urban, suburban, and rural areas. The rank of the county for sprawl and congestion metrics (i.e., yearly delay and travel time index) fall in the mid-range in comparison with other US urban regions. Thus, the study area may be representative of other US urban regions with medium sprawl and above-average congestion levels. Oxides of nitrogen (NOx), a surrogate for traffic pollution, is the focus pollutant. The Health Effects Institute’s report on traffic-related air pollution identifies NOx as a potential surrogate due to its relative ease of measurement and the abundance of epidemiologic studies that characterize exposures to NOx. Because exposures are dependent on the spatial and temporal distributions of both people and pollution, this study first sought to understand the importance of activity and travel patterns of individuals for exposure estimation. To estimate exposures, the 2009 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) data containing daily individual activity records, ArcGIS-estimated shortest-time travel route profiles, and the annual-average diurnal cycle of NOx derived from hourly CALPUFF dispersion model results from 2002, were combined. Two exposure measures were estimated: activity-based exposure that considers the daily activity and travel patterns of individuals, and residence-based exposure that considers only the pollutant concentrations at the residences. Exposure estimation without inclusion of activity and travel patterns was found to slightly underestimate activity-based exposures on average. Additionally, disproportionately-high exposures were found for blacks, Hispanics, below poverty groups, urban residents, and people whose daily travel time is greater than one hour. Finally, urbanicity and travel time variables were found to be the strongest predictors of daily exposure. Following this, a modeling framework was developed to predict population exposure by integrating activity-based travel demand modeling (DaySim), dynamic traffic assignment simulation (MATSim), mobile-source emission estimation (EPA MOVES), and pollutant dispersion modeling (R LINE). This modeling framework was used to predict daily population and subgroup exposures by estimating the high-resolution spatial and temporal distributions of both pollution and individual activities for the year 2010. Persistent exposure inequalities were found at the population-level; blacks, Hispanics, active age groups (19-65 years), below-poverty and middle-income groups, urban residents, and individuals with daily travel times above one hour had higher estimated exposures than the population mean. These inequalities for blacks, Hispanics, and below-poverty non-white groups worsened at higher exposure levels. Use of low-resolution activity and pollution data as opposed to high-resolution data led to underestimation of exposures (by 10% on average). Finally, the integrated modeling framework was employed to understand the relationship between urban transportation and land use design, air quality, and population exposure. Three scenarios that are based on a combination of diesel-bus transit services and residential distribution were simulated. Specifically, the low-transit scenario used the 2040 base residential distribution and the 2010 bus services. The enhanced-transit scenario applied the 2040 bus services proposed for the county instead. The compact-growth scenario added an increase of residential density to this latter scenario. Specifically, about 37% of total households were redistributed from locations with low accessibility to jobs and transit to locations near employment and bus stops. Results indicate slight higher non-car travel mode shares in the enhanced-transit and compact-growth scenarios compared to the low-transit scenario (with a 7.1% increase for walking, 0.2% for bicycle, and 1.8% for transit for the compact-growth scenario versus the low-transit scenario). The enhanced-transit scenario resulted in slightly lower daily total travel distances and times compared with the low-transit scenario, but daily total emissions and winter mean concentration of NOx were higher, i.e., the increase in bus transit services did not induce sufficient shifts in travel mode to overcome the concomitant increase in diesel-bus emissions. The compact-growth scenario resulted in lower daily total travel distance (9%) and travel time (2.1%) and daily total emissions of NOx (11%) and its winter mean concentration (9%), compared with both the low-transit and enhanced-transit scenarios. Although the compact-growth scenario improved the air quality of the region on average, daily population mean exposure was higher compared with both the low-transit (29%) and enhanced-transit scenarios (25%). This is largely due to the redistribution of population to urban core locations that had higher pollutant levels. Overall, neither the bus-transit improvements nor residential compaction strategies alone were sufficient to mitigate population exposures. Combining them with transit that services both origins and destinations, uses clean fuel technologies, and separates major roadways from dense residential pockets may be needed for greater exposure reductions. Overall, this dissertation has implications for population exposure to traffic pollution and public health through transportation and land use interventions. Results presented here may be applicable to other study regions that have similar composite sprawl scores as the Tampa Bay area. Future studies should exploit spatially-and temporally-resolved data on human activities and travel, vehicular activities, and air quality for better characterization of population exposure. Engineers and planners should pay greater attention to integrated land use and transport planning; lone, disjointed, and ill-planned design interventions may exacerbate population exposure to air pollution. The integrated modeling framework presented here may be applied in a wide variety of urban contexts to further explore the nexus between travel demand, air quality, and exposures. However, before such an exercise is undertaken, a preliminary analysis should be conducted to assess the transferability of the framework. Policies that could be studied include mixed land use design, urban compaction with controlled sociodemographic distributions (to assess exposure inequality), and inclusion of additional types of transit and fuel technologies.

Les risques naturels majeurs constituent une menace plus ou moins récurrente pour la plupart des populations de la planète. Les catastrophes naturelles sont à la fois sources et révélatrices d’inégalités sociales et environnementales, dans le monde, mais aussi sur le territoire de la République française. Les Antilles françaises sont très fréquemment, et très lourdement frappées par les aléas naturels. La réponse en matière de gestion des crises, et, en amont, en matière de prévention, ne nous semble pas à la hauteur des défis, et des besoins des populations. C’est la raison pour laquelle nous nous interrogeons, à travers la présente thèse, sur la place de la solidarité et de l’égalité, dans le régime juridique des risques naturels majeurs. C’est une préoccupation doctrinale majeure, inscrite dans la constitution. La recherche du lien entre droit des risques naturels majeurs et justice sociale et environnementale est l’objet de la présente étude, s’agissant de la réponse juridique à la préoccupation des populations et catégories défavorisées, qui s’avèrent a priori les plus atteintes par les catastrophes naturelles. Les limites des textes, l’insuffisance des moyens, ainsi que les pratiques locales, facteurs d’aggravation des vulnérabilités, le laxisme des pouvoirs publics nationaux et territoriaux, l’absence de culture de risque et l’esprit « kokagneur » des populations (avec des différences de comportement entre la Guadeloupe et la Martinique), toutes ces considérations rendent illusoire la détermination proclamée des pouvoirs publics de résoudre les problèmes de risques naturels majeurs. Des voies d’un renforcement de la solidarité sont proposées. Cette contribution à la recherche sur les risques ambitionne d’apporter aux acteurs, une vision transversale de la problématique des risques naturels, par l’analyse du régime juridique confronté à une exigence de justice sociale et environnementale. Les Antilles françaises servent de support à cette étude. / Major natural hazards are more or less recurring threat for most people in the world. Natural disasters are both sources and revealing social and environmental inequalities in the world, but also in the French Republic. The French West Indies are very frequently and strongly hit by natural hazards. The answer in terms of crisis management, and beforehand, in terms of prevention, doesn’t seem to be up to the population’s challenges and needs. This is why we wonder, in this thesis, about the place of solidarity and equality in the legal system of major natural hazards. This is a major doctrinal concern in the constitution. The research of the relationship between major natural hazards law and environmental and social justice is the subject of this study, concerning the legal answer to the concerns of the underprivileged people and categories, which prove to be a priori the most struck by natural disasters. The limits of the legislation, inadequate resources and local practices, vulnerabilities worsening factor, the laxity of the national and territorial public authorities, the lack of risk culture and the "kokagneur" spirit of the populations (with behavior differences between Guadeloupe and Martinique), all these considerations make unreal the government’s proclaimed determination to solve the major natural hazards issues. Ways to strengthen solidarity are proposed. This contribution to risks research aims to bring to the players an interdisciplinary view of natural hazards issues, through the analysis of the legal system confronted with the requirement of social and environmental justice. The French West Indies are used as research support.

A combination of the urban heat island effect and a rising temperature baseline resulting from global climate change inequitably impacts socially vulnerable populations residing in urban areas. This dissertation examines distributional inequity of exposure to urban heat by socially disadvantaged groups and minorities in the context of climate justice. Using Cutter’s hazards-of-place model, variables indicative of social vulnerability and biophysical vulnerability are statistically tested for their associations. Biophysical vulnerability is conceptualized utilizing a urban heat risk index calculated from summer 2010 LANDSAT imagery to measure land surface temperature , structural density through the normalized difference built-up index, and vegetation abundance through the normalized difference vegetation index. A cross-section of twenty geographically distributed metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the U.S. are examined using census derived variables at the tract level. The results of bivariate correlation analysis, ordinary least squares regression, and spatial autoregression analysis indicate consistent and significant associations between greater social disadvantage and higher urban heat levels. Multilevel modeling is used to examine the relationship of MSA-level segregation with tract-level minority status and social disadvantage to higher levels of urban heat. Segregation has a significant but varied relationship with the variables, indicating that there are inconsistent associations with urban heat due to differing urban ecologies. Urban heat and social vulnerability present a varying landscape of thermal inequity in different urban areas, associated in many cases with residential segregation.

Progress Village, a historically Black neighborhood outside of Tampa, FL, encountered structural violence that included construction of an adjacent phosphogypsum stack. Why the neighborhood signed a legal agreement with the stack’s operating industry and the impacts of this decision provides a lesson in critical environmental justice. Theories of urban political ecology frame exploration of resident priorities, relationships with industry, risk perceptions, and health concerns. Utilizing activist anthropology, this thesis aims to be mutually beneficial to scholarly and neighborhood development. Ultimately, this research demonstrates how southern gradualism, racism, and a trend towards isolationism created today’s striving, yet marginalized and divided community. This thesis encourages scholarship on everyday resident-industry interactions and provides insights to strengthen future Community Benefits Agreements, while questioning if such agreements serve environmental justice.

Citizens of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation fight for justice with their bodies at the frontlines of environmental catastrophe. This dissertation employs a biopolitical and interpretive analysis to examine these struggles in the polluted heart of Canada’s ‘Chemical Valley’. Drawing from a discursive analysis of situated concerns on the ground and a textual analysis of Canada’s biopolitical ‘policy ensemble’ for Indigenous citizenship, this dissertation examines how citizens and public officials respond to environmental and reproductive injustices in Aamjiwnaang. Based upon in-depth interviews with residents and policy-makers, I first document citizens of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation’s activities and practices on the ground as they cope with and navigate their health concerns and habitat. Second, I examine struggles over knowledge and the contestation over scientific expertise as the community seeks reproductive justice. Third, I contextualize citizen struggles over knowledge by discussing the power relations embedded within the ‘policy ensemble’ for Indigenous citizenship and Canadian jurisdiction for on-reserve environmental health. From an interpretive lens, inspired by Foucault’s concepts of biopower and governmentality, the dissertation develops a framework of “ecological citizenship”, which confronts biopolitics with a theoretical discussion of place to expand upon existing Canadian citizenship and environmental studies literature. I argue that reproductive justice in Aamjiwnaang cannot be separated from environmental justice, and that the concept of place is central to ongoing struggles. As such, I discuss “ecological citizenship’s double-edge”, to contend that citizens are at once bound up within disciplinary biopolitical power relations and also articulate a radical form of place-based belonging.

Abstract: This research seeks to investigate the possibilities and inadequacies of including wild animals within the justice realm. It bases this research on the reasons and rationales of representatives within environmental non- governmental organizations (ENGOs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and public agency working with animal- rights and welfare or environmental protection. These representatives reason from a personal and organizational perspective concerning justice, ethics and morals to wild animals. Environmental Justice (EJ) and Ecological Justice (EcJ) serves as the main theories for this research where EJ is often perceived as anthropocentric and EcJ as a non- anthropocentric amelioration of the former. The results indicate that Animal Rights (AR) and World Animal Protection (WAP) think more of animals in terms of individualism, whilst World Wide Foundation (WWF), Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) and Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC) think in terms of consideration for species and ecosystems holistically. Some respondents perceived justice exclusively as a human term, however with regard to altered paths of reasoning later in the interview as most respondents continuously struggled, to various degrees, to make sense of justice in relation to wild animals. There were occasional uncertainties concerning ethics and morals, however less alien than the justice term and more relevant in relation to other NGOs, i.e. animal- rights and welfare organizations and less outspoken, though not entirely dismissed, within ENGOs and public agency. However, although some respondents occasionally argued that they do not reflect on ethics, morals and justice, these interviews are testament that they do, but with other terms and concepts that could be argued to be synonymous to ethics, morals and justice and perhaps used consciously and/or unconsciously at work. In other words, one can say that a different kind of rhetoric was applied i.e. justice in form of rights, respect. Another finding of the research was a structuration concern: specifically, on whether morals and ethics are reflected in law, or whether the law becomes what constitutes our morals and ethics, given as a majority of the respondents often refer to laws as general guidelines. In other words, does the law reflect reality, or does the law constitute reality? What is the dialectic here? In conclusion, wild animals might never receive full justice, where the researcher analyses it as a sequence of animals not holding moral capacities enough to be moral agents, though with the exception of having rights. As shown in the results, some wild animals can already be said to receive justice, e.g. wild animals as state property and hunting legislation, whilst other wild animals are excluded altogether, e.g. wild animals not being considered in welfare law. In this way, many future challenges include expanding the legal stance of wild animals. Human precedence barricades the opportunities for extending justice which are shown in this study and can be said to link to relational-, aesthetical-, contextual factors and deep cultural values and associations, aspects which overshadow human flourishing, wild animals not having a counterpart, animals as objects and so forth. Though, by giving e.g. wild animals a heightened status in legislation, extending the moral circle to include wild animals the utility of justice may prove helpful in furthering the rights and welfare of animals. Additionally, properties as recognition through, e.g. agency and capabilities could also guide us in giving justice to the natural world, as highlighted by Schlosberg (2007), but also the idea of intrinsic value as highlighted by many respondents. Future research may consider the holistic and individualistic tendencies held within ENGOs, NGOs and public agency to see how it could be mutually considered to a larger extent. As highlighted by one of the respondents, perhaps laws and legislation are not enough and that one could investigate more in how one perceive animals culturally, in other words human dimensions socially and culturally.

The dissertation is a philosophical approach to politicizing place and space, or environments broadly construed, that is motivated by three questions. How can geography be employed to analyze the spatialities of environmental justice? How do spatial concepts inform understandings of environmentalism? And, how can geography help overcome social/political philosophy's redistribution-recognition debate in a way that accounts for the multiscalar dimensions of environmental justice? Accordingly, the dissertation's objective is threefold. First, I develop a critical geography framework that explores the spatialities of environmental injustices as they pertain to economic marginalization across spaces of inequitable distribution, cultural subordination in places of misrecognition, and political exclusion from public places of deliberation and policy. Place and space are relationally constituted by intricate networks of social relations, cultural practices, socioecological flows, and political-economic processes, and I contend that urban and natural environments are best represented as "places-in-space." Second, I argue that spatial frameworks and environmental discourses interlock because conceptualizations of place and space affect how environments are perceived, serve as framing devices to identify environmental issues, and entail different solutions to problems. In the midst of demonstrating how the racialization of place upholds inequitable distributions of pollution burdens, I introduce notions of "social location" and "white privilege" to account for the conflicting agendas of the mainstream environmental movement and the environmental justice movement, and consequent accusations of discriminatory environmentalism. Third, I outline a bivalent environmental justice theory that deals with the spatialities of environmental injustices. The theory synergizes distributive justice and the politics of social equality with recognition justice and the politics of identity and difference, therefore connecting cultural issues to a broader materialist analysis concerned with economic issues that extend across space. In doing so, I provide a justice framework that assesses critically the particularities of place and concurrently identifies commonalities to diverse social struggles, thus spatializing the geography of place-based political praxis.

Orientador: Prof. Dr. Elias David Morales Martinez / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal do ABC, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências Humanas e Sociais, São Bernardo do Campo, 2018. / A defesa das populações indígenas e da natureza latino-americanas pode se dar pela discussão das origens em que ambas foram formuladas dentro da perspectiva moderno-europeia das Ciências Sociais. Nesse sentido, tendo como base a contextualização de um padrão de poder baseado na colonialidade, este trabalho discute como a mobilização do movimento transnacional indígena na Bacia Amazônica constrói a justiça ambiental na região. A partir da análise da Coordenação das Organizações Indígenas da Bacia Amazônica (COICA), pretende-se constatar as hipóteses da necessidade da autonomia política indígena (na elaboração e implementação de políticas) para a preservação ambiental, e da colonialidade como um problema estrutural. Para tanto, serão utilizadas as perspectivas decolonial, da Ecologia Política, e de identidade e reconhecimento para contextualizar as realidades política, econômica, social e cultural das populações indígenas da região / The defense of Latin American¿s indigenous peoples and nature can be performed through the discussion of the origins in which both were formulated within the modern-European perspective of the Social Sciences. In this sense, based on the contextualization of a power standard based on coloniality, this research discusses how the mobilization of the indigenous transnational movement in the Amazon Basin constructs environmental justice in the region. Based on the analysis of the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA), it¿s intended to investigate the hypothesis of the need for indigenous political autonomy (in the elaboration and implementation of policies) for environmental preservation, and the coloniality as a structural problem. To do so, it¿s used the decolonial, Political Ecology, and identity and recognition perspectives to contextualize the political, economic, social and cultural realities of South American indigenous populations.

Despite the directions of regulatory agencies, that prompt a sufficient provision of green spaces in the urban context, research claims that the access to parks depends on the Socio-Economic-Status (SES) of the inhabitants of the city. Therefore, the uneven access to the green areas, known as Environmental Inequality, has been recognised as an Environmental Injustice. In this study, a qualitative approach was employed to assess the presence of the Environmental Inequality between two neighbourhoods with different SES in the city of Rome; consequently, the interest was to investigate how does the inequality occur given a satisfying quantity of green space. Ten citizens were selected to participate in semi-structured interviews with the aim to understand their attitudes and perspectives towards the local green parks and to verify if the inhabitants perceived any inequality. The results indicate the presence of the Environmental Inequality based on the SES of the inhabitants of the two neighbourhoods, in consequence of qualitative factors such as maintenance and lack of facilities. A perceived Inequality was also found within the participants of both the neighbourhoods supporting the results about the presence of the inequality. The present study contributes to the discussion about the qualitative obstacles that may influence access to the urban parks and that may determine an environmental injustice. Further research should extend the samplings to more than two neighbourhoods in order to confirm that these results apply to the rest of the wide territory of Rome, as these results cannot be generalized with a sample size of ten.

Texas is the last remaining state to utilize the rule of capture, a doctrine based on English Common Law, as a means of regulating groundwater resources. Many of the western states originally used the rule of capture to regulate their groundwater resources, but over time, each of these states replaced the rule of capture with other groundwater laws and regulations. The Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) State Water Plan, Water for Texas-2002, warned Texans if current water usage and laws do not change, there will be an unmet need of 7.5 million acre-feet of water annually by 2050. This caused individuals in state and local government to begin asking the question, "How are we going to meet our future water needs?" In the search for a solution to the water shortage problem people have divided themselves into two groups: one wants to consider the implementation of water conservation measures to reduce per capita water use in order to meet future demands; while the other group wants to spend millions of dollars to build reservoirs and dams along with laying thousands of miles of pipeline to move water around the state. The fact that Texas has yet to come up with a definitive answer to their water shortage peaked my curiosity to research what caused the State of Texas to get to a point of having a shortage of fresh water and then look at possible solutions that incorporate water conservation measures. In my thesis I present a historical overview of the rule of capture as Texas's means of groundwater management in order to illustrate the role it played in contributing to the water shortage Texans now face. I also take a historical look at the environmental justice movement, a grass-roots movement by environmentalists and Civil Rights activists working together to guarantee the rights of low-income and minority communities to clean and healthy environments, focusing on several acts and policies enacted by the federal government as a direct result of this movement. I then demonstrate how the rule of capture is in conflict with these acts and policies along with being in violation of both state and federal regulations in an attempt to establish a sound argument as to why we need to replace the rule of capture not only from an environmental standpoint, but from a legal standpoint as well. After considering groundwater legislation in other states, I offer a possible alternative to the rule of capture as part of the solution to the approaching shortage of Texas's fresh water supply. The implementation of new laws, regulations and conservation measures will help conserve water for future Texans, but we must also consider a change in our relationship to water along with the attitudes and ideas that resulted in a water shortage not only in Texas, but on a global scale if we truly want to solve our future water crisis.