Political Ecology Theses (Robbins)
This thesis claims that local systems are disrupted because control of resources and landscapes has been taken from local peoples or groups in the name of 'sustainability', 'community', or 'nature.'
What is the conservation and control thesis?
This concept became well known in 1982 when civil rights activists rallied in the state of North Carolina to stop the dumping of 120 million pounds of soil contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the county with the highest proportion of African Americans.
What is environmental racism?
This type of approach examines the dispersion of the pollution risk to see where pollution burden falls, which is determined by modeling things like quantity and type of toxic emission released, wind speed, and other factors.
What are risk-based approaches?
This explanation argues that industry does not intentionally discriminate against socioeconomic minorities rather it maximizes profits and reduces cost by placing facilities where land and labor are cheap
What is the economic explanation?
Environmental Justice affirms the sacredness of this, ecological unity and the interdependence of all species, and the right to be free from THIS
What are Mother Earth and ecological destruction?
This thesis claims that scarcity produced through resource restriction or appropriation accelerates conflict between peoples and environmental problems can quickly become social conflicts depending on control of resources.
What is the environmental conflict and exclusion thesis?
This field emerged as an interdisciplinary body of literature in which researchers documented unequal impacts of environmental pollution on different social classes and racial or ethnic groups
What is environmental justice studies?
This method describes when researchers select some geographic unit, like census tracts or zip codes, then determine which units contain the hazard of interest, and finally compare the demographics of those containing the hazard versus those that do not.
What is unit-hazard coincidence?
This term describes the fact that race, class, gender, and other social characteristics are linked for individuals and groups and directly impact their experiences
What is intersectionality?
Environmental Justice calls for universal protection from nuclear testing, extraction, production and disposal of toxic/hazardous wastes and poisons and nuclear testing that threaten the fundamental right to clean THIS, THIS, THIS, and THIS
What are air, land, water, and food?
This thesis claims that efforts by state authorities or foreign institutions to enhance modernization or pushing overexploitation of resources locals depend on to further integrate into larger markets leads to increased poverty and a cycle of overexploitation.
What is the degradation and marginalization thesis?
This agency proposed a definition of environmental justice as "The fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies."
What is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)?
This debate examines "which came first" meaning did minority communities build themselves around sources of pollution due to political and socioeconomic influences or did sources of pollution infiltrate minority communities
What is the Chicken and the Egg Debate?
This explanation argues that both industry and government follow the path of least resistance for siting hazardous waste or pollution facilities and that path is usually through communities without the resources to actively oppose their placement
What is the sociopolitical explanation?
Environmental Justice considers governmental acts of environmental injustice a violation of international law, THIS, and THIS
What are the Universal Declaration On Human Rights and the United Nations Convention on Genocide?
This thesis claims that material characteristics of non-human nature like climate, animals, or microbes are active agents alongside people, institutions, and communities and together they create networks that influence things like power, control, transformations, and even assemblages of resistance.
What is the political objects and actors thesis?
This, written by Robert Bullard, was the first major study of environmental racism that linked hazardous facility siting with historical patterns of spatial segregation in the southern US
What is Dumping in Dixie?
This concept caused issues for environmental justice methodologies because relationships found at a larger geographic scale may not exist at a smaller geographic scale
What is an ecological fallacy?
This explanation argues that prejudiced attitudes and racism heavily influence decision-making and a lack of responsiveness to environmental concerns that primarily impact racial and ethnic minorities
What is the racial discrimination explanation?
Environmental Justice affirms the fundamental right to political, economic, cultural and environmental THIS of all peoples
What is self-determination?
This thesis claims that 'institutionalized and power-laden environmental management regimes' foster new kinds of people because the environmental actions, behaviors, or rules systems set forth by such regimes force people to adapt.
What is the environmental subjects and identity thesis?
A 1990 meeting, the Conference on Race and the Incidence of Environmental Hazards at the University of Michigan, resulted in the creation of this office at the EPA later renamed the Office of Environmental Justice
What is the Office of Environmental Equity?
In the 70s and 80s, LULUs were diverted to politically vulnerable low-income and people of color communities shifting NIMBY to more aptly mean PIBBY. These acronyms in their full form are...
LULUs - Locally unwanted land uses
NIMBY - Not in my backyard
PIBBY - Place in blacks' backyards
This model, produced by Schnaiberg, describes how capitalism continuously creates ecological and social harm through the extraction of resources particularly in indigenous and minority communities resulting in habitual ecological destruction and environmental injustice.
What is the treadmill of production model?
Environmental Justice demands the cessation of the production of all THIS, THIS, and THIS, and that all past and current producers be held strictly accountable to the people for detoxification and the containment at the point of production.
What are toxins, hazardous wastes, and radioactive materials?