This book examines and encourages the increasing involvement of those in the social sciences, including social work, as well as everyday citizens, with environmental injustices that affect the natural ecology, community health, and physical and mental health of marginalized communities. The authors draw on their diverse experiences in research, practice, and education to suggest interdisciplinary strategies for addressing environmental justice, climate change, and ecological destruction on both a local and global scale. This insightful work presents models for action, practice, and education, including field learning, with examples of how programs and schools have integrated and infused environmental justice content across their curricula. Environmental and ecological impacts on local communities as well as the whole ecology of life are examined. Models for engaging civic dialogue, addressing structural oppression, and employing other interdisciplinary responses to environmental injustices are provided. Topics explored among the chapters include: Water, Air, and Land: The Foundation for Life, Food, and Society Human Health and Well-Being in Times of Global Environmental Crisis Power and Politics: Protection, Rebuilding, and Justice Pathways to Change: Community and Environmental Transformation Decolonizing Nature: The Potential of Nature to Heal The Intersection of Environmental Justice, Climate Change, Community, and the Ecology of Life equips readers to identify the impact of the global environmental crisis in their own communities. Emphasizing the need for immediate action on ecological, climate, and environmental justice issues, this forward-thinking book assists social science professionals, educators, researchers, and other concerned individuals with the knowledge needed for creating meaningful interdisciplinary responses in their communities as they take action within a rapidly changing context.

This book focuses on ecosocial work within the context of community practice. It aims to provide insights on understanding key issues, concepts and debates surrounding the mainstreaming of ecosocial work for sustainable community development. Divided into three parts, the first part of the book focuses on ecosocial work and ecosocial change around water, the ecology of coastal communities experiencing climate change, and environmental degradation. The second part includes chapters on ecosocial change and community practice in other kinds of bioregions. Finally, the third part primarily focuses on pedagogical approaches for teaching ecosocial work. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Community Practice.

Puerto Rico is experiencing its deepest economic crisis since the first half of the twentieth century. The unique political and economic relationship between the US and Puerto Rico arguably plays a fundamental role in this crisis. With these in mind and given the imposition of the Financial Oversight Management Board by the US government, this book presents policy recommendations to help Puerto Rico achieve sustainable development. A set of partial equilibrium models are employed to study important industrial policy options and trade issues. This book also discusses the potential role of market-based environmental policies as well as issues of income convergence. The method of analysis to study the Puerto Rico–US relationship presented in this book is entirely new to the literature and the analysis of market-based environmental policy. The overarching result is that it is in the best interest of Puerto Rico and the US to set economic policies consistent with an equilibrium characterized by political independence (i.e., national sovereignty) for Puerto Rico. The potential for sustainable economic growth and development is latent in Puerto Rico’s economy. But for factors of production to be used effectively and efficiently, Puerto Rico’s economy requires access to international markets at sufficiently lower transaction costs, a condition consistent primarily in an equilibrium characterized by political independence. Access to international markets at sufficiently lower costs would help, inter alia, restore market credibility, regain access to credit markets at bearable costs and achieve important efficiency gains. This book argues that international trade ought to be at the center of development and growth policy. Importantly, it argues on the grounds of efficiency that not only is it in the best interest of the US to help Puerto Rico move gradually towards an equilibrium consistent with political independence, but that a statehood-like equilibrium is inefficient, particularly if a higher degree of access to global markets is at the center of policy formulation. I hope the discussion presented in this book signifies an important contribution to the policy debate in order to address Puerto Rico’s economic challenges.

Much of the published work on disaster response has focused on specific disasters, highlighting what went wrong. Taking a new approach, this book explores ways in which transformational leadership principles may be applied to an organization’s disaster preparation and response, moving the organization away from a competitive or top-down approach and toward a more collaborative one. Rather than focus on centralizing responsibility, with commands emanating from the top, author William Lester offers readers a new paradigm, with step by step instructions on placing transformative and collaborative systems front and center, in order to develop a sustainable disaster response system – one that is not centered on a specific leader or time, but instead focuses on the changes needed to build a system that can outlive any one leader. Implementation plans to move from concept into workable, effective strategies that can be used immediately are included. Assuming no prior background in either organizational theory or disaster response systems, the book offers practical examples and hands-on explorations of the responses to Hurricanes Sandy, Harvey, Irma, and Maria, written by experts who know those disasters best – delivering important insight into what elements make the best disaster response system.

Environmental Health: Foundations for Public Health brings together diverse voices and perspectives to examine our most pressing public health issues today. This foundational textbook introduces readers to a wide range of the knowledge, skills, data, and resources needed to ensure environmental health at local and global levels. Whether students are heading into careers in governmental public health, research, advocacy, or other sectors, this textbook covers topics that relate to us all: climate change, energy, air, water, food, waste, and much more. Designed for graduates and advanced undergraduates, this textbook presents the field's basic concepts, related policies, and scientific tools in an accessible way. Readers learn about regulatory science, how environmental health science informs environmental protections, and where gaps remain, particularly in promoting environmental justice. Each chapter examines ways that structural racism and discrimination have shaped environmental health inequities that persist today. Readers can dig deeper to examine how environmental health and justice can be achieved in our communities, workplaces, households, and other built and social environments, as well as our healthcare systems. Drawing on countless historic and contemporary case studies, Environmental Health: Foundations for Public Health facilitates a learning experience that inspires students to reimagine the foundations of environmental health for all. Key Features: Provides a variety of learning tools, including discussion questions and learning activities, related to engagement, advocacy, and the exploration of environmental health in our daily lives Presents "In Other Words" boxes to reframe key or complex concepts and promote accessibility Humanizes the realities of pressing environmental health and justice concerns Includes access to a five-episode companion podcast series—The PFAS Chronicles—on the challenges and solutions of preventing and combating per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), or "forever chemicals" Qualified instructors have access to expanded Instructor Resources featuring chapter PowerPoint slides, a Test Bank, a Sample Syllabus, and an Instructor Manual to supplement students' dynamic learning and interaction with the text

Urban centres are bastions of inequalities, where poverty, marginalization, segregation and health insecurity are magnified. Minorities and the poor – often residing in neighbourhoods characterized by degraded infrastructures, food and job insecurity, limited access to transport and health care, and other inadequate public services – are inherently vulnerable, especially at risk in times of shock or change as they lack the option to avoid, mitigate and adapt to threats. Offering both theoretical and practical approaches, this book proposes critical perspectives and an interdisciplinary lens on urban inequalities in light of individual, group, community and system vulnerabilities and resilience. Touching upon current research trends in food justice, environmental injustice through socio-spatial tactics and solution-based approaches towards urban community resilience, Resilience, Environmental Justice and the City promotes perspectives which transition away from the traditional discussions surrounding environmental justice and pinpoints the need to address urban social inequalities beyond the build environment, championing approaches that help embed social vulnerabilities and resilience in urban planning. With its methodological and dynamic approach to the intertwined nature of resilience and environmental justice in urban cities, this book will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners within urban studies, environmental management, environmental sociology and public administration.

Emphasizing the voices of activists, this book’s diverse contributors examine communities’ common experiences with environmental injustice, how they organize to address it, and the ways in which their campaigns intersect with related movements such as Black Lives Matter and Indigenous sovereignty. The global COVID-19 pandemic exposed the ways in which BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) communities and white working-class communities have suffered disproportionately from the crisis due to sustained exposure to toxic land, air, and water, creating a new urgency for addressing underlying conditions of systemic racism and poverty in North America. In addition to exploring the historical roots of the Environmental Justice movement in the 1980s and 1990s, the volume offers coverage of recent events such as the DAPL pipeline controversy, the Flint water crisis, and the rise of climate justice. The collection incorporates the experiences of rural and urban communities, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, Puerto Ricans, and Indigenous peoples in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. The chapters offer instructors, undergraduate and graduate students, and general readers a range of accessible case studies that create opportunities for comparative and intersectional analysis across geographical and ethnic boundaries.

This two-volume set provides an authoritative overview of the major environmental issues of the 21st century, with a special focus on current challenges, trends, and policy choices. This set provides an up-to-date, comprehensive, and focused resource for understanding the nature and scope of environmental challenges facing the United States and the world in the 21st century, as well as options for meeting those challenges. Volume One covers environmental trends and challenges within the United States, while Volume Two illuminates environmental issues and choices around the world. Issues covered in both volumes include vital topics such as climate change, air and water pollution, natural resource and species protection, and agricultural/industrial impacts on the environment and public health. For all topics, the authors—scholars and experts hailing from a wide range of environmental and policy fields—detail a range of political, social, and economic options for the future and explain why the issue in question is important for society and people as well as the natural world.