Analyze

Residents of Love Canal, in the Niagara Falls region of Western New York, were alerted to signs of a toxic waste crisis involving the lethal chemical byproduct dioxin in the late 1970s. Residents learned about the crisis through news media, community activism and research, and their own visceral experiences – they could smell noxious fumes, noticed black sludge seeping into their basements, and saw children falling ill. Activists and academics carried out community-based research to survey the area in an effort to understand the extent of the hazard and its effects – data that they saw as missing, at the time – in turn generating evidence of changes in health and pregnancy abnormalities. In doing so, members of the community aimed to hold corporate and government stakeholders accountable to evacuate residents, organize remediation, and strengthen scientific studies and interventions to care for residents. Regional health authorities, however, dismissed community-based studies as “useless housewife data”. Activists responded by scrutinizing government and scientific studies, critiquing a lack of ecological validity and trustworthiness. Residents and community groups’ advocacy contributed to their exercise of epistemic authority, the creation of archival records and initiatives tracking the crisis over the last five decades, and wider public attention to Love Canal and other sites like it.

Image Description and Source: "Map showing distribution of symptoms believed to be caused by Love Canal pollutants," Digital Collections - University at Buffalo Libraries, May 1982.

Shankar, Saguna. 2023. "What's the Use of Data? Epistemic Authority and Environmental Injustice at Love Canal." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali. Kim Fortun, Phillio Baum and Prerna Srigyvan. Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawaiti, Nov 8-11.

The Grassroots Global Justice Alliance is an international organization focusing on various kinds of injustices. They have launched various programs, including Global Wellbeing, Grassroots Feminism, Demilitarise and Movement Building, aiming at addressing various types of worldwide justice struggles. 

The Grassroots Global Movement has gathered Climate Justice Alliance, It Takes Roots, People’s Action, and East Michigan Environmental Action Council to build political power for the frontlines communiteis for 2020 and beyond.

The Grassroots Global Justice Alliance is aiming at thriving the green new deal. The core of the work of just transiton from this organizations is the principles mentioned in the green new deal. 

The policy is the IAEA: Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident. Written in 1986, it aimed to create an international system for reporting a nuclear accident, transferring vital information from the source to those who would need it to facilitate effective emergency response.

The convention was drafted and signed at a special meeting of the IAEA that took place 5 months after the Chernobyl Disaster. No one author or author country could be determined based on the document.

This policy applies internationally, to 119 states who were subject to it after the entry to force date. 69 states signed the convention at the IAEA special meeting in 1986.

This policy was created as a direct response to the Chernobyl Disaster. An interesing historical note is that the USSR and the Ukranian SSR were among the 69 states that signed the convention at the 1986 meeting, and both quickly ratified it afterward. 

By establishing for effective communication of information regarding a nuclear accident to other states which could be effected by it, and creating policies for the transfer of information, the convention addresses public health by giving goverments access to the information needed to respond to a nuclear disaster from abroad. 

This policy doesn't specifically address the needs of vulnerable popluations. 

This policy would help provide first responders and technical professionals with specific information on a nuclear emergency from a forign source which they could be responding to. This information could allow them to more effectively mitigate the effects of such a disaster.