Analyze

In their introduction, Vermeylen's argument for a particularist and decolonial approach to justice through a recognition of plural ontologies and epistemologies that decenters Western liberal discourse and its theory of justice. How does bringing the lens of coloniality into environmental justice literature alter our visions of energy futures? Can we make appeals to environmental justice without recourse to liberal theories of individual rights and property ownership? More specifically, I am wondering how our team can study and address this dynamic plurality of ways of understanding and experiencing in/justice in this site, and how can we engage this plurality in productive ways? What axes of difference and inequality should we be looking for/at (race, gender, class, sexual orientation, citizenship, housing status, etc)? If the Anthropocene is coloniality by another name, how can we foreground this in our approach?

The authors productively place three bodies of theory in conversation, abolitionist theories, urban political ecology, and decolonial theory, to rewrite the intellectual trajectories of EJ as extending the legacy of the Black Radical Tradition. What are our intellectual and political genealogies as students and researchers of the quotidian anthropocene? What genealogies are we pushing against? Drawing from their examples of spaces and historical moments of interracial solidarity, what kinds of coalitions do we see ourselves partnering with and contributing to as (largely?) newcomers to the activism in Austin?

In this fascinating review, the authors show how environmental justice is reproductive justice (following the water protectors at Standing Rock) and how this intersection reshapes understandings of the environment, embodiment, and exposure. I was particularly interested in the concepts of social and cultural re/production, and how we might think about this in light of Austin's rapid gentrification. They discuss an intersectional approach as a multi-scalar approach, from climate change to chemical exposure in the home - and I think this could be extended to a inter/multi-generational approach to justice (esp given our focus on renewables). The authors show how the RJ framework rethinks the individualism of reproductive choice as the right to conceive and bear children in conditions of social justice and human flourishing - then how does the current energy system (and future energy transitions) negate or create these conditions, and for whom? If we think about biological/cultural reproduction, how do we also incorporate the concept of reproductive labor into our analysis? Finally, I think they make an important point about the harms of documentation, and it would be great to hear everyone's thoughts (Esp those who have participated in earlier field campuses) on what the goal and ethics of our knowledge production are?

Walsh's piece gives us a concise history and geography of environmental racism in Austin, by drawing our attention to how ineequality is written into city law and urban planning. The ongoing legacies of segregation have shaped social life from access to public services to access to recreational spaces. Given the foundations of environmental racism in zoning laws and land use regulations, so succinctly highlighted by Walsh, how does/must the process of energy transition address these issues? Can there be zoning for justice, and what would that look like? In what way can our work at the field campus contribute to the existing work being done by orgs like El Pueblo and PODER?

This report was published by Human Rights Watch.

One process to consider is that alot of Newark Environmental and Public Health laws had not been changed since the 1950's, so that allowed for continuing of neglegence over the course of history in terms of environmental justice. Other social processes that might have played a part is race and class. Low-rise and dense housing for low-income and minority civilians have become major victims of careless industrialization.

Paul Farmer is the chair of the Department of GLobal Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is an expert in health care services and advocacy for those who are sick and in poverty. He doesn't appear to be situated in emergency response; he seems to be much more on the follow-up months or years later. Dr. Farmer has myriad publications of relevance to the Network, and his research foci are mostly regarding establishing high-quality health care in resource-poor environments. (http://ghsm.hms.harvard.edu/person/faculty/paul-farmer)

Bruce Nizeye works as the Chief of Infrastructure for PIH in Rwanda. It appears that his expertise is in physical constructs. I could not find how he was situated in emergency response, but it appears that he takes a role on the back side of disasters, much like Dr. Farmer. (http://www.pih.org/blog/the-voices-of-our-colleagues/)

Sara Stulac is an Associate Physician in the Division of Global Health Equity at BWH. She is also the Deputy Chief Medical Director for PIH. She seems to be an expert in pediatrics, specifically HIV care and prevention and oncology. Like her other authors mentioned on this page, she does not seem to be directly involved with emergency response. Her research foci are mostly not related to emergency response, but dealing with non-emergent pediatric care. (http://www.brighamandwomens.org/Departments_and_Services/medicine/servi…)

Salmaan Keshavjee is a professor at HMS and a physician at BWH. He has conducted research on post-Soviet Tajikistan's health transition and worked on an MDR-TB treatment program in Tomsk, Russia. Rather than emergency response, Dr. Keshavjee seems to be focused on epidemiology like his co-authors. He has a number of research foci including MDR-TB treatment and policy, health-sector reform in transnational societies, the role of NGOs in the formation of trans-border civil society, and "modernity, social institutions, civil society, and health in the Middle East and Central Asia. (http://ghsm.hms.harvard.edu/person/faculty/salmaan-keshavjee)

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It appears that MSF is motivated by data showing that people in countries without adequate local health services do not recieve the care they need. MSF attempts to bridge the gap between needing healthcare and actually getting it by operating in those aforementioned environments.

The CEHC aims to "support high-quality academic programs for ... students," research to produce new knowledge, provide learning opportunities and training for professionals in order to "prepare for, protect against, respond to, and recover from a growing array of natural and human-caused risks and threats in NYS and around the world."