Description
Environmental Injustice in the United States provides systematic insight into the social, economic, and political dynamics of environmental decision-making, and the impacts of those decisions on minority communities. The first part of the book examines closely the history of the environmental justice movement and the scholarly literature to date, with a discussion about how the issue made the public agenda in the first place. The second part of the book is a unique quantitative analysis of the relationship among race, class, political mobilization, and environmental harm at three levels-- state, county, and city. Despite the initial skepticism of the authors, their study finds both race and class to be significant variables in explaining patterns of environmental harm. The third part of the book then offers policy recommendations to decisionmakers, based on the book's findings. It was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Book of 2001.
Table of Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments , Introduction The Nature of the Problem , Environmental Injustice Research: Reviewing the Evidence , Environmental Justice: Getting on the Public Agenda , Modeling Environmental Injustice: Concepts, Measures, Hypotheses, and Method of Analysis , Environmental Injustice in America’s States , Environmental Injustice in America’s Counties , Environmental Injustice in America’s Cities , Summary and Conclusions from the Multilevel Analyses , Existing Federal and State Policies for Environmental Justice: Problems and Prospects , Designing an Effective Policy for Environmental Justice: Implications and Recommendations
