Analyze

New social and environmental obligations are now imposed on transnational companies. They are now responsible for the concrete implementation of these obligations and are developing a set of practices to measure, prevent and remedy their environmental impact. These “corporate transition policies” (Lhulier & Tenreira, 2023) are at the frontier of law, management and natural sciences (mapping, indicators, thresholds), thus constitutive of a new co-produced scientific-normative space. A qualitative Science & Technology (STS) analysis on the basis of corporate documents and other collective practices is useful in order to describe this “corporate assemblages” (Tenreira, 2023), especially using Jasanoff's four-tiered analysis. The case study analysis reveals that the firm Decathlon refers to the 9 planetary limits ("experts/identities" N°1). It also refers to "institutions" (N°2) such as Sciences Based Target. The analysis of the "discourses" (N°3) shows that Decathlon's commitment actually appears largely declarative. The firm falls short of adopting concrete methodologies for calculating its ecological footprint, thereby highlighting a gap between rhetoric and action. This discrepancy presents a unique "representation" (N°4) of science, which permits the company a considerable degree of latitude in employing or constructing scientific indicators according to its “discretion”. At this stage of the analysis, it is thus possible to “problematize” (Laurent, 2022) corporate objects as corporate assemblages. The next steps of the analysis would nevertheless require other methodological approaches to “assess reflexively” these assemblages regarding an “rhizomatic ecological reality”.

Image : Tomas Saraceno, "Galaxies Forming along Filaments, Like Droplets along the Strands of a Spider’s Web", 2009, in Bruno Latour

Tenreira, Luca. 2023. "The construction of an episteme of objectification of corporate practices in the field of transition." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

This initiative by the ICC to ground the history of Environmental Justice in Newark, while creating resilience through education and powerful messages.

They wanted to make the waters cleaner and help the enviroment get better. 

The source of resilence was local knowledge and community that wanted to see a difference from companies dumping trash in the water. 

Newark's air is polutted from the factories and warehouses the most. Also, Newark's port is surrounded by factories and use of toxic gases. I think the air pollution in Newark impacts the residents of Newark and the surrounding cities as well. Air Pollution causes lots of diseases.

First of all I would like to highlight the first source used in the new. The map with the risk on air polution in Newark.

Now I'll point out the two qutes suggested:

"Air quality was analyzed using proximity to 5 factors: major roads, truck routes, rail lines, Newark airport are all nonpoint sources and facilities that have violated their major permit at least once within the last 3 years are point sources. Point sources were buffered 1 miles for the area of high risk, and 1.5 miles for the area of elevated risk."

(at the begging of the last paragraph)

"This project is an attempt to identify those areas of high risk and the people being affected by poor air quality. It can be used to inform the public about their risk and to influence policy makers and developers."

(the fourth paragraph)

In an industrial city like Newark, although prevention of air pollution is hard, but control can be in our hands. By identifying the areas with the higher risks and also the people being affected by the poor air quailty, we can further give the community more clear information regarding the risks and also in turn influencing policy makers and the stakeholders of the community. Being correctly informed on the topic not only helps the community members, but also the people in charge of making decisions for their communities, making this a better way to work together to build a healthier ans safer community in areas like these. 

Yes, individual communities should determine the air quality standards for their areas because each area would have a different standard. For example the Newark area air quality standard would be much lower then the other tri-state areas of New Jersey. If Newark's air quality was measured with standards that are kept for the whole state then the results would be much lower and wouldn't be right to compare the two. Having different standards per each area helps in diffrentiating between each one.