Community-Engaged Research for Environmental Justice

A special issue of Social Sciences (ISSN 2076-0760). This special issue belongs to the section "Community and Urban Sociology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 1 January 2025 | Viewed by 2193

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Communication, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA 95053, USA
Interests: community-engaged research; environmental justice; political communication encompasses environmental communication; news and politics; deliberative democracy; games for civic learning

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Guest Editor
Urban & Environmental Policy Institute, Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA 90041, USA
Interests: urban and environmental policy; community-based research; environmental justice

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Guest Editor
Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management, Tishman Environment and Design Center, The New School, New York, NY 10011, USA
Interests: environmental justice policies; climate justice and renewable energy policies; land use and zoning tools for environmental justice; zero waste systems; cumulative impacts, and mitigation strategies; community engaged scholarship
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Community-engaged research (CER) advances environmental justice by centering the local knowledge and concerns of frontline communities in the research agenda, creating equitable and mutually beneficial relationships between these communities and professional researchers, and co-producing actionable data that can influence policies and practices. This Special Issue welcomes empirical and conceptual articles on environmental justice that employ any CER approach, including participatory action research, community-based participatory research, citizen science and community science, and Indigenous-led and decolonial research. This research may involve collaborations with community organizations and advocates by academic and other professional researchers, and/or government agencies. We are especially interested in CER that recognizes the intersectional roots of environmental injustices in colonialism, racism, economic exploitation and patriarchy, and that can inform policy and practical responses to urgent issues of environmental justice, including:

  • Climate justice, just transitions and debunking false solutions to climate and environmental justice;
  • Cumulative impacts of environmental and social harms, including relevant methodologies for measuring and mapping these impacts, modeling climate risk and social vulnerabilities, and conducting scans of current or proposed policies for addressing cumulative impacts;
  •  Planning, land use and zoning, such as efforts to counter green gentrification and climate gentrification, develop equitable climate mitigation and resilience plans, etc.;
  • Alternative approaches to community economic development, such as social and solidarity economies, buen vivir, degrowth and regenerative economies;
  • Food justice and food sovereignty;
  • Health equity, such as addressing environmental health threats from pollution, land grabs, occupational hazards and sociospatial exposures to policing, spatial stigma and White spaces;
  • Decolonization, such as strategies for Indigenous-led conservation and healthcare, land back, applying traditional ecological knowledge and restorative justice processes;
  • Demilitarization and decarceration, including the environmental justice dimensions of immigrant/migration justice, conflict transformation, criminal justice reform and peace with justice;
  • Democratizing legal, regulatory and public participation processes to increase the influence of environmental justice communities;
  • Transforming government and academia to support and enable environmental justice research, praxis, policy or funding.

Prof. Dr. Chad Raphael
Prof. Dr. Martha Matsuoka
Dr. Ana Baptista
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • community-engaged research
  • participatory research
  • citizen science
  • community science
  • environmental justice
  • environmental racism
  • climate justice
  • decolonization

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

20 pages, 4992 KiB  
Article
Shifting Power in Practice: Implementing Relational Research and Evaluation in Conservation Science
by Tamara J. Layden, Sofía Fernández, Mynor Sandoval-Lemus, Kelsey J. Sonius, Dominique David-Chavez and Sara P. Bombaci
Soc. Sci. 2024, 13(10), 555; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13100555 - 17 Oct 2024
Viewed by 874
Abstract
Elevating Indigenous leadership in conservation science is critical for social and ecological wellbeing. However, Indigenous knowledges are frequently undermined by persistent colonial research standards. In response, calls to implement ethical guidelines that advance Indigenous research and data governance are mounting. Despite this growing [...] Read more.
Elevating Indigenous leadership in conservation science is critical for social and ecological wellbeing. However, Indigenous knowledges are frequently undermined by persistent colonial research standards. In response, calls to implement ethical guidelines that advance Indigenous research and data governance are mounting. Despite this growing movement, most environmental studies continue to follow largely colonial, extractive models, presenting a widening gap between ethical guidelines and practical applications across diverse research contexts. To address this gap, our study aims to design and evaluate a wildlife conservation research project based on the Relational Science Model, which outlines guidance for improving research relations with Indigenous Peoples. To achieve this aim, we conducted a post-survey to evaluate the project from the perspectives of the intended beneficiaries of La Bendición in southwestern Guatemala, accompanied by researcher reflections and observations. The results revealed strong agreement between community research partner experience and Relational Science Model outcomes, including relevant and innovative knowledge generation, alongside improved trust in research collaborations. Respondents also outlined several areas of improvement, including a desire for more diverse community engagement, particularly regarding youth. Overall, this study outlines pathways and recommendations for researchers, institutions, and agencies to improve relational accountability in conservation science practice, supporting Indigenous conservation governance and environmental justice. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Community-Engaged Research for Environmental Justice)
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