Ecology Law Currents

7th Annual EJ Symposium — Hungry for Justice: Growing an Equitable Food System

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Student Review of Selected Panels at the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice 2010 Symposium “Empowered Partnerships: Participatory Action Research for Environmental Justice”

Anna Lund, Michelle Ben-David, and Ubaldo Fernandez*

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The following articles are student responses and observations of a selected few panels at Berkeley Law’s 2010 Symposium “Empowered Partnerships: Participatory Action Research for Environmental Justice” hosted by the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice and co-sponsored by Students for Economic and Environmental Justice at UC Berkeley School of Law; the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment; Communities for a Better Environment; Asian Pacific Environmental Network; West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project; ¡PODER! - People Organizing to Demand Environmental & Economic Rights; California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc.; Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice; The Pacific Institute; Environmental Studies Institute at Santa Clara University; Cal Corps at UC Berkeley; La Raza Law Students Association at UC Berkeley School of Law; Berkeley La Raza Law Journal; Ecology Law Quarterly; Central Valley Air Quality Coalition; California Law Review; California Environmental Justice Alliance; and the Women of Color Collective at UC Berkeley School of Law.

Student Review of Selected Panels at the Berkeley Law 2010 Environmental Justice Symposium

Kara Cook, Maria Stamas, and Meredith Wilensky*

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The Role of the Environmental Justice Lawyer

PANELISTS:

Kara Brodfehrer, Attorney, California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc.;
Alegria De La Cruz, Directing Attorney, Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment;
Helen Kang, Director, Golden Gate University, Environmental Law and Justice Clinic;
Phoebe Seaton, Attorney, California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc.

The forum discussion on February 16, entitled “The Environmental Justice Movement: History & Skills Every Lawyer Should Know,” was a great kick off to the Sixth Annual Environmental Justice Symposium. For aspiring lawyers with very little experience or background in Environmental Justice (EJ) this introductory forum was the perfect place to learn more about the movement. The forum explored the EJ attorney’s role as an advocate.

Fishing for Justice or Just Fishing?

Fraser M. Shilling*

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California is not unique among states by virtue of having both a sizable urban fishing population and environmental pollution leading to fish contamination. Nor is it alone when it comes to having both highly diverse communities actively engaged in fishing and a political and social tradition of elitist decision making about both protecting fish populations and the people eating the fish. In many ways consumption of contaminated fish in California is an example of a confluence of contemporary social and ecological problems, for which there is no adequate statutory or regulatory framework. I describe here a case study of contaminated fish consumption that reflects many of the environmental, social, and political conditions experienced by poor and disenfranchised communities in California and the United States.

Food Justice and Food Retail in Los Angeles

Mark Vallianatos*

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Food justice is the notion that everyone deserves healthy food and that the benefits and risks associated with food should be shared fairly. The concept borrows its distributional equity framework from the environmental justice movement, its focus on access to food from the community food security movement, and its interest in food environments from research in the public health and food systems fields.[1] Unfortunately, disparities in access and health mean that food justice is currently an aspiration rather than a reality in many low-income communities.

This article examines the food retail landscape in Los Angeles and briefly summarizes some programs that could increase food access and quality in underserved communities. In describing these opportunities, this article shows how L.A. residents, advocates, and policy makers have begun and can continue to survey their food environments, attract more supermarkets and hold food retail firms accountable; partner with corner stores to offer more healthy choices; limit fast food restaurants and improve nutrition information at chain restaurants; promote healthy mobile food vending; and establish farmers’ markets and re-envision these markets as hubs for local food distribution. Some of these efforts have been underway for years, while others are new experiments. Together they comprise a diverse set of interconnected measures to promote food justice by improving food retail in low-income areas.

Spreading the Water Wealth: Making Water Infrastructure Work for the Poor*

Patrick McCully and Lori Pottinger **

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Want of clean water, decent sanitation, and adequate food and energy strips people of their dignity and their most basic rights. Inequitable access to water, especially for growing crops, is a major factor in global poverty and a death sentence for millions each year.

According to the World Bank, “[t]he ‘easy and cheap’ options for mobilizing water resources for human needs have mostly been exploited.”[1] If the World Bank were right, this would be a depressing message for the 1.1 billion people without easy access to safe water.[2] The good news is, the Bank is wrong. Many technologically easy and relatively cheap options for water provision exist that can help lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, end widespread hunger, and reduce the daily workload of women and children. The bad news is that the World Bank-led large-dam lobby is aggressively supporting a resurgence in water mega-projects.[3]