Pub Date : 2022-03-18DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2054131
Christopher W. Gibson
ABSTRACT By analyzing the multiple forms of debt used by municipal water supply organizations, I present evidence to argue that the financial structures of contemporary public governance give financial interests undue influence over the management of natural resources. This study uses financial statistics and qualitative data pertaining to the largest provider of drinking water in the US, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD), an empirically significant case study. Municipal water agencies collect revenues through traditional sources including water sales and tax collections, but they also raise significant funding with a variety of debt instruments. In this study, I first observe a strong increase in revenue-backed debt, supplanting tax-backed debt, as the primary source of funding. Next, I examine how revenues have shifted since mid-century with water sales growing primary and taxation becoming peripheral. Lastly, I analyze the influence of financial gatekeepers – credit rating agencies – considering the growing reliance on private financial capital. I find that rating agencies push finance-oriented objectives on water managers that include commodifying water to maximize revenue, avoiding expenditures, and flouting climatological realities of scarcity, among others. I propose the notions of financial feedbacks and the financial pathology of institutions as conceptual tools for characterizing these processes.
{"title":"‘How will this affect our credit rating?’: municipal debt and governing the environment","authors":"Christopher W. Gibson","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2054131","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2054131","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT By analyzing the multiple forms of debt used by municipal water supply organizations, I present evidence to argue that the financial structures of contemporary public governance give financial interests undue influence over the management of natural resources. This study uses financial statistics and qualitative data pertaining to the largest provider of drinking water in the US, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD), an empirically significant case study. Municipal water agencies collect revenues through traditional sources including water sales and tax collections, but they also raise significant funding with a variety of debt instruments. In this study, I first observe a strong increase in revenue-backed debt, supplanting tax-backed debt, as the primary source of funding. Next, I examine how revenues have shifted since mid-century with water sales growing primary and taxation becoming peripheral. Lastly, I analyze the influence of financial gatekeepers – credit rating agencies – considering the growing reliance on private financial capital. I find that rating agencies push finance-oriented objectives on water managers that include commodifying water to maximize revenue, avoiding expenditures, and flouting climatological realities of scarcity, among others. I propose the notions of financial feedbacks and the financial pathology of institutions as conceptual tools for characterizing these processes.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41429457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-14DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2042888
H. Askland, Barrie Shannon, R. Chiong, Natalie Lockart, A. Maguire, Jane Rich, Justine Groizard
ABSTRACT Scholarship on displacement caused by the effects of climate change generally approaches displacement as the involuntary movement of people. However, in this article, we argue that there are uncertainties surrounding Climate Change Induced Displacement (CCID) that are partly caused by discursive ambiguity around the notion of ‘displacement’ – a concept that remains poorly defined in the context of climate change research – and a conflation between displacement due to quick-onset disaster events and the cumulative pressure of living in an environment marked by a disrupted climate. Reflecting on the impacts of the Australian bushfires in 2019–20, we conceptualise CCID beyond migration as an event and a physical relocation across geographical space. Even fast-onset disaster events, such as the Australian bushfires, can dispossess and displace beyond the immediate threat of the fire front; but this displacement is not necessarily aligned with movement and migration, nor is it evenly proportioned across populations. Based on a review of existing literature on CCID, we identify three key tensions shaping scholarship on CCID: conceptualisation; distribution of risk and impact; and discursive framing. Together, we contend, these tensions highlight the imperative of striving for conceptual clarity and awareness of distributional inequities of risk and vulnerabilities.
{"title":"Beyond migration: a critical review of climate change induced displacement","authors":"H. Askland, Barrie Shannon, R. Chiong, Natalie Lockart, A. Maguire, Jane Rich, Justine Groizard","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2042888","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2042888","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Scholarship on displacement caused by the effects of climate change generally approaches displacement as the involuntary movement of people. However, in this article, we argue that there are uncertainties surrounding Climate Change Induced Displacement (CCID) that are partly caused by discursive ambiguity around the notion of ‘displacement’ – a concept that remains poorly defined in the context of climate change research – and a conflation between displacement due to quick-onset disaster events and the cumulative pressure of living in an environment marked by a disrupted climate. Reflecting on the impacts of the Australian bushfires in 2019–20, we conceptualise CCID beyond migration as an event and a physical relocation across geographical space. Even fast-onset disaster events, such as the Australian bushfires, can dispossess and displace beyond the immediate threat of the fire front; but this displacement is not necessarily aligned with movement and migration, nor is it evenly proportioned across populations. Based on a review of existing literature on CCID, we identify three key tensions shaping scholarship on CCID: conceptualisation; distribution of risk and impact; and discursive framing. Together, we contend, these tensions highlight the imperative of striving for conceptual clarity and awareness of distributional inequities of risk and vulnerabilities.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48204557","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-09DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2042887
Elise Largesse
ABSTRACT Environmental sociologists have debated the role of individual versus societal responses to climate change impacts and threats. Some are critical of all individual consumption-driven private responses; others see some value in conscious consumption. One characterization of private threat response is ‘inverted quarantine’: attempting to isolate an individual from a ‘sick’ world by purchasing safe products or spaces. Inverted quarantine scholars theorize this can have unintended consequences such as harm displacement onto the unprotected and redirection of resources toward privilege. Little work, however, has empirically documented the causal relationship between inverted quarantines and unintended consequences, which are typically spatially and temporally distant. This multi-method ethnography of Nantucket Island fills that gap by leveraging characteristics of ‘islandness,’ enabling observation of sequential processes of inverted quarantine, consequences, and responses. The study confirms that harm displacement and resource redirection occur. It also finds an additional, insidious consequence of inverted quarantines: a double bind impeding effective public solutions. Public solutions threaten the private-threat-response industry and therefore the livelihoods of laborers producing inverted quarantines. While creating the conditions for its own eventual failure, inverted quarantines may also guarantee their continued manufacture at the expense of public solutions, by monopolizing the means of economic and social reproduction.
{"title":"Class, climate change, and closed systems: inverted quarantine on Nantucket Island","authors":"Elise Largesse","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2042887","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2042887","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Environmental sociologists have debated the role of individual versus societal responses to climate change impacts and threats. Some are critical of all individual consumption-driven private responses; others see some value in conscious consumption. One characterization of private threat response is ‘inverted quarantine’: attempting to isolate an individual from a ‘sick’ world by purchasing safe products or spaces. Inverted quarantine scholars theorize this can have unintended consequences such as harm displacement onto the unprotected and redirection of resources toward privilege. Little work, however, has empirically documented the causal relationship between inverted quarantines and unintended consequences, which are typically spatially and temporally distant. This multi-method ethnography of Nantucket Island fills that gap by leveraging characteristics of ‘islandness,’ enabling observation of sequential processes of inverted quarantine, consequences, and responses. The study confirms that harm displacement and resource redirection occur. It also finds an additional, insidious consequence of inverted quarantines: a double bind impeding effective public solutions. Public solutions threaten the private-threat-response industry and therefore the livelihoods of laborers producing inverted quarantines. While creating the conditions for its own eventual failure, inverted quarantines may also guarantee their continued manufacture at the expense of public solutions, by monopolizing the means of economic and social reproduction.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-03-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45903126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-03DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2048237
R. Lidskog, A. Standring, James M. White
ABSTRACT What role should social science play in the work for transforming society towards sustainability? The background for this question is that despite massive investments in environmental research and the accumulation of data on the human impact on the environment, action remains insufficient. The severity of the current situation has led to the conclusion that moderate change is not enough; there is a need for a fundamental transformative change of society. How social science expertise should contribute to this is a fundamental epistemic and normative question and is the point of departure for this paper. This paper aims to develop a theory of social scientific environmental expertise. It first gives a broad account of expertise and its current landscape. It then develops a pluralistic approach, where expertise can take many forms, but should be reflexive, critical, and constructive. Finally, it stresses the crucial role that social science expertise has to play in the work for transformative change, not least to broaden environmental problems and their complexities, so that society is better equipped to undergo sustainable transformation.
{"title":"Environmental expertise for social transformation: roles and responsibilities for social science","authors":"R. Lidskog, A. Standring, James M. White","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2048237","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2048237","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT What role should social science play in the work for transforming society towards sustainability? The background for this question is that despite massive investments in environmental research and the accumulation of data on the human impact on the environment, action remains insufficient. The severity of the current situation has led to the conclusion that moderate change is not enough; there is a need for a fundamental transformative change of society. How social science expertise should contribute to this is a fundamental epistemic and normative question and is the point of departure for this paper. This paper aims to develop a theory of social scientific environmental expertise. It first gives a broad account of expertise and its current landscape. It then develops a pluralistic approach, where expertise can take many forms, but should be reflexive, critical, and constructive. Finally, it stresses the crucial role that social science expertise has to play in the work for transformative change, not least to broaden environmental problems and their complexities, so that society is better equipped to undergo sustainable transformation.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45990483","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2047325
Martijn Stehouwer, S. Wertheim-Heck, Bas van Vliet
ABSTRACT Wastewater from sanitation contains several scarce resources that can be reused for purposes of energy and food production. Sanitation infrastructures, however, are often overlooked in debates on circular food systems, while the role of sanitation could be pivotal in combatting resource depletion facing agriculture. Transitioning sanitation infrastructures to support circular systems also needs a thorough understanding of the sanitation practices involved, as resource-oriented sanitation systems require a de-routinization in how we make use of toilets and deal with wastewater. Instead, novel sanitation practices are needed for circular developments around sanitation to ensure the reuse potential of wastewater. This research paper focuses on exploring how sanitation practices are shaped and embedded in wider configurations of domestic practices and its implications for the routinization of novel sanitation practices. A mixed-method research design has been adopted studying sanitation practices and infrastructures in three distinct neighborhoods within the Amsterdam Metropolitan Region. First, a survey was conducted that enabled the development of a neighborhood typology. Second, in-depth interviews were conducted to uncover the embeddedness of sanitation practices. Results highlight the importance of normalizing novel sanitation practices when linking sanitation to food systems and list five steppingstones that may help doing so.
{"title":"Normalizing novel sanitation practices in transitioning towards circular food and energy systems","authors":"Martijn Stehouwer, S. Wertheim-Heck, Bas van Vliet","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2047325","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2047325","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Wastewater from sanitation contains several scarce resources that can be reused for purposes of energy and food production. Sanitation infrastructures, however, are often overlooked in debates on circular food systems, while the role of sanitation could be pivotal in combatting resource depletion facing agriculture. Transitioning sanitation infrastructures to support circular systems also needs a thorough understanding of the sanitation practices involved, as resource-oriented sanitation systems require a de-routinization in how we make use of toilets and deal with wastewater. Instead, novel sanitation practices are needed for circular developments around sanitation to ensure the reuse potential of wastewater. This research paper focuses on exploring how sanitation practices are shaped and embedded in wider configurations of domestic practices and its implications for the routinization of novel sanitation practices. A mixed-method research design has been adopted studying sanitation practices and infrastructures in three distinct neighborhoods within the Amsterdam Metropolitan Region. First, a survey was conducted that enabled the development of a neighborhood typology. Second, in-depth interviews were conducted to uncover the embeddedness of sanitation practices. Results highlight the importance of normalizing novel sanitation practices when linking sanitation to food systems and list five steppingstones that may help doing so.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48771804","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-17DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2042889
Zeke Baker, S. Fick
ABSTRACT Different cultural valuations of landscapes often underlie land use conflict. How do place-based experiences inform cultural values regarding landscapes? Further, how do such values shape conflicts over land use and land management? This paper draws from ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with recreational land users (primarily rock climbers), land managers, ranchers, and others in the Indian Creek area of Bears Ears National Monument in Southeast Utah to address these questions. The findings presented center on the following paradox: recreational users value the landscape as a vestige of wilderness values while simultaneously experiencing and contributing to socio-ecological dynamics that either impinge upon or unravel the basis of these values. We argue that discourses of sacredness, stewardship, authenticity, and ‘local ethics’ relieve some friction, but nonetheless build a common narrative that the landscape is being ‘loved to death.’ Two conclusions follow. First, land use conflicts can be generally understood as having cultural roots developed through embodied engagement with landscapes. Second, as land managers regulate outdoor recreation in multi-use settings, policies should engage the contradictory social pressures (namely wilderness ethics vs. high-impact consumption) that define outdoor recreation culture.
{"title":"Loving it to death: land use conflict, outdoor recreation and the contradictions of wilderness in Southeast Utah, USA","authors":"Zeke Baker, S. Fick","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2042889","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2042889","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Different cultural valuations of landscapes often underlie land use conflict. How do place-based experiences inform cultural values regarding landscapes? Further, how do such values shape conflicts over land use and land management? This paper draws from ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with recreational land users (primarily rock climbers), land managers, ranchers, and others in the Indian Creek area of Bears Ears National Monument in Southeast Utah to address these questions. The findings presented center on the following paradox: recreational users value the landscape as a vestige of wilderness values while simultaneously experiencing and contributing to socio-ecological dynamics that either impinge upon or unravel the basis of these values. We argue that discourses of sacredness, stewardship, authenticity, and ‘local ethics’ relieve some friction, but nonetheless build a common narrative that the landscape is being ‘loved to death.’ Two conclusions follow. First, land use conflicts can be generally understood as having cultural roots developed through embodied engagement with landscapes. Second, as land managers regulate outdoor recreation in multi-use settings, policies should engage the contradictory social pressures (namely wilderness ethics vs. high-impact consumption) that define outdoor recreation culture.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41790955","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-28DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2031513
Lacee A. Satcher
ABSTRACT Unequal access to important resources like grocery stores, pharmacies, and parks in the urban built environment has been a significant social problem under study by social scientists. Drawing from work in urban and environmental justice studies that conceptualize racism as a structural factor that shapes environmental inequality, I assess spatial inequality in urban cities across the southern USA. Utilizing data from the U.S. Census, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the National Provider Identifier (NPI) registry, and county and state government websites, I examine the relevance of race and class to the existence of neighborhoods as single or multiple resource deserts, coined multiply-deserted areas (MDAs). Results indicate that predominantly Black neighborhoods are more than twice as likely to be resource deserts, even after adjusting for class. Additionally, predominantly Black neighborhoods are nearly three times as likely to have more intense, compounded resource scarcity than other neighborhoods. Moreover, results indicate a race and class interaction effect such that a predominantly Black neighborhood has increased odds of being a multiply-deserted area as median household income increases. The findings implicate yet another route through which racism shapes inequality and demonstrate a need to address racial differences in access to resources across socioeconomic status.
{"title":"Multiply-deserted areas: environmental racism and food, pharmacy, and greenspace access in the Urban South","authors":"Lacee A. Satcher","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2031513","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2031513","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Unequal access to important resources like grocery stores, pharmacies, and parks in the urban built environment has been a significant social problem under study by social scientists. Drawing from work in urban and environmental justice studies that conceptualize racism as a structural factor that shapes environmental inequality, I assess spatial inequality in urban cities across the southern USA. Utilizing data from the U.S. Census, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the National Provider Identifier (NPI) registry, and county and state government websites, I examine the relevance of race and class to the existence of neighborhoods as single or multiple resource deserts, coined multiply-deserted areas (MDAs). Results indicate that predominantly Black neighborhoods are more than twice as likely to be resource deserts, even after adjusting for class. Additionally, predominantly Black neighborhoods are nearly three times as likely to have more intense, compounded resource scarcity than other neighborhoods. Moreover, results indicate a race and class interaction effect such that a predominantly Black neighborhood has increased odds of being a multiply-deserted area as median household income increases. The findings implicate yet another route through which racism shapes inequality and demonstrate a need to address racial differences in access to resources across socioeconomic status.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47344061","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-26DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2031512
D. Ciplet
ABSTRACT From its origins in the labor and environmental justice movements in the United States, the concept of a just transition has travelled globally as a frame to infuse concerns of justice in public responses to escalating environmental crises. However, important gaps remain in terms of understanding the potential of transition efforts to be transformative in shifting the political economic structures that cause, sustain, and deepen injustices. This article asks: what does critical sociological theory of power and social change offer for understanding the features of transformative transition coalitions as compared to those that reinforce environmental, social, and economic inequality? To this purpose, I apply insights from Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi, contemporary scholars who use their theory, and environmental justice scholars to identify the means and form of transformative just transition coalitions. I identify two respective conditions of transformative coalitions: strategic power and embedded relations. Through this lens, I describe four transition coalition types: status quo, impeded, disembedded, and transformative, and discuss related examples.
{"title":"Transition coalitions: toward a theory of transformative just transitions","authors":"D. Ciplet","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2031512","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2031512","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT From its origins in the labor and environmental justice movements in the United States, the concept of a just transition has travelled globally as a frame to infuse concerns of justice in public responses to escalating environmental crises. However, important gaps remain in terms of understanding the potential of transition efforts to be transformative in shifting the political economic structures that cause, sustain, and deepen injustices. This article asks: what does critical sociological theory of power and social change offer for understanding the features of transformative transition coalitions as compared to those that reinforce environmental, social, and economic inequality? To this purpose, I apply insights from Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi, contemporary scholars who use their theory, and environmental justice scholars to identify the means and form of transformative just transition coalitions. I identify two respective conditions of transformative coalitions: strategic power and embedded relations. Through this lens, I describe four transition coalition types: status quo, impeded, disembedded, and transformative, and discuss related examples.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45002011","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-21DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2021.2004497
lAurA A. McKinney, Ryan Thomson
ABSTRACT One under-explored area of concern is the relationship between disasters and the waste they generate, which often amounts to the equivalent of 5 to 15 years of garbage that a community would create under normal circumstances. The road to recovery depends heavily on the removal of waste and debris, the bulk of which is directed towards construction and demolition (C&D), industrial, and municipal landfills. This paper theoretically develops and empirically evaluates the spatial distribution of disasters and waste using environmental justice and spatial inequality frameworks. We employ the spatial durbin model (SDM) to analyze the distribution of landfills, disaster events, and socioeconomic factors for 613 counties in the southeastern region of the United States. Findings demonstrate the disproportionate concentration of landfills in poor areas with high female-householder families and minority populations. We also find natural disasters have significant impacts on the communities that process waste. Conclusions point to the benefits of using spatial perspectives and companion analytic approaches to deepen our understanding of environmental inequality.
{"title":"Landfills and disasters: a geospatial analysis of environmental injustice across the Southern United States","authors":"lAurA A. McKinney, Ryan Thomson","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2021.2004497","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2021.2004497","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT One under-explored area of concern is the relationship between disasters and the waste they generate, which often amounts to the equivalent of 5 to 15 years of garbage that a community would create under normal circumstances. The road to recovery depends heavily on the removal of waste and debris, the bulk of which is directed towards construction and demolition (C&D), industrial, and municipal landfills. This paper theoretically develops and empirically evaluates the spatial distribution of disasters and waste using environmental justice and spatial inequality frameworks. We employ the spatial durbin model (SDM) to analyze the distribution of landfills, disaster events, and socioeconomic factors for 613 counties in the southeastern region of the United States. Findings demonstrate the disproportionate concentration of landfills in poor areas with high female-householder families and minority populations. We also find natural disasters have significant impacts on the communities that process waste. Conclusions point to the benefits of using spatial perspectives and companion analytic approaches to deepen our understanding of environmental inequality.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41970599","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-11DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2021.2021604
Dylan Bugden
ABSTRACT Ecological modernization refers to the process of resolving ecological crises through radical improvements in resource efficiency and the substitution of environmentally harmful industrial processes for less harmful ones without undermining economic growth and other capitalist imperatives. An important theoretical perspective within environmental sociology, it is also the intellectual kin of global environmental policies that pursue objectives such as decoupling, green growth, and sustainable development. While numerous studies cast doubt on ecological modernization and its associated policy efforts, existing empirical analyses do not fully address the theory’s core hypothesis on the relationship between technological innovation and environmental impacts. I resolve this problem by using newly available global patent data on environmental technologies across 35 countries from 1982–2016. Results of panel regression analyses demonstrate that a nation’s development of environmental technologies only marginally attenuates the effects of economic activity on a nation’s ecological footprint, while the direct effect of patents is to increase, rather than decrease, a nation’s ecological footprint. These results offer further evidence of the limits of both (a) ecological modernization theory and (b) environmental policies that exclusively emphasize technological solutions to global environmental problems.
{"title":"Technology, decoupling, and ecological crisis: examining ecological modernization theory through patent data","authors":"Dylan Bugden","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2021.2021604","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2021.2021604","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Ecological modernization refers to the process of resolving ecological crises through radical improvements in resource efficiency and the substitution of environmentally harmful industrial processes for less harmful ones without undermining economic growth and other capitalist imperatives. An important theoretical perspective within environmental sociology, it is also the intellectual kin of global environmental policies that pursue objectives such as decoupling, green growth, and sustainable development. While numerous studies cast doubt on ecological modernization and its associated policy efforts, existing empirical analyses do not fully address the theory’s core hypothesis on the relationship between technological innovation and environmental impacts. I resolve this problem by using newly available global patent data on environmental technologies across 35 countries from 1982–2016. Results of panel regression analyses demonstrate that a nation’s development of environmental technologies only marginally attenuates the effects of economic activity on a nation’s ecological footprint, while the direct effect of patents is to increase, rather than decrease, a nation’s ecological footprint. These results offer further evidence of the limits of both (a) ecological modernization theory and (b) environmental policies that exclusively emphasize technological solutions to global environmental problems.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44961617","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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