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“The “right” scale will depend upon the nature of the harm being analyzed and purpose for which information is being gathered.” (Kaswan, p 29)

“Numerous studies, at a multiplicity of scales, analyze the distribution of a wide variety of land uses, as well as risk: what exposures, with what consequences, do people experience?” (Kaswan, p 33). 

This text builds on concepts of equality, bases for deviating from the core idea of equality, and the multiple contexts that define and shape distributive justice. Kaswan additionally advances the distributive environmental justice by outlining the different contexts, including historical land use patterns, government regulations, infrastructure, and enforcement and the implications that each of these dimensions have on contributing to distributive injustice. 

The main narrative of this text builds on foundational ideas on equality and extrapolates it further to establish how distributive environmental justice, its ideas and articulations, as well as its operationalization, has taken shape throughout the years. To outline these points, Kaswan outlines different cases of environmental disaster, and subsequent government responses, to showcase how government institutions have both upheld and endeavored to address distributive environmental inequality in the past decades.

The author, Chad Raphael, is the Faculty Associate for Sustainability across the Curriculum  at Santa Clara University and Co-Coordinator of the Environmental Justice and the Common Good Initiative. Raphael is considered a prominent scholar in political and environmental communication and has served as a consultant in designing communication campaigns for many environmental organizations. In his position as researcher and professor, Raphael remains committed to integrating his research and teaching by continually co-publishing with undergraduate students. 

“Reflexivity should act as a check on academic anxieties about scholarly identity and status, on professional and disciplinary insularity, and self-regard. Reflexivity reminds us that discipline-building – increasing access to grants, recognition, and seats at the policy table – is a means to larger ends, not an end in itself. It pushes us to worry less about whether we are distinguishing ourselves from other fields and more about whether we are collaborating well with scholars from other disciplines and with community actors to address society’s most significant challenges and imagine their solutions.” (Raphael, p 16)

“The research cited above has begun to document inequities within countries, and between countries in the global North and South, and how they are driven by colonial legacies, corporate exploitation, governmental policies and corruption, intergovernmental agreements and organizations, international foundations, and consumer demand. However, scholars from a handful of countries account for most of this research. Of all scholarly articles published in 2009 with the keyword “environmental justice,” almost half were authored by researchers based in the U.S., 20 percent were written by authors in the U.K., and 60 percent exclusively addressed U.S. cases (Reed & George, 2011). While this distribution in part reflects global scholars’ preference for other terms for EJ issues, it should also alert us to the need to extend the scholarly community beyond dominant Anglo-American academic institutions and to address EJ around the globe.” (Raphael, p 11)

Through this guide, Raphael makes a case for ES within EJ research. Particularly, Raphael articulates the value ES in: 1) building scholarly relevance and promoting restorative justice, 2) improving methodological designs in communication research, 3) reaching a wider pool of audiences in ways that are translatable to the public sphere, and 4) prompting greater reflexivity and collaborations by scholars across disciplines. Evidence is cited from a particular case study wherein a collaboration across academic institutions, independent research institutes, and a statewide advocacy organization led to improvements across the four aforementioned spheres for the research project itself. For example, by co-designing materials to increase the visibility and transparency of specialized research on pollution emissions, this collaboration succeeded in relating knowledge around pollution risks and lent strength to a wider organizing campaign to reduce emissions from the Chevron Oil Refinery in Richmond. 

Yuanni Wang is a PhD student at the Department of Sociology at Hohai University in Nanjing China and Xinhong Wang is Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick, UK.

This study has additionally been published with additional guides to project and organizational management, such as the Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, published by the Project Management Institute. It serves as a source of reference for other organizations hoping to operate within China’s semi-autonomous state. As a case study of effect bargaining and collaboration with government actors, this text has further been referenced across non-profit management guides, as well as environmental justice studies within similar academic settings to our class.

What does an environmental justice movement look like in a semi-autonomous state? Green Yunnan and their organizational approach to operating within a government well known for its restrictions on free speech, can serve as a proxy for other environmental organizations seeking to do the same. In a similar context, Vietnam’s semi-autonomous state has rendered it extremely difficult for victims of the Formosa environmental disaster to achieve redress. Protests and opposition to government actors in this case has resulted in  deaths, injuries, and collective trauma for members of Central Vietnam’s fishing community. As research on this case builds, another important dimension worthy of investigation includes understanding  how current Vietnamese environmental organizations can employ the same diplomatic strategy to achieve environmental redress. A greater understanding of effective organization could lead to future “soft” confrontations that do not end in bloodshed or engender  greater government animosity against affected communities.