Welcome
The mission of the Environmental Justice Project at the John Muir Institute of the Environment is to encourage and develop interdisciplinary research on environmental justice.
The UC Davis Environmental Justice Project (EJP) defines environmental justice broadly, to encompass environmental issues as they pertain to race, as well as to class and gender. The EJP seeks to respond to unique challenges and opportunities presented by environmental justice in California's Central Valley. As the source of much of the food for the United States, the Central Valley is a strategic location economically and politically. Unfortunately, it is also what Isao Fujimoto calls the "back stage" of California, where the richness of the land contrasts dramatically with the poverty of the people who produce its abundance, and with the poisoned state of its air, water and land. Not surprisingly, it is the low-income communities of color who bear the brunt of these environmental problems, drinking contaminated water (often at high prices), breathing pesticide-laden air, living in substandard housing, and facing a gauntlet of obstacles to receiving quality health care, education and other services. At the same time, those individuals and communities most affected by these issues are typically least included in decision-making and policies meant to address them. In the face of these large and growing problems, public agencies are just now beginning to incorporate environmental justice values and analyses as part of their policies and procedures. As a glimmer of hope, an environmental justice movement has developed in the region that is challenging the marginalization of affected communities and struggling to represent their interests on local, regional, state and federal scales.
Despite these developments, there has been little sustained attention from academia to environmental justice in the Central Valley. While there are researchers at outside universities studying the Central Valley, there is no academic base within the region dedicated to addressing the environmental justice problems that communities of color face. This is a critical gap because of the need for long-term and trusting relationships between academic institutions and the community-based organizations (as well as agencies) engaged with environmental justice issues on the ground.
The mission of the Environmental Justice Project is to encourage and develop interdisciplinary and applied research on environmental justice in ways that respond to the challenges and opportunities outlined above. The goals of the EJP are to:
- Increase the visibility of environmental justice issues at UC Davis (activities include: building a library of videos on environmental justice for public and classroom use, sponsoring a speaker series);
- Encourage student (undergraduate and graduate) and faculty research and campus community on environmental justice and expand the environmental equity issues, building on existing campus strengths in environmental research in the Central Valley;
- Help build campus and community partnerships on environmental justice issues;
- Advance state policy analyses that promote environmental justice and community perspectives on particular environmental, environmental health, or urban planning issues, drawing on campus strengths, as well as our proximity to Sacramento;
- Promote interdisciplinary conversation on environmental issues, specifically as they pertain to race, class and/or gender at the John Muir Institute of the Environment and on the UC Davis campus.
Ultimately, with a strong base in place, the long-term goal is to engage in innovative environmental justice research projects that analyze pressing EJ issues in the Central Valley (e.g., pesticide drift, water quality in colonia settlements) and that profile the struggles of EJ organizations to address these issues. For example, the EJP is involved with the Community University Research and Action Alliance for Justice (CURAJ), a coalition of researchers, legal advocates, and community activists dedicated to applying research to address issues of race and poverty in the Central Valley. Members represent the Center for Race Poverty and the Environment, California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, Latino Issues Forum, Madera Coalition for Community Justice, Youth In Focus, Boalt Hall School of Law Center for Social Justice, UC Merced, UC Sacramento Center, and UC Davis. EJP Senior Researcher Jonathan London serves on the CURAJ interim board representing UC Davis.
Together, we intend these activities to result in an EJP that serves as an effective resource for promoting the understanding and critically-informed practice of environmental justice in the Central Valley and beyond. These activities will also catalyze an EJP that is supported on campus and by community partners in a strong and sustainable fashion.