EDGI is partnered with a few universities research units/programs, Union of Concerned Scientists, and other research labs and climate organizations.
EDGI has a main website where all of their information is stored. Based on a Google search, there is also a social media account via Twitter.
EDGI has several projects such as “A People’s EPA”, “Data Together”, and “Federal Environmental Web Tracker”
“Federal Environmental Web Tracker”: a public dataset to changes of federal environmental websites under the Trump administration and beyond. This one especially peaked my interest because it is fairly simple to navigate and there is also a Google Sheets version that is downloadable I believe.
EDGI obtains its funding from several 501 c 3 organizations but primarily relies on volunteer work. They are also offered compensation and reimbursement for some of their work or operations. EDGI is fiscally sponsored by Multiplier, a 501 c 3 organization that supports projects that have a planet-saving impact.
EDGI formed in November 2016 to document and analyze changes to environmental governance that would transpire under the Trump Administration. EDGI subsequently became the preeminent 'watchdog group' for material on federal environmental data issues on government websites and a national leader in highlighting President Trump’s impacts such as declines in EPA enforcement.
EDGI has created many projects that demonstrate tracking of environmental governance changes, specifically in environmental data infrastructure. It mainly deals with federal datasets and does not have much information on its website about engaging smaller communities.
There are 50+ members of this organization from academic institutions, non-profit and grassroots organizations, and professionals from a broad spectrum of work and life backgrounds.
Sub-units of this organization include one for environmental data justice.
There are five major programs: 1) investigating and analyzing the inner workings of federal environmental policy, through interviewing of agency staff, as well as data and documentary collection and analysis, 2) monitoring changes to, and exploring standards for, web-based information about the environment, energy, and climate provided by the federal government, 3) developing new ways of making federal environmental data more accessible to the public, 4) imagining, conceptualizing, and moving toward Environmental Data Justice, and 5) prototyping new organizational structures and practices for distributed, collective, effective work rooted in justice.
"The Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) documents, analyzes, and advocates for the federal provision of environmental data and governance, from policies and institutions, to public access to information, to environmental decision-making. They seek to improve environmental information stewardship, promote environmental democracy, health, and justice, and to better adapt these all to the digital age." (Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, About section)
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?
Environmental justice narratives in the U.S. often fall into "sacrifice zone" narratives that universalize experiences on the community-level, reproducing specifically bounded narratives about American lives and livelihoods, relationships to nature and capital, and the kinds of knowledge and authority that matter. Vermeylen's article disrupts this idea, rightfully arguing that environmental justice requires a more upfront confrontation with the socio-historical causes of oppression brought about by coloniality, as well as the fact that we need to question the righteousness of EJ discourses that rely on white settler logics.
For the Austin Field Campus, how can we bring attention to Anglo-American settler colonialism in our approaches to EJ and gentrification? And thinking back to the NOLA Field Campus, what Texas histories should we be drawing from to understand energy transitions in the city?