Environmental justice is not only about pollution in low-income and communities of color, but the environmental justice movement also represents community-building and a positive spirit.
Research
A key mission of the EJP is to encourage student (undergraduate and graduate) and faculty research and campus community on environmental justice and environmental equity issues at UC Davis building on existing campus strengths in environmental and scientific research in the Central Valley. Given our proximity to Sacramento, we also hope to advance state policy analyses that promote environmental justice and community perspectives on particular environmental, environmental health, or urban planning issues.
We also hope to help build campus and community partnerships on environmental justice utilizing existing campus programs and partnerships. A key tenet of the environmental justice movement (see About Environmental Justice) is that the communities historically disenfranchised by race and class "speak for themselves." Thus, research on environmental justice needs to be community-sensitive, and not "top-down." There is an extensive literature on community-based research on environmental health and justice which highlight successful partnerships.
We hope to build relationships with Central Valley communities working on a wide range of issues that have environmental equity and justice components and to work on community-based research projects. These may include projects dealing with water, transportation, and air quality. To this end, EJP Senior Researcher Jonathan London currently represents UC Davis on the Community University Research and Action Alliance for Justice (CURAJ) Advisory Board. CURAJ is 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, UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law Center for Social Justice, UC Merced, UC Sacramento Center, and UC Davis.
Projects
Building Capacity of the Environmental Justice Project at UC Davis
Julie Sze and Jonathan London, Co Principal Investigators
Funding provided by the Ford Foundation
Project activities include:
- Develop an EJ campus-community advisory committee
- Conduct an inventory of existing EJ-related research relevant to the Central Valley and of new EJ research needs from communities and EJ advocates
Environmental Justice and Regional Change in the Central Valley
Mary Cadenasso (Plant Sciences), Fraser Shilling (Environmental Science and Policy), Jonathan London (Human and Community Development) and Julie Sze (American Studies), Co-Principal Investigators
Funding provided by the UC Davis Committee on Research
This project is an interdisciplinary study of the social equity impacts of regionalism in environmental governance drawing on perspectives from the natural and social sciences and the humanities. ABSTRACT (PDF, 12 KB)
Building a Foundation for Participatory Action Research with Agricultural Worker Communities: An Environmental Justice Perspective
Julie Sze and Jonathan London, Co Principal Investigators
Funding provided by the Western Center for Agricultural Health and Safety
Central Valley communities where agricultural workers and their families predominate are threatened by multiple sources of environmental pollution, including pesticide contamination of air and water, asthma-causing particulate matter, and leachate from hazardous waste facilities and disposal sites. Despite this concentration of risk, agricultural workers are rarely represented in public decision-making on the policies and practices that affect their lives. ABSTRACT (PDF, 10 KB)
Research Interest Group on Race, Gender and the Environment
Julie Sze and Jonathan London, Co Principal Investigators
Funding provided by the Consortium for Women and Research
The main goal of the Research Interest Group on Gender, Race and the Environment is to facilitate collaborative, cross-disciplinary research and inquiry about gender, race and environment in this region, where the problems of environmental injustice and the need for strong community leadership is especially acute. In addition to facilitating such research, our other goal is to build stronger connections between scholars, policy makers, activists and local communities around the nexus of gender, race and the environment.