Analyze

"An EJ approach could provide new and different tactics to prisoner advocates and their allies.  If we understand death row inmates to be a particularly vulnerable population, could the EPA itself become more involved in monitoring conditions, and if so, what are the benefits or risks of such an approach? " (219)

"Instead of environmentally invisible spaces, death row should be viewed as involuntary state homes and therefore particularly deserving of attention and regulation. " (220)

"the EPA’s unique powers can be characterized as (1) information gathering, and (2) enforcement actions.93  The EPA’s tools apply to carceral facilities as they would any other business or agency.  By statute, the EPA has the authority to enter and inspect facilities, to request information, and assist facilities in developing or remedying violations." (220) ...  "Individual EPA offices have at times attempted to examine the conditions of incarceration at several federal facilities, primarily through information gathering.  For example, under an agreement between the EPA and the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) in 2007, over a dozen facilities were audited for environmental hazards.100  These consent arrangements can promote environmental improvement by limiting the potential sanctions for discovered violations." (221)

"Through an environmental justice lens, we may see patterns that were previously hidden.  Unlike traditional prisoner advocacy tools, environmental assessments include cumulative impacts over time and in context, rather than single isolated acts." (224) ... "A pattern-based approach may help to discern the underlying factors that result in diagnoses like Glenn’s. " (225)

"An EJ approach fundamentally centers the voices of the impacted and allows for contextual reasoning.  Although carceral facilities, and death row in particular, are externally perceived as sites of punishment, incarcerated people may have a different view.  Glenn Ford’s cell, where he was confined days at a time, was his involuntary home.  Viewing jails and prisons as homes illuminates the humanity of the people who live there.  Understanding these spaces as homes underlines the need for carceral facilities to be safe and for individuals to be protected from all types of harm, environmental and otherwise.124 " (225)

"Based on Glenn Ford’s experience, the conditions on death row in Louisiana can be grouped into the following environmental hazards:  indoor air pollution, water pollution, hazardous waste, and exposure to lead." (217)

"Glenn’s story of the conditions on death row is a story about environmental justice.  His accounting forces us to see prisons as involuntary homes, where residents are held captive to environmental harms.  Yet, the experience of Glenn and others sentenced to live on death row are largely excluded from environmental justice conversations.10" (207)

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) itself has acknowledged that carceral facilities present environmental challenges.11  In 2007, the EPA noted that “[p]otential environmental hazards at federal prisons are associated with various operations such as heating and cooling, wastewater treatment, hazardous waste and trash disposal, asbestos management, drinking water supply, pesticide use, and vehicle maintenance.”12  Yet, the EPA, which is the lead federal agency for environmental justice, completely excluded jails and prisons from its 2011 planning document for addressing environmental justice through 2014.13  Similarly, the EPA’s 2020 Action Agenda for environmental justice does not even mention carceral facilities, much less recognize prisons and jails as environmentally “overburdened communities.”14 " (207)

"Data on conditions within carceral facilities is generally not available,53 and even when it is available, the data is rarely complete." (214)

This text builds from earlier conceptions of the term “land dispossession” and “land grab”. As defined by the 2011 International Land Coalition, land grabbing specifically refers to large scale land acquisitions that are “ in violation of human rights, without prior consent of the preexisting land users, and with no consideration of social and environmental impacts”. Characterization of land grabs and their resulting harms most commonly considers the effect of physical displacement and harms within the articulated “grabbed” area (Nyantakyi-Frimpong, 2017;Ogwand, 2018;  huaserman, 2018). Li and Pan seek to expand the frame of analysis for land grabs beyond the site of grabbed land to consider the full extent of harms associated with land grabs both geographically (via pollution spillover to areas outside of “grabbed land”) and temporally (via latent “expulsion by pollution). 

 “While the villagers are not passive victims and have adopted various resistance strategies, the space for them to struggle and achieve success is confined and shaped by the existing power asymmetry in which local villagers, capital and local government are embedded.”  (Li and Pan, 2021, p 418). 

“...this framing of land dispossession is problematic in two aspects. Firstly, it obscures an invisible form of land dispossession in which people still maintain control of their land but its use value is damaged by pollution. This kind of indirect land dispossession could lead to expulsion, not due to the direct loss of control over land but by it being rendered useless by pollution.” Li and Pan, 2021, p 409). 

 This text employs a case study approach to characterize how villagers in a village in China have been displaced “in-place” as a result of new industrial activities within the area  (all specific details have been hidden within the publication, wherein the names of villager groups and the site of study itself is referenced only by coded letters). The scale of analysis primarily centers at the village level, though analysis of the case study itself extends towards the country level specifically when analysis of state actors are involved. 

Authors Hua Li and Lu Pan are scholars from China. Li is  affiliated with the College of Humanities and Law at Taiyuan University of Technology, wherein her research focuses specifically on water politics, environmental justice, and rural development and agrarian change. Pan is affiliated with the College of Humanities and Development at China Agricultural University. Her research interests include marginalized communities, rural development, and agrarian change.

TS: In this picture, taken by Paul Jobin at the Yunlin County Court in Central Taiwan, a lawyer explains the details of a Formosa Plastics lawsuit to a group of plaintiffs. In our conversation, Paul Jobin said that this picture symbolizes the difficulties to mobilize and "prepare" plaintiffs. At best, many of them are unaware that they have a right to appear in court, but often they are intimidated and fear retaliation. According to Jobin, social scientists can at times help with political organizing, for example by not only interviewing residents, but also informing them about their rights. Likewise, it was Jobin who encouraged the lawyer to take a moment after the hearing to engage with the plaintiffs.