Citation:

Eisenhauer, E., K. Williams, C. Warren, T. Thomas-Burton, S. Julius, AND A. Geller. New Directions in Environmental Justice Research at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: Incorporating Recognitional and Capabilities Justice Through Health Impact Assessments. ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE. Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., New Rochelle, NY, 14(5):322-331, (2021). https://doi.org/10.1089/env.2021.0019

Impact/Purpose:

This article shares information about EPA's use of Health Impact Assessments in communities and applies the concepts of recognitional and capabilities justice to EPA's environmental justice work.

Description:

In the decades since the founding of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) progress has been made in cleaning up the environments in which Americans live, work and play. However, many communities continue to suffer the impacts of pollution, particularly low-income and racial and ethnic minority communities. This commentary argues that recent developments in Environmental Justice (EJ) theory and research that go beyond the traditional dimensions of distributional and procedural justice can enhance EPA’s research in ways that will improve the ability to address disparities and EJ issues more broadly, resulting in better outcomes for communities. Research that incorporates recognitional justice and the justice of capabilities approach in both the products and the research process provides a path to deeper understanding of the nature of environmental injustices and a wider array of solutions by recognizing community identity and lifeways and implementing activities that enhance community capabilities. This kind of translational research can support environmental problem solving that is targeted to community concerns and that builds the capacity for communities to lead in addressing environmental injustices. In this commentary we discuss the potential for Health Impact Assessments (HIA) to further recognitional and capabilities justice, using the example of EPA’s work with communities in Atlanta’s Proctor Creek watershed, and illustrate the ways that it advanced environmental justice. We also discuss some of the challenges and limitations of HIA’s within a federal agency context.

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