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Strengthening Community Resilience Through Environmental Justice
The next session of the workshop examined case studies focused on strengthening community resilience through the lens of environmental justice. The panel, moderated by Planning Committee Member Arianne Teherani, Professor of Medicine and Education Scientist, Director for Program Evaluation and Education Continuous Quality Improvement, and Founding Co-Director of the Center for Climate Health and Equity, University of California, highlighted the critical importance of justice and its historical context for both theoretical and practical approaches.
Planning Committee Member Alaí Reyes-Santos, Professor of Practice at the School of Law and Associate Director of the Pacific Northwest Just Futures Institute for Racial and Climate Justice at the University of Oregon, addressed the fundamental role of balancing justice and power toward advancing solutions and mitigating the impacts of climate change. Jesse Keenan, Favrot II Associate Professor of Sustainable Real Estate at Tulane University, highlighted tools and strategies for fostering relationships among diverse stakeholder groups, sectors, and communities. The panelists endeavored to identify practical approaches facilitating collaboration and bridging gaps between entities, leading to inclusive, effective environmental justice initiatives, community resilience, and transformative action in addressing the challenges posed by the climate crisis.
JUSTICE AND THE BALANCING OF POWER AS A CORNERSTONE TO THE CLIMATE CRISIS
Reyes-Santos, an interdisciplinary worker, brought valuable insights to the panel discussion by addressing the role of justice and power struggles in advancing transformative change amidst the climate crisis. She noted that the climate crisis is neither a neutral phenomenon nor a recent development. She highlighted the profound impact of historically ingrained power dynamics on adaptation—for example, the displacement of Indigenous peoples and the removal of ecological knowledge from ancestral lands due to colonialism. She suggested that communities belonging to minority groups have firsthand experience of these adverse and racist effects, uniquely positioning them to function as a voice for underserved and underrepresented populations when it comes to shaping responses to the climate crisis. Reyes-Santos emphasized the essential need to acknowledge traditional “notions of time” and, in so doing, draw upon the wisdom of communities that have adapted over generations to limited and depleted resources.
Reyes-Santos mentioned that sustaining relationships and fostering ownership within communities are critical strategies for successful community engagement. Drawing upon her TED Talk entitled Building Intercultural Communities,1 she referred to seven principles for building intercultural communities: “listen, respect, reflect,
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1 Reyes-Santos, A. (2014, May 7). Building intercultural communities: Irmary Reyes-Santos at TEDxUOregon [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeomTrwz-9k
transform ourselves, hold ourselves accountable, create, and evaluate.” She emphasized the importance of challenging traditional academic notions and processes and allowing community-based work to transform knowledge production. Focusing on two case studies, the Healers Project2 and the Oregon Water Futures3 initiatives, Reyes-Santos discussed lessons she has learned from her experience. She highlighted the significance of teamwork, transdisciplinary collaboration, partnership, community engagement, and “cultivating care and joy.” These two initiatives showcase three essential points: valuing co-designed projects with and for the communities they intend to serve, recognizing communities’ unique perspectives, and fostering a sense of kinship and solidarity. Reyes-Santos emphasized adaptability, equity, and accessibility in project design and implementation. She underscored the importance of providing diverse avenues for participation, including various ways to accommodate language, time, and modality. Furthermore, she emphasized the need for universities to support minority faculty and encourage transdisciplinary student teams through academic partnerships.
Throughout her remarks, Reyes-Santos stressed the significance of fostering relationships, intentionally addressing power differentials, and cultivating gratitude and kinship. She emphasized the need for governance structures that directly engage in all levels of decision making, conflict resolution, equity, and justice-accountability systems. She highlighted the importance of facilitating grantmaking and interdisciplinary collaboration to support and advance environmental justice initiatives.
USEFUL TOOLS FOR BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS AMONG DIVERSE STAKEHOLDER GROUPS, SECTORS, AND COMMUNITIES
Keenan brought attention to the epistemological4 challenges associated with resilience. Highlighting the concept’s misuse and maladaptation, he explained the need for a comprehensive understanding of its parameters. Framing his discussion in the context of climate change, he discussed two dimensions of resilience, mitigation and adaptation, both of which involve preparing for and responding to the impacts of climate change. He emphasized the importance of referencing valuable, large-scale reports such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report.5
Keenan noted that separate variants of resilience are needed in practice and in scholarship. He delved into the various interpretations of resilience, noting that one side of the spectrum, which encompasses engineered resilience, often focuses on the performance of designed systems, aiming for a superior level of performance in a single-equilibrium, descriptive approach. Conversely, community resilience encompasses multiple equilibria and has normative and conceptual dimensions. As another vital aspect within the spectrum of resilience, Keenan highlighted the measures of resilience shown in Figure 7-1. Shifting the conversation toward climate justice, he emphasized the conflicts between resilience and adaptation, and the importance of defining and using appropriate vocabulary to understand the principles of distributional equity and procedural justice. Finally, Keenan noted that describing a process as resilience is not sufficiently precise; instead, he suggested that precise definitions be used for each form of resilience.6
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2 “The Caribbean Women Healers Project: Decolonizing Knowledge Within Afro-Indigenous Traditions, is a collaborative research project built as a result of our journeys within Caribbean communities throughout the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Pacific Northwest region.” More information about the project is available at https://healers.uoregon.edu/about/
3 “The Oregon Water Futures project has learned that a vision for water justice in the state must engage low-income, rural, Black, Indigenous, people of color, and migrant communities as community assets.” More information about the Oregon Water Futures project is available at https://www.oregonwaterfutures.org/our-vision
4 Epistemology is defined as “the philosophical study of the nature, origin, and limits of human knowledge.” Stroll, A., & Martinich, A. P. (2023, June 28). Epistemology. In Encyclopedia Britannica, from https://www.britannica.com/topic/epistemology
5 Pörtner, H. O., Roberts, D. C., Tignor, M., Poloczanska, E. S., Mintenbeck, K., Alegría, A., Craig, M., Langsdorf, S., Löschke, S., Möller, V., Okem, A., & Rama, B. (Eds.). (2022). Climate change 2022: Impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009325844
6 The Core Writing Team, Pachauri, R. K., & Meyer, L. A. (Eds.). (2014). Climate change 2014: Synthesis report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/; Kennan, J. M. (2019). Climate adaptation finance and investment in California. Taylor & Francis.
SOURCE: Keenan, J. (2023). Community Resilience and Environmental Justice (slide #4), presentation for the Workshop on Integrating the Human Sciences to Scale Societal Responses to Environmental Change. Reprinted with permission.
Keenan raised a critical point about the trade-offs involved in community development. He suggested that specific forms of resilience have varying effects, whereas maladaptive approaches may impose a debt burden on communities, particularly when compared to nonstructural methods.7 Understanding these trade-offs is crucial to ensure justice and fairness in resilience-building efforts. Keenan underscored that “resilience is not an absolute good.” He cautioned against the pitfalls of observed resilience that are often response-specific and fail to capture the broader costs and benefits. He emphasized the need to challenge higher-order resilience framing, as well as the need to avoid perpetuating the ineffective status quo, as resilience may mask the systemic factors and power imbalances that contribute to underlying vulnerabilities. He discussed examples drawn from anthropology8 and related disciplines to illustrate the potential negative dimensions of resilience concerning the tendency to perpetuate poverty and reinforce the stereotypes and struggles of marginalized communities. He highlighted locations where resilience efforts had fallen short. In Norway, for example, there has been a narrow focus on engineered resilience, leading to complacency and inadequate preparedness for various risks.9 Similarly, formal resilience-promoting processes in Boston reinforced existing power dynamics and political agendas, disregarding the transformative adaptation ideas advocated for and by communities. He stressed the importance of recognizing the diversity of resilience epistemologies and evaluating, prior to implementation, the trade-offs between and among diverse types of resilience. To foster sustained resilience, he advocated for avoiding maladaptation and the harmful effects of institutional lock-in and competition.
PANEL DISCUSSION
During the subsequent discussion session, panelists discussed the implications of co-design and its varying interpretations and applications. Reyes-Santos highlighted the importance of understanding the levels at which
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7 “Non-structural measures are measures not involving physical construction which use knowledge, practice or agreement to reduce disaster risks and impacts, in particular through policies and laws, public awareness raising, training and education.” More information on how the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction discussed these measures is available at https://www.undrr.org/terminology/structural-and-non-structural-measures#:~:text=Non%2Dstructural%20measures%20are%20measures,awareness%20raising%2C%20training%20and%20education
8 Nelson, D. R. (2011). Adaptation and resilience: Responding to a changing climate. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 2(1), 113–120.
9 Admundsen, H. (2011). Illusions of resilience? An analysis of community responses to change in Northern Norway. Ecology and Society, 17(4), 46.
co-design takes place—which is to say research can either support the community’s lead or take a collaborative approach. She noted that, in some cases, collaboration is shaped horizontally, meaning the community’s needs determine the nature of the relationships. In addition, Reyes-Santos stated, co-design effectiveness often depends on factors such as funding and staffing.
Keenan addressed the role of co-design in policy planning and engagement, particularly for developing indicators. He emphasized that co-design offers an informal way of accountability and involves a normative dimension by determining the direction of progress. Therefore, co-development extends beyond involving stakeholders in decision making and encompasses the ideal or desired direction of progress, based on shared values, ethical considerations, or societal norms. He noted that linear orientation is only sometimes applicable, and indicators are crucial in broadening the understanding of alternative knowledge forms, including Indigenous knowledge. In response to a question about high-order vulnerability constraints, Keenan mentioned the following factors: land use planning, insurance policies, structural market forces, tax base, and vulnerability-based economies. He also highlighted National Flood Insurance as a policy that may influence vulnerability.
Panelists also discussed the language used in community-based conversations and the associated power implications. Keenan pointed out that language adaptation, change, listening, and absorption depend on the work’s context and purpose. He cautioned against conflating divergent functions and stressed the importance of avoiding unnecessary jargon. Since heuristics and shortcuts can sometimes hinder understanding, Keenan stressed the need to maintain control and fundamentally understand units of analysis and areas of justice.
