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Participatory Research and Environmental Justice |
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PART I: ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE PART II: HOW CAN RESEARCH HELP? |
Introduction: What is participatory research? Participatory research is a collaborative approach to research that emphasizes the importance of community guidance of, and participation in, the research process. Participatory research has roots in two traditions—one of "action research," a form of research dedicated to specific changes within a larger system, and the other of larger social change, embedded in the popular education and emancipatory work of Paolo Friere in Brazil, and the Highlander Center in the United States. Participatory research has three overlapping components: the collective investigation of problems by the constituency and the researcher; the collective analysis of the issues by the researcher and the constituency, including looking for underlying structural causes; and collective action to solve the problems. In participatory research, the community is empowered through a process in which researchers and community members come to the table as equal participants to examine and address multifaceted problems. The researchers' role in participatory research may be that of a facilitator. Participatory research calls for the researcher to work extensively in the field with the constituency, adopt appropriate attitudes, behavior and rapport, and recognize the value and validity of indigenous technical knowledge. In all these elements, participatory research challenges the dominant paradigm of doing research, in which the researcher is the knowledge-holder, and creates questions about the community that may have little to do with immediate community concerns. As such, the community receives no benefit from the research—either by working through the research process, or applying the research to create a helpful outcome. Engaging in participatory research forces researchers and communities to address difficult questions of power relations, and the emphasis is on collaboration, the community, and the research process. Most groups facing environmental justice issues do not come to the table knowing their questions and with the data. The first response from community groups dealing with environmental justice problems is often emotional and reactive—anger, frustration, and a feeling that there is "nowhere to turn." Researchers can help community members translate local knowledge and concerns into research questions about the impact of a proposed project or policy on the affected community. Community-based participatory research around impact assessment and mitigation is transformative and empowering for the following two reasons:
The scope and goals of the research to be approached from a participatory framework should be defined collaboratively, and for the purpose of empowering local communities to undertake scientifically defensible assessments of local impacts. "Local impacts" could include environmental, economic, health, or social baselines and trends, stressors, and the effectiveness of existing, proposed or possible mitigations. Partnerships between environmental organizations, scientists, impacted communities and their allies are often needed. If key partners are missing, the impact analysis process is unlikely to have the desired outcomes. How Researchers Can Help with Environmental Justice Concerns: Working with Communities to Documents Undue Burdens Both urban and rural communities facing environmental injustices already suffer disproportionate burdens associated with an institutional permitting structure that treats each environmental problem as new. From the affected communities' points of view, it is an environmental injustice to assume that additional environmental damages would be unrelated to current conditions and isolated from the legacy of untreated environmental problems in an area. Environmental assessment starts unfairly because communities facing environmental injustices are already suffering from cumulative environmental degradation—little of which has been documented in an effective way. Nor are the interrelationships from multiple environmental stresses understood even if they are well documented. When ecological and economic poverty are combined, the "burden of proof" for proving "undue environmental burdens" typically shifts to the victims, instead of being borne by project proponents. Chronic economic dis-investment and cumulative environmental degradation can become vicious downward spirals for both urban and rural areas. Documentation of "undue burdens" is what triggers environmental justice mitigation obligations. Data is used to define the scope and nature of the impacts that the mitigation is supposed to "mitigate to insignificance" or to compensate for. Constituencies need to be able to formulate and to undertake assessments that accurately depict the cumulative insults of chronic disinvestments, institutional disenfranchisement, and ecological degradation that diminish their communities. In addition to being accurate and relevant at the community level, assessments must be scientifically defensible to survive an almost certain power struggle between the impacted communities and the project proponent, over whose and what information should become the basis for documenting and mitigating environmental injustices. Environmental justice representatives and others often advocate for:
Specific questions need to be answered to determine community-scale impacts from a proposed project. At the meeting of the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water in Los Angeles, California, beginning questions included:
Allies and Partners Because environmental justice encompasses environmental issues, social justice issues, and sustainability concerns, environmental justice practitioners have found it useful to divide the groups involved into lists of allies and partners. Allies are typically groups that are not directly environmental justice populations. Allies work on environmental justice issues and furthering the environmental justice movement through research, and/or through supporting environmental justice groups financially, organizationally, or politically. An example would be the Pacific West Community Forestry Center, which has targeted funds and time toward environmental justice concerns. Forest Community Research, another ally, maintains office space for the Maidu Cultural and Development Group, a group directly dealing with environmental injustices. Partners are environmental justice groups like the Maidu Cultural and Development Group, the Mothers of East Los Angeles, the Alliance of Forest Workers and Harvesters, the United Farmworkers, or the California Indian Basketweavers Association. These groups are fighting environmental injustices daily. We call them partners because of the necessity of working together when there are many smaller groups with similar causes. Partnering together for positive change is a proactive stance to take on environmental justice concerns. Environmental - Environmental Justice Partnerships Many ad hoc groups are engaged in the evolution of the relationship between environmental groups who monitor the enforcement of environmental laws and policies and environmental justice groups who seek equitable treatment in the enforcement of environmental laws and policies. The following section explores some of the similarities and differences between environmental issues and environmental justice issues, and successful areas of overlap pioneered by proactive groups. In a 1996 article entitled "A Winning Hand? The Uncertain Future of Environmental Justice," author Christopher Foreman Jr. wrote that minority populations are "...often acutely suspicious of mainstream environmentalism, believing the urban poor a more endangered species than spotted owls." He follows with a quote from Whitney Young, executive director of the National Urban League, who "bluntly advised postponing the war on pollution until 'after the war on poverty is won.' " In the last decade, increased documentation of environmental racism has showed a clear connection between environmental pollution, racism, and poverty. Those with the least resources often bear the heaviest burden of environmental problems. Environmental justice groups tend to arise in opposition to specific projects in already overburdened communities. Some environmental justice groups come to broaden their focus to reducing the environmental burden everywhere instead of displacing pollution on another community elsewhere. While NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) was the earlier slogan for environmental justice activists, this has transformed into NIABY (Not in Anybody's Backyard). According to one Bay Area-based environmental justice activist, "We need to work to create more space, rather than fighting for the spotlight or a piece of the pie. Development needs to happen together." This is true for rural and urban groups, as they link together to deal with watershed-wide issues related to the allocation of water and power, and the management of natural resources at the headwaters and at the delta. Pollution prevention may be where environmental justice advocates find the most explicit common ground with environmentalists. Both see the importance of environmentally friendly technologies and natural resource conservation, since preventing pollution obviates the need for distributing it equitably. The Korean Youth and Community Center (KYCC) in Los Angeles, joins many groups working in the area of overlap between environmental and environmental justice issues. They have a contract with the Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power to distribute and install low-flow toilets in low-income communities. To accomplish this, the KYCC employs a range of people from the local community, providing local jobs and teaching job skills while reducing water pollutant loads through water use efficiency. In a similar combination of community development and environmental advocacy, a partnership between the Mono Lake Committee, a rural environmental group, and the Mothers of East LA created an environmental education program that helps barrio youth understand where their water comes from and why water conservation and environmental conservation is important. Participants in the youth-based restoration program at Mono Lake made the connection, saying that "Mono Lake is part of the 'hood." The program also expands the social justice horizons of urban youth brought to the Sierras. "It teaches kids how to be human, and how to protect their natural resources," said Elsa Lopez of the Mothers of East LA. Environmental Defense, a well-known environmental organization, has an office of environmental justice in Los Angeles as part of its Living Cities program. The environmental justice office works on equal access to clean and green parks, schools, and playgrounds; increasing the mobility of people without access to cars; and making sure that development projects don't adversely impact low income or minority communities. When the Staples Center expanded into the surrounding poor community, Environmental Defense helped local residents negotiate a community benefits package that included local hiring, an on-site training center; and a pledge of money for parks. Based on their success in Los Angeles, Environmental Defense issued some guidelines to other environmental groups who are working to solve both environmental and environmental justice problems:
Researcher-Environmental Justice Partnerships: At the Pacific West Community Forestry Center, researchers are linking people and information in order to help affected rural people define policy issues and to elevate rural environmental justice concerns to policymakers and natural resource programs. This involves compiling and disseminating resources, identifying institutional barriers and programmatic opportunities, and publicizing key legal and administrative precedents. Helping communities to format their concerns within the institutional contexts and decision-making labyrinths that can potentially address them is called "setting up the administrative record." Establishing an administrative record is an essential first step for "legitimizing concerns" and for "getting a place at the table" in decision-making venues such as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Helping communities conduct research that is responsive to community concerns includes getting the information needed for establishing legal and administrative standing, and for documenting special needs and undue burdens. Instead of creating new programs, Center researchers have focused on inserting equity and environmental justice concerns into the already open (if not receptive) public participation windows in existing programs. For example, the desire among Maidu people (a landless, unrecognized tribe) to regain control of a land base on which they could apply traditional knowledge, was channeled into the Forest Service Stewardship Pilot Program. In 1998 the Maidu received a stewardship pilot project and became the only Native American pilot of the 22 initial projects selected by the Forest Service. Now the Pacific West Community Forestry Center (which did not exist when the Maidu first obtained the pilot project) supports Maidu knowledge gathering and participatory research for the Maidu Stewardship Project. Forest Community Research, with partial support from the PWCFC, recently completed a large-scale assessment of the Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative (NEAI)—the economic development component of Clinton's Northwest Forest Plan that channeled federal funds to communities in Oregon, Washington, and Northern California to help offset the economic and social affects of cutbacks in the timber industry. This study took a multi-leveled approach, and included an institutional analysis, regional comparisons, and community-level case studies. The community case study methodology was used to document the community context, existing problems, changing socioeconomic trends, and the affects of federal interventions. Researchers spent roughly two weeks in each community, conducting in-person and phone interviews, compiled relevant census data, reading historical accounts, and reviewing project proposals that were funded by NEAI monies. The case studies have been useful for outsiders and community members alike to learn about the suite of issues facing timber-dependent communities, begin to understand the challenges of transitioning to a more diversified economy, and increasing the communication of shared concerns and innovative solutions between communities dealing with similar problems. During the analysis of the case studies, differences in access to NEAI Programs by different groups—such as Native American tribes—was noticed and evaluated. Tribes appeared to be more successful at receiving and implementing NEAI funds when they were internally organized to access the program and externally connected to governments and the larger community. However, many issues that were specifically tribal changed the nature of the NEAI process with tribes. For example, tribes are sovereign governments, so they often had pre-existing relationships with agencies and did not need to go through the Community Economic Revitalization Team (CERT) process that distributed NEAI funds. However, when they did enter the process, important connections were made with other groups. In order to make the CERTs more responsive to tribes, groups lobbied to include a Native American representative on the California team. In addition, the creation of a Native American Community Coordinator position in northern California was also key to networking tribes and helping them to access the funding process. The case study methodology and analysis used in the NEAI project can be applied to the research questions emerging from the environmental justice movement. Environmental justice issues are complicated, and often involve multiple underlying, structural problems, as well as multiple causes and effects. They require an investigative, multi-dimensional case study methodology to illuminate the range of issues, provide important background information for decision- making, and offer an important cadre of information that may head-off conflicts and leverage benefits among communities. For example, the Hupa tribe on the Trinity River in northwestern California has been struggling with decreased salmon runs for several years. When farmland is retired down stream, more water is available in the river and the salmon population is sustained. However, when farmland is retired, farm workers lose their jobs. Through case studies and community-based research, the two equally burdened populations will be able to learn about one another and meet to create collaborative solutions. In addition, voters and decision makers can rely on case studies to provide a comprehensive explanation of issues—so that decisions reflect the concerns of both farmworkers and Native people, not just one or the other. For more information on the case study approach and for case studies that included communities dealing with environmental justice issues, see Cave Junction, Oregon; Neah Bay, Washington; Hoopa, California; Warm Springs, Oregon; Forks, Washington; and Happy Camp, California; all in the "Assessment of the Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative. For a copy of the assessment, go to http://www.fcresearch.org/neai/, or call (530) 284-1022. Circuit Riding, Peer Learning and Communication As in the Hupa/ farmworker example above, it is key for populations to learn about one another's issues. If groups are not informed about the complex causes of their situations, and the complex effects of their decisions, they may make a choice that hurts another population, when a collaborative decision could be just as satisfactory, and build a stronger coalition between equally disadvantaged communities. Similarly, in the environmental justice mobilization occurring around the CALFED activities, or in the multi-state watershed movement, it is key to have communication and idea sharing between groups. While groups are mobilizing, developing their positions and finding each other for critical mass, the policy and decision making process rolls along, whether environmental justice groups are ready to engage or not. Most government agencies interpret their environmental justice responsibilities as providing equitable notification, rather than an obligation to guarantee equitable participation in decision-making. Therefore it is critical for environmental justice groups to have access to individuals who can act as watchdogs over public decision-makers and public decision-making. For example, large, entrenched water interests may not have the broadest public good in mind and may not welcome yet another constituency at the policymaking and decision-making tables. In the California water arena, circuit riders served an interim and critical facilitative leadership role by attending suites of meetings, noting the issues, players, and decisions at each meeting, and inserting pro-environmental justice language into the administrative record wherever possible. Circuit riders continue to serve as a link between environmental justice, environmental, and watershed groups so that grassroots activists can learn how they may more effectively work together on issues of mutual benefit, and where they most need to spend their limited time and resources to have the greatest positive impact. Rural Environmental Justice Database Project Databases exist listing the myriad urban environmental justice groups in California, but no databases are available on rural environmental justice groups. This is not because rural environmental justice issues do not exist, but, rather, because rural groups are dispersed, and may not be organized under the term "environmental justice." The PWCFC is beginning work on a list of rural groups in the Sierra Nevada who are directly facing and/or working on environmental justice concerns. This list includes allies—groups supporting environmental justice groups and advocating for equitable policies, public involvement processes and laws—and partners— environmental justice groups directly dealing with environmental justice concerns. The following paragraph will offer a description of the initial efforts to map Sierra environmental justice groups. The first question was "are there environmental justice issues in the Sierra Nevada?" and, through investigating census data and interviewing community members, we found the answer to be yes. Next, we asked what groups were affected and what the differences between the issues faced in rural areas and the issues faced in urban areas were. The latter question requires more time and investigation to understand the links between urban and rural issues, and the larger causes of both. The former question, regarding groups, will take networking, circuit riding, traveling, researching census data, and meeting with communities to define. Any researcher begins with a literature search—we asked, "What else has been written about rural environmental justice?" Being in a rural area ourselves, research libraries are difficult to access, so we turned to computer articles and databases. Some resources are listed above in the "resources" section. After finding documents and reading about publicized cases of rural environmental justice, the next question narrowed our focus to, "How does it apply to our area?" Some rural environmental justice issues we considered included property values that are increasing beyond the average income in the area to cater to outside buyers, decreased river flows that impact fishing, ranching, farming, and other traditional uses upstream, and herbicide spraying on private or public lands that impacts watershed health and local subsistence users. Bringing the lens to focus on the rural Sierra Nevada, there were a variety of ways to approach the search for rural environmental justice groups and issues. Here is a list of five approaches that are being considered:
These approaches led us to census data on the Sierra counties, research into previously completed studies, and conversations with our partners, including Jose Montenegro, who works with Latino forest workers. Attending sessions organized by the Office of Planning and Research that targeted issues of participation raised the question of whether participation was more difficult in rural areas, and whether there were laws that fostered, rather than squelched, participation. We want to share the more positive statutes with rural populations so that they are aware of their rights and their opportunities to enter the process. In order to make a change and mitigate environmental justice issues in rural areas, someone has to first identify the issues and the constituencies, and then make these visible to policy makers. This is one of the first times rural people have pushed to have environmental justice elevated in water policy; and pushed for public participation. We are on a cusp now. There is a limited amount of water and there are many uses—some new, some historical, and some carrying more monetary value than others. Low-income and minority groups are being impacted because they are subsistence users, they have historical user rights of cultural importance, and they often depend on working-class natural resource related employment for their economic solvency. We don't want to see Native Americans and farm workers pitted against one another regarding natural resource policies and environmental laws. Cultivating communication between rural and urban constituencies, rural and rural in different areas, and urban and urban, is key to reducing feelings of isolation, creating important linkages, and forming a stronger, watershed-wide coalition to address the structural issues of environmental injustice. Our goal is to create a landscape of environmental justice issues and affected communities in rural California, and to link the rural and urban components across the state for watershed-wide solutions Current issues and upcoming events The Environmental Justice Coalition for Water is a collaborative of community based-organizations and individuals that was founded in 1999 in response to CALFED. Members meet, discuss their water issues, and collaborate. The coalition's steering committee is largely Bay Area-focused and trying to expand. The goal is to build the local community capacity of individuals and organizations to serve their constituents, and also to form a statewide coalition. The coalition is still working to get CALFED to include environmental justice requirements in their review process. The coalition has become a clearinghouse for environmental justice related water issues, and members are working on an educational and policy paper—a blueprint. To become involved with any of these aspects, including Assembly Bill 2534 for implementation of the EJ component of Proposition 40, or to learn about the next meeting, visit http://www.ejwatercoalition.org. Coming soon:
For rural groups interesting in participating in these and other upcoming events, the Pacific West Community Forestry Center may be able to provide technical and financial resources to help groups develop:
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Copyright 2003 Pacific West Community Forestry Center. All rights reserved. |
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