Browsing by Subject "Environmental justice"
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Item Assessing the environmental justice impacts of toll road projects(2010-12) Carroll, Lindsey Elizabeth; Bhat, Chandra R. (Chandrasekhar R.), 1964-; Prozzi, JolandaInadequate and uncertain transportation funding have in recent years resulted in a renewed emphasis on using investments that can be recovered by toll charges to finance new roads and modernize existing roads. This has raised questions about environmental justice (EJ) and how it pertains to tolling. In 2004, TxDOT Project 0-5208 was funded to propose an approach for the identification, measurement, and mitigation of disproportionately high or adverse impacts imposed on minority and low-income (EJ) communities by toll roads relative to non-tolled facilities. The methodology proposed had two equally important components: an analysis/quantitative component and an effective EJ participation component. However, the research raised concerns about the ability of various available analytical tools and analysis techniques to measure the potential impacts imposed on EJ communities by toll roads relative to non-toll roads. The objective of this thesis study was to extend the work that was conducted under TxDOT Research Project 0-5208 by (a) reviewing the ability of available tools and analysis techniques to quantify and qualitatively describe the EJ impacts associated with toll road projects and toll road systems through an evaluation of state-of-the-practice applications, and (b) recommending a suitable approach to assess the EJ impacts of toll roads and toll road systems on EJ communities. The research conducted to meet the study objectives has culminated in this thesis.Item The atypical environmentalist : the rhetoric of environmentalist identity and citizenship in the Texas coal plant opposition movement(2013-12) Thatcher, Valerie Lynn; Brummett, Barry, 1951-Many contemporary grassroots environmental campaigns do not begin in urban areas but in small towns, rural enclaves, and racially or economically disadvantaged communities. Citizens with no previous activist experience or association with the established environmental movement organize to fight industry-created degradation in their communities, such as coal-fired power plants in Texas, the focus of this dissertation. The Texas coal plant opposition movement is identified as sites of environmental justice, particularly as discriminatory practices against sparsely populated communities. The movement’s collaborative efforts are defined as a new category of counterpublic, co-counterpublic, due to the discrete organizations’ shared focus and common purpose. The concept that a growing number of environmental activists are atypical is advanced; atypical environmentalists often engage in environmental practices while rejecting traditional environmentalist language and identity to avoid stigmatization as tree-huggers, extremists, or affluent whites. Presented are rhetorical analyses of identity negotiation and modalities of public enactments of citizenship within the Texas coal plant opposition movement and a critique of plant proponent hegemonic discourses. Research focused on five sites of coal plant opposition in Texas, gathered through ethnographic fieldwork and through a compilation of mediated materials. Asen’s discourse theory of citizenship was used to analyze the data for instances of rhetorical negotiation of environmentalist identity in politically conservative and in ethnically marginalized communities, their localized performances as public citizens, and the collaborative processes between established environmental groups and discrete local organizations. Texas anti-coal activists engaged in what Asen called hybrid citizenship; activists were primarily motivated toward enacted citizenship by a sense of betrayal by authorities. Issue and identity framing theories were implemented to critique rhetorical strategies used by plant proponents. In order to silence the opposition, plant supporters marginalized local anti-coal activists using what Cloud called identity frames by foil; proponents borrowed derogatory rhetorics from well-established anti-environmentalist discourse through which they self-identified positively by framing opponents as Other. The means through which proponents deflected their responsibility to the community by promoting technological solutions to pollution and deferring authority to industry executives and government agencies is analyzed within Chong and Druckman’s competing frames and frames in communication theories.Item Cancer Alley and infant mortality : is there a correlation?(2011-12) Kluber, Heidi Ellen; Eaton, David J.; Sletto, BjornThis report explores issues surrounding health concerns in the State of Louisiana in the context of environmental justice. It provides a history of Cancer Alley, an area along the Mississippi River with disproportionately high cancer rates. It discusses case studies of environmental justice issues within the state. The researcher provides a geographical analysis and statistical analysis to estimate whether there is a relationship between the presence of industrial plants and health indicators, specifically cancer and infant mortality. Using cancer and infant mortality as health indicators for a population, the evidence supports a correlation between the presence of industrial pollution and waste with cancer rates and infant mortality rates across the State of Louisiana. Given that these populations are predominantly minority and low-income, these results reflect an environmental injustice.Item Cultivating Science and Environmental Justice(2020-12-04) Ramirez-Andreotta, MonicaItem Daylighting equity : evaluating efforts to daylight lower-income and minority areas in El Cerrito, California(2018-12-07) Ligons, Sydni Atrice; Paterson, Robert G.In recent years there has been a push to bring nature and its benefits back into the built environment. Urbanized areas are seeing the revitalization and restoration of once buried urban waterways. This growing trend is known as daylighting and has become an increasingly popular method of bringing nature back to the city. Although nature is making its way back into the built environment, the benefits of nature have been excluded from low-income and minority communities. Park space for the lower income residents has been an issue in the environmental justice arena for years, and in these low-income areas, the lack of green space for the city’s most vulnerable is a problem that has yet to be solved. This report examines urban green planning, daylighting specifically in the City of El Cerrito, California to explore whether daylighting projects present EJ concerns in a California community and the use of analysis tools under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to explore social justice issues. The PR draws on the California Department of Transportation (CalTrans) desk guide for EJ analysis under NEPA and CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act). That adopts the same definition and criteria of evaluation as NEPA. Smaller regional planning organizations also use this method. Using this evaluation process, I located communities of concern at the census tract and block group level in areas that were not located near daylighting projects in the City of El Cerrito. Although NEPA is primarily used for highway and transportation projects, this report demonstrates the potential of NEPA EJ tools to examine social justice issues for green amenity planning.Item Disparate exposure to fine particulate air pollution in formerly redlined cities : Chicago, Dallas, and Fort Worth(2022-05-11) Kane, Clare Ennis MacLise; Olmstead, Sheila M.Fine particulate matter (PM₂.₅) pollution is the largest environmental health risk in the United States and globally (GBD, 2019). The leading sources of PM₂.₅ pollution in the United States are fossil-fuel combustion sources like power generation and residential energy use. People of color are disproportionately exposed to PM₂.₅ pollution and have higher rates of asthma, which is known to be triggered by PM₂.₅ exposure. This thesis evaluates satellite PM₂.₅ pollution in three formerly Home Owner’s Loan Corporation (HOLC) “redlined” cities (Chicago, Dallas, and Fort Worth) to determine if historic housing policies that have perpetuated residential segregation contribute to current disparities in PM₂.₅ pollution exposure. Results suggest that residents currently living in historically low-grade HOLC neighborhoods in Chicago are exposed to significantly higher levels of PM₂.₅ pollution than high-grade HOLC neighborhoods. Although results for Dallas-Fort Worth are not statistically significant, a positive relationship between increase in HOLC grade and PM₂.₅ concentrations was found. Additionally, formerly low-grade HOLC neighborhoods had significantly higher asthma rates in 2017 than high-grade HOLC areas in all three cities. All three cities also have qualitative examples of citizens who are residing in formerly redlined neighborhoods, experiencing high concentrations of PM₂.₅ pollution from surrounding industry, and experiencing poor health outcomes. These findings further support efforts by communities of color to understand energy equity and advocate for environmental justice policies in their neighborhoods as well as the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) goal to understand the air quality concerns in overburdened communities and the health impacts these have on residentsItem The effect of local planning actions on environmental injustice : Corpus Christi's refinery row neighborhoods(2015-05) Beeler, Melissa Morgan; Mueller, Elizabeth J.; Rawlins, RachaelPublic health problems associated with industrial and hazardous waste facilities seriously and disproportionately impact some communities more than others and have been the subject of environmental justice research for decades. This report aims to 1) evaluate whether and how local planning policies have contributed to a concentration of minorities and poverty adjacent to industry in Corpus Christi's north side, and 2) examine actions that planners and city officials could take to successfully mitigate environmental justice problems. City plans, reports and zoning maps relating to the north side were reviewed to understand whether the City has contributed to the neighborhoods' proximity to industrial sites. These documents suggest that city actions have had some role in the minority neighborhoods' proximity to environmental hazards, especially in the early years of planning in Corpus Christi. Lessons learned from these planning documents are discussed, as well as recommendations for future planning efforts in the north side.Item Environmental justice considerations in heavy-vehicle traffic within the landscape of Austin, Texas(2020-08-10) Greeman, June; Karner, AlexFreight trucking is an industry whose impacts remain under-discussed in planning spheres with regard to social equity. Despite literature detailing the varied and unique impacts of heavy vehicle traffic to nearby communities, decision makers are slow to separate freight and its effects from traffic at large. This leads in turn to a lack of awareness detailing the environmental justice issues accompanying freight traffic. While in recent years, freight generating land uses have come to be accepted under the same political pretext of other locally unwanted land uses, the ways in which freight is distributed on the roadways has gone mainly un-examined, despite research clearly showing racial and economic disparities in the populations nearby major routes. To provide understanding of these issues in a regional context, heavy-vehicle traffic on Austin roadways was analyzed to reveal the possible existence of these disparities in Austin. The analysis reveals Hispanic populations to be disproportionately within the impact of heavy vehicle traffic, further legitimizing the need for local and regional decision-makers to take action towards remedying environmental injustice in areas surrounding major Austin roadways. Distribution of heavy-vehicle traffic within Austin must be understood as a clear consequence of historic and continued structural racism within Austin area policy and infrastructure.Item Environmental justice spatial issues : analysis of Austin’s public schools and their proximity to environmental hazards(2022-06-16) Willis, Ottilia; Lieberknecht, Katherine E.It is well documented that communities of color are disproportionately burdened with environmental harms. This report explores issues surrounding the location of environmental harms in Austin and the general social vulnerability of each Census tract in Travis county. It presents spatial patterns of toxic release inventories that self-report toxic chemicals they use and store. Each of these variables are considered in regards to the location of public schools to determine which schools are most at risk of being negatively impacted by these harms. Lastly, this report provides recommendations of organizations the City of Austin should partner with to support youth, as well as recommendations for school and toxic release site locations.Item Evaluating climate change mitigation efforts in California and how to secure significant and equitable co-benefits(2022-10-06) Detelich, Madeline Elaine; Apte, Joshua S.Limiting global warming to 1.5°C, or even 2°C, will require a sharp reduction in fossil fuel use over the next decade. A rich body of research quantifies the human health benefits from the improved air quality that will result in reducing fossil fuel combustion and makes the case for rapid, aggressive pathways to net-zero emissions. California has been a global leader in environmental protection and climate change mitigation, implementing a cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gas emissions in 2013. Given the disproportionate burden of air pollution exposure that many minority and low-income communities already experience, environmental justice advocates fear that a market-driven system like cap-and-trade could increase pollution disparities. Multiple studies have established that higher rates of Black and Hispanic or Disadvantaged Communities live near cap-and-trade-regulated facilities (Boyce et al. 2013, Anderson et al. 2018, Cushing et al. 2018). Using an environmental justice exposure tool developed by Chambliss et al, intake fractions are linked to cap-and-trade facility information from the database created by Cushing et al. These intake fractions for total population and Disadvantaged Communities show how communities are exposed to air pollution from these facilities, which sectors are disproportionately responsible, and the impact on Disadvantaged Communities. These studies do not show whether or not pollution has been concentrated in environmental justice communities, but they do show how it could happen. Considering the difficulty California regulators have had in implementing suggestions from its Environmental Justice Advisory Committee and the role of the industry responsible for the majority of PM₂.₅ exposure and large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions from cap-and-trade facilities, oil and gas, in legislating climate change mitigation in California, researchers and activists should keep carefully studying this program.Item Expressions of membership and belonging : Chicana/o cultural politics in Barrio Logan(2015-05) Galaviz, Manuel Guadalupe; Menchaca, Martha; Rodriguez, NestorThis thesis explores the spatial and cultural politics of Barrio Logan in the City of San Diego, California. Barrio Logan is a global seaport neighborhood located north of the Thirty-Second-Street U.S. Naval base and is the first residential neighborhood south of Downtown San Diego. Since its inception this neighborhood has experienced radical transformations in its built environment. In this thesis, I argue that the reconfiguration of urban space and land use in Barrio Logan by powerful State and private actors has not gone uncontested. Cultural and political resistance to urban marginalization processes is discussed in relation to the political activism of community members as they transform their social environment. Chicana/o community artists and activists have strategically employed Chicana/o cultural identity markers as forms of social and environmental justice activism.Item Food in the floodplain? Exploring the potential to grow food and racial equity on Austin’s floodplain buyout lands(2021-05-05) Albornoz, Sara Belén; Lieberknecht, Katherine E.As climate change unfolds, municipal governments like the City of Austin, Texas are using voluntary floodplain buyouts—a form of planned retreat—as a strategy to move residents out of hazard-prone areas. As a result of buyouts, city governments become stewards of vacant, publicly owned lands that cannot be developed, and face decisions about how to use them. Governments have the opportunity to repurpose buyout lands into community amenities, such as sustainable agriculture projects, that can generate an array of social and ecological benefits. In deciding how to repurpose buyout lands, however, governments have a responsibility to pay special attention to the implications of their actions for racial equity. Racial equity matters in this context because communities of color are being disproportionately impacted by both climate change impacts and planned retreat, and because the creation of green amenities in historically disinvested neighborhoods has the potential to spur gentrification and displacement. This professional report explores the questions: 1) Are sustainable agriculture projects a viable use for public, urban floodplain buyout lands? and 2) How can municipal governments pursue such projects in a way that prioritizes racial equity? I address these questions through a case study of a specific prospective agriculture site on City of Austin-owned floodplain buyout land in the Lower Onion Creek buyout area, which is located in the historically Latinx, climate impacted Southeast Austin neighborhood of Dove Springs. Using an environmental justice framework and a mixed-methods approach, I evaluate the likelihood that the conditions that sustainable agriculture projects require for success can be met at the prospective site, in light of the site’s physical characteristics and propensity for flooding; safety considerations; and regulatory and environmental constraints. Drawing insights from Dove Springs community leaders and subject matter experts, I discuss how the planning and implementation of a sustainable agriculture project at the prospective site could be carried out in a way that advances racial equity and environmental justice. Finally, I present recommendations for concrete next steps the City of Austin can take to move this project forward while prioritizing equity and justice.Item Home ecology and challenges in the design of healthy home environments : possibilities for low-income home repair as a leverage point for environmental justice in gentrifying urban environments(2015-08) Walsh, Elizabeth Anne; Moore, Steven A., 1945-; Mueller, Elizabeth J; Wilson, Patricia A; Paterson, Robert G; Ward, PeterHome environments pose a number of challenges for environmental justice. Healthy homes in healthy neighborhoods are often inaccessible due to socioeconomic factors, environmental racism, and/or environmental gentrification. Publicly funded home repair programs increasingly strive to both improve environmental health conditions and to reduce energy bills for low-income homeowners. Such programs have been intended to stimulate reinvestment in neighborhoods experiencing blight and more recently to reduce gentrification pressure in neighborhoods experiencing rapid reinvestment. While such programs do not represent a silver-bullet solution to the accessibility of healthy housing, the question remains: “What is the potential of low-income home repair programs to serve as a leverage point for environmental justice in urban home environments facing gentrification pressure?” This question is investigated through performance evaluation case studies of three municipally funded, low-income home repair programs in Austin, Texas intended to ameliorate gentrification and advance outcomes related to environmental justice. The findings suggest that as a site of intervention, dialogue, community connection, and resource-mobilization, home repair programs have potential as leverage points in regenerative community development that advances environmental justice performance outcomes. Actors in home environments can increase their performance with the support of the home ecology paradigm (HEP), a synthetic research paradigm that draws from sustainability science, environmental justice, and social learning literature to renew an action research paradigm established by Ellen Swallow Richards in the late 1800s to advance healthy community design and development. Guided by a vision of environmental justice, equipped with tools supporting holistic, multi-scalar systems-thinking and regenerative dialogue assessments, and engaged in a practice of resilient leadership, such actors can more deftly dance with the co-evolving systems of their home environments. In so doing, they increase their potential to directly enhance the material, social, and ecological conditions of life in the present, while also cultivating the capacity of these living systems to adapt resiliently to future disruptions. Furthermore, beyond producing life-enhancing performance outcomes, the HEP also appears to support actors in an engaged praxis that enhances their moment-by-moment experience of life and the vitality of living systems in the present.Item Introducing environmental justice dimensions into grid planning models via air pollution modeling to develop equitable decarbonization pathways(2022-05-06) Alverson, Sarah Katherine; Castellanos, Sergio (Researcher); Kinney, KerryGrid planning models are key tools for strategizing pathways to decarbonize energy systems. Historically, these capacity expansion models have focused on optimizing for least-cost solutions subject to operational constraints and CO₂ emission reduction targets, excluding non-technical factors, such as social and health implications. There are many benefits outside of CO₂ reduction to consider as plants are retired such as the impact on nearby human health due to co-emitted pollutants such as NOₓ and SO₂. Recent efforts have expanded models’ capabilities to account for equity dimensions and considering the emissions produced by power plants. However, these modeling approaches have not used a more detailed emission dispersion model and made assumptions such as only defining impact across a predefined distance radius. This body of research addresses some of these gaps in the literature by using an open-source capacity expansion model to first evaluate generation plants portfolios into the future in the Western Interconnection (WECC) in the US, and then to model the proposed plants using a simplified air pollution modeling software to reveal which zip codes are most impacted by proposed natural gas power plants. California’s environmental justice index, CalEnviroScreen is then used to analyze the environmental justice implications of the generation plants portfolio. The plants most impacting environmental justice are recommended to be constrained in the deployment of least-cost solutions. The results aim to provide informed recommendations on how to lessen the impacts on environmentally burdened populations and plan for an equitable decarbonized grid by 2045 in California.Item Introductory Economics: One class's lasting impacts on climate and social policy(2021) Moore, Cammie; Walenta, JaymeIn the midst of a climate crisis and growing social inequity, our economic mindset must adapt to our current reality. While some form of introductory economics is taken by 40% of undergraduate students across the US, these courses are not centered around the environmental and social contexts that researchers have shown affect our economy. This work is an entry into the discussion on mainstream economics and its effects on slowing down progress on climate change.Item A methodology for the environmental justice assessment of toll road projects(2006) Victoria-Jaramillo, Isabel Cristina; Walton, C. MichaelEnvironmental Justice (EJ) legislation and regulation are designed to protect the health and welfare of specific populations. Although the importance of environmentally just transportation projects is widely recognized, appropriate documents to guide transportation decision makers in assessing EJ concerns particularly pertinent to tolled facilities are largely unavailable. It is foreseeable that toll road projects could hold additional benefits as well as burdens for EJ communities compared to non-toll road projects. To date, however, very little guidance exists on how to assess the additional benefits and burdens imposed by toll roads compared to non-toll roads, and how to mitigate any negative impacts. The objective of this research was to develop a robust approach for the effective identification, evaluation, and mitigation of disproportionately high impacts imposed on minority and low-income communities (EJ communities) by toll roads relative to non-toll roads given four specific scenarios. The scenarios were conceptualized considering the tolling policy adopted on December 16, 2003 by the Texas Transportation Commission. The recommended EJ evaluation methodology vii (EJEM) has two equally important components: an analysis/quantitative and an effective EJ participation component. The analysis component requires the analyst to (1) identify the demographic profile and the spatial distribution of population groups within the impacted area by using an appropriate geographic scale, (2) identify the spatial concentrations of EJ communities in the impacted area, (3) determine the additional impacts of concern associated with the toll road relative to the non-toll road, (4) calculate the magnitude of the additional impacts, (5) determine whether zones with higher concentrations of EJ populations are disproportionately impacted by the toll road, and (6) identify and formulate effective mitigation options if it is found that the impacts on zones with higher concentrations of EJ populations are appreciable more severe than the impacts on zones with lower or no concentrations of EJ populations. The EJ participation component aims to ensure that EJ communities are given the opportunity for meaningful participation. EJ outreach efforts are foreseen during the various steps of the analysis to ensure that (1) all EJ communities (neighborhoods) are identified, (2) all the adverse impacts are identified and prioritized, (3) the measured impacts are shared with the impacted communities, and (4) effective mitigation options are designed in consultation with the impacted EJ community. Finally, the products developed in this research provide transportation planners and decision makers with a robust and defendable methodology to address EJ concerns associated with toll road projects in Texas and other U.S. states with similar equity concerns.Item Modern displacements : urban injustice affecting working class communities of color in East Austin(2012-05) Gray, Amanda Elaine; Cordova, Cary, 1970-In this report I analyze both historical and contemporary urban planning policies enacted by the City of Austin, TX, through which I establish patterns of structural inequality affecting working class communities of color residing in East Austin. I examine early 20th-century urban beautification initiatives, along with the Progressive era segregationist project of the modern city. Austin city planners solidified segregation along racial lines with the 1928 Master Plan, which mandated the systematic displacement and relocation of African American and Mexican American communities to Austin’s Eastside, along with all “objectionable industries.” Today, East Austin working class communities of color continue to experience unequal burdens of environmentally hazardous industry in their neighborhoods. I examine initiatives implemented by the local grassroots environmental justice organization PODER and their fight for the health and safety of East Austin residents of color in combination with their protest against gentrifying urban planning policies and practices. Through an analysis of the PODER Young Scholars for Justice documentary, Gentrification: An Eastside Story, I look at the ways in which gentrification has changed the East Austin urban cultural landscape. This report aims to shed light upon spatial and racial social geographies that have contributed to the nearly century long battle East Austin residents have waged against discriminatory urban planning policies resulting in educational segregation, environmentally racist industrial zoning, and contemporary displacement of working class communities of color for city profit.Item Multiscale spatial patterns of outdoor air pollution in California : drivers of variability and implications for exposure and environmental justice(2021-04-06) Chambliss, Sarah Elisabeth; Apte, Joshua S.; Kinney, Kerry A.; Marshall, Julian D; Passalacqua, Paola; Misztal, Pawel KExposure to air pollution causes diseases of the lungs, cardiovascular system, brain, and numerous other systems, and is a leading environmental health risk worldwide. The burden of air pollution exposure is not distributed evenly across the population of the United States, and often falls more heavily on low-income groups and people of color. An accurate understanding of how air pollution levels vary on multiple spatial scales is critical for shaping effective policies to improve air quality for the highest exposed communities. Pollutants with primary and secondary contributions like fine particulate matter (PM₂.₅) vary significantly within urban areas on length scales of 1 km but are influenced by emissions at scales of 100 km or more, while other pollutant categories exhibit strong near-source decay at length scales of 100 m. In this dissertation I apply two complementary approaches to assess multiscale spatial patterns for five health-relevant pollutants: PM₂.₅, black carbon (BC), ultrafine particles (UFP), nitrogen oxide (NO), and nitrogen dioxide (NO₂). Using a reduced-complexity chemical transport model I show that current emissions patterns lead to significant PM₂.₅ exposure disparity among racial-ethnic groups, income categories, and other socioeconomic groupings, driven by the systematically higher proximity to emissions from on-road mobile sources, industry, natural gas and petroleum development, and other major sources. To estimate exposure disparity for pollutants that vary at very fine spatial scales and follow difficult-to-model patterns driven by complex characteristics of the urban landscape (BC, UFP, NO, and NO₂), I use data collected via mobile monitoring to construct empirical air pollution maps for a variety of neighborhoods in the San Francisco Bay Area. These measurements show high exposure disparities both within and among racial-ethnic groups, with disparity in mean concentrations driven by differences in neighborhood background concentrations but higher within-group disparity driven by highly localized near-source gradients. I also assess sources of uncertainty in mobile monitoring-based mapping techniques. These complementary approaches provide a broad picture of causes of urban exposure disparity in California and can inform future mitigation measures.Item Oil and gas in the great state of Tejas : centering land tenure histories of fracking geographies within the Texas-Mexico border landscape(2020-04-23) Wirsching, Andrea Christina; Sletto, Bjørn; Mueller, Elizabeth; Paterson, Robert; Guidotti-Hernández, Nicole; Webber, MichaelThis dissertation examines the Texas-Mexico border oil and gas landscape and the unequitable distributions of impacts and benefits these extractive activities produce. I situate my work within critical, interdisciplinary literature on the relationship between the exploitation of natural resources and wealth distribution, and the explicit problematization of inherent uniqueness of border spaces. I utilized a critical, multi-disciplinary framework drawing from political ecology, planning, and border studies, to critique and inform more nuanced vulnerability assessments and literatures across temporal and spatial scales. I argue consideration of the role of who owns what and how they obtained it in policy and planning, not just land use, is key to understanding the reproduction of oppressive and exclusive political structures and land rights regimes along the border. Using a mixed method approach to examine this exemplary case study, I integrated spatial, quantitative methods with qualitative interviews and archival document analysis to trace the historical land tenure patterns of property ownership in Webb County, as well as conduct vulnerability and risk assessments. Using governance geographies as a spatial and conceptual lens for analyses, I demonstrate how land tenure and ownership illuminate the important role of the gradations of informality, and by extension the state, is in producing social vulnerabilities in borderlands. The following themes emerged from analysis of my case study: relationship between land wealth and political power and vulnerability; tensions between land control, stewardship, and exploitation; and the value in learning from histories of land tenure and borderlands in reconceptualizing, identifying, and developing policies that aim to address vulnerability. My research suggests the confluence of physical and regulatory remnants of past colonial powers along the border region continue to be visible and influence the balance and power and distribution of public resources. Furthermore, their corresponding land rights regimes, dispossession via subsequent sovereign land grants, and generational wealth accumulation and political power from these activities, are significant in shaping this particular oil and gas producing landscape. As one of the least regulated, pro-property rights and pro-oil-and-gas states in the country, this study serves as an example of what happens when wealth and political power continues to fortify the structural mechanisms that, in the absence of regulatory controls and avenues for redistribution and remediation, effectively rendering moot a government meant to serve and protect everyone else.Item Participatory budgeting's contributions to environmental justice : evaluating Green Projects funded through Greensboro PB(2023-04-20) Nemetz, Maggie G.; Lieberknecht, Katherine E.Participatory Budgeting (PB) is a process in which the people most affected by a budget determine how it is spent. Since its onset in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 1989, PB has spread to thousands of cities globally and is lauded as a solution to top-down governing that enhances democracy, boosts civic engagement, and meets growing demands for direct democracy. PB is a new practice in the U.S. and its contributions to distributive justice are not well defined. This professional report analyzes PB in Greensboro, North Carolina (Greensboro PB) and uses an environmental justice (EJ) framework to evaluate whether PB’s benefits are equitably distributed and whether PB is contributing to EJ goals. Findings from Greensboro PB indicate that winning PB projects are more likely to be located in neighborhoods with lower incomes, lower percentages of white residents, and higher percentages of Black residents. These results hold true when evaluating all PB projects as well as green infrastructure (GI) projects specifically. The analysis found no significant difference in neighborhoods that win GI projects over other types of projects. While Greensboro PB voter demographic data indicates voters are over-represented by white and wealthy residents, the outcomes do not reflect this in terms of projects won, which raises questions about the relationship between procedures and outcomes. This report makes recommendations to build the relationship between participatory budgeting and environmental justice and suggests investing in capacity building, expanding budget sizes and sources, and building solidarity networks will yield more transformative outcomes.