Environmental Justice and Expert Knowledge in the Wake of a Disaster

Abstract

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina provides an important lens into the various dimensions environmental justice in New Orleans. In particular, the hurricane served to highlight disparities in health and well-being that already existed in the region and to foreground the vulnerabilities of poor, working class, and minority communities. Disputes over local vs cosmopolitan knowledge and questions about whose science and whose knowledge 'counts' in the reclamation of the city play out in the politics of rebuilding this historic place.The US environmental justice (EJ) movement of the past several decades, a hybrid of traditional environmental and social justice concerns, has primarily focused on two issues: (1) the siting and expansion of hazardous and undesirable facilities in poor and minority communities; and(2) the effort to remediate, relocate, and/or pay damages to members of poor and minority communities affected by pollution. Louisiana has been a focus of this movement, with citizens' groups fighting a variety of injustices from the siting of hazardous industries in minority communities to building affordable housing on superfund sites (Roberts & Toffolon-Weiss, 2001).A good example of the EJ movement is the activism that has taken place in Louisiana's Cancer Alley, an 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge that is home to more than 130 petrochemical plants and petroleum processors interspersed between numerous rural, urban, and suburban communities. The public controversies that have played out in the region, largely driven by the citizens' desire to protect or clean up their environment, serve to illustrate intersections between EJ and science studies. In particular, the public understanding and use of science has played an important role in the various debates and has helped shape regulation, enforcement, and remediation (Allen, 2003). Science has often been used strategically as a weapon in the context of environmental controversy, with each side each having its own, often unequal, defenses. Furthermore, the integration of environmental issues with social justice concerns engendered a broader conception of what counts as a

Chronic disaster syndrome: Displacement, disaster capitalism, and the eviction of the poor from New Orleans

“…That issue explored the contours of environmental, social, political, and cultural disaster during the first year after the storm and provides a template for understanding at least several of the analytical issues explored in this article. This work also joins others in tracing the contours of recovery in terms of the study of disasters, inequality and social justice, and the creation of new economies of intervention related to disasters (Allen 2007; Button and Oliver-Smith 2008; Fassin and Rechtman 2009; Fjord and Manderson 2009; Gunewardena and Schuller 2008; Klinenberg 2002, 2003; Lubiano 2008, Nicosia 2009; Reed 2008). The insights for this article were generated from the first two years of data collection of a four-year research project funded by the National Institutes of Health (National Institute on Aging) on the long-term health effects of displacement in post-Katrina New Orleans.…”

Climate Change, Justice, and Adaptation among African American Communities in the Chesapeake Bay Region

“…Among this literature is a growing number of studies focusing on racial and economic injustices in response to natural disasters, including those related to climate and weather (cf. Allen 2007;Elliott and Pais 2006;Oliver-Smith 2009;Pezzoli et al 2007;Wilson et al 2010).…”

Hurricane Katrina‐linked environmental injustice: race, class, and place differentials in attitudes

“…Allen (2007) and Morse (2008) identified three critical examples of disaster-related environmental injustice:…”

“…This distinct line of research reveals that racial minorities and the poor were disproportionately affected by Hurricane Katrina, as well as by Hurricane Andrew in August 1992 (Peacock, Morrow, and Gladwin, 1997;Cutter et al, 2006;Pais, 2006, 2010); these inequitable outcomes of Katrina, in particular, are the products of an enduring system of southern apartheid, involving racial segregation and consequent established patterns of community settlement of people of colour in less desirable, low-lying, flood-prone environments (Landphair, 1999;Colten, 2002;Allen, 2007;Morse, 2008).…”