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Title: Institutional Roadblocks to Achieving Environmental Justice Through Public Participation: The Case of CSO Control in US Cities

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2018

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Abstract: Rather than meaningfully involving representatives of environmental-justice communities in decisions about the hazards that disproportionately affect their health, public participation efforts initiated by federal and municipal agencies often perpetuate inequities. Rebekah Breitzer argues that the problem stems in part from the adoption of social diffusion theory, which conditions policymakers to think of low-income people as targets for behavior modification rather than as potential contributors to environmental policy creation. Predominantly poor communities and communities of color remain disproportionately impacted by environmental hazards. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is now focused on combating this inequality by increasing “meaningful public participation” in these “overburdened and vulnerable communities” (US EPA, 2016, p. 27). The EPA’s emphasis on public participation reflects a larger trend in environmental governance: officials increasingly view public participation as a normative good, as a right of citizens, and as a method of increasing government legitimacy and public support for new policy agendas (Rydin and Pennington 2010). Conversely, failure to fully include the impacted public in environmental policy creation is now often seen as an obstacle for new policy initiatives, particularly if one of the stated goals is increased environmental equity. For instance, in their review of New York City’s 2015 OneNYC plan, Bautista, Hernandez, Osorio, and Soto (2017) note that despite . . .

Url: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328201881

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Authors: Breitzer, Rebekah

Publisher: MetroPolitics.eu

Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS

Topics: Other

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