Ecosystem duties, green infrastructure, and environmental injustice in Los Angeles

Abstract

In Los Angeles, water managers and environmentalist NGOs champion green infrastructure retrofits, installations intended to maximize the water-absorbing capacity of the urban landscape. In such arrangements, the work of water management is necessarily spread among a more-than-human community, including (but certainly not limited to) humans, plants, soils, and gravels. This article analyzes the human labor within these collaborations, tracking when and how this work gets enrolled in networks of water management and circuits of value. I develop the term ecosystem duties to characterize these exertions and as a useful analytic for assessing emergent dynamics of environmental justice. K E Y W O R D Secological labor, ecosystem services, environmental justice, infrastructure, water management ResumenEn Los Ángeles, los administradores de agua y las ONGs ambientalistas, abogan por la actualización del diseño de la infraestructura verde, instalaciones destinadas a maximizar la capacidad de absorber agua del paisaje urbano. En tales arreglos, el trabajo del manejo del agua está necesariamente distribuido entre una comunidad más que humana, incluyendo (pero ciertamente no limitada a) humanos, plantas, suelos y gravillas. Este artículo analiza el trabajo humano dentro de estas colaboraciones, siguiendo cuándo y cómo este trabajo se inscribe en las redes de manejo y circuitos de valor.Desarrollo el término deberes ecosistémicos para caracterizar estos esfuerzos y como información útil para evaluar la dinámica emergente de justicia ambiental. [trabajo ecológico, servicios ecosistémicos, infraestructura, manejo de aguas, justicia ambiental]

Holding water for the city: Emergent geographies of storage and the urbanization of nature

“…The residents of the moderate-income, majority Latinx neighborhoods of the Eastern San Fernando Valley have not been entirely welcoming to the state's new footprint here, targeting some stormwater installations for repeated tagging and expressing discontent with the new, largely unfunded burdens of maintenance that accompany these installations (Randle, forthcoming). Such ambivalence hints at the frictions that can emerge when technocratic attention and investment is rerouted to historically underserved sections of a city, reworking relations between residents and local agencies.…”