Ecology Law Currents

Student Review of Selected Panels at the 2012 Water Law Symposium "Water and Growth: The Imperative for Sustainable Approaches to Uncertainty"

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All review authors attended the 2012 Water Law Symposium hosted at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law on January 21, 2012. The panel reviews are based on their own observations and reflections. No citations should be attributed directly to the panelists themselves.

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.

Levine v. Vilsack: When “Likely” Actually Means “Definitely”

Bruce Wagman & Lisa McCurdy*

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Sometimes procedural rulings allow courts to avoid important decisions that would otherwise make social and ethical declarations about the duality of American values with respect to animals. Stark evidence of that comes with the recent Ninth Circuit opinion in Levine v. Vilsack.[1] The Ninth Circuit ruled only that plaintiffs had no standing to sue because they did not meet the “redressability” requirement of standing under Article III, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution.[2] With this holding, the opinion may signal a new hurdle for plaintiffs to clear. The opinion also leaves in place a federal policy that has mandated the humane treatment of animals before they are slaughtered for food for over fifty years, but applies it to only one out of every ten animals who reach the slaughterhouse. The opinion thus delivers two unfortunate messages. As a nation, we care about animals—but not 90 percent of them. And if you are working to protect animals in the courts, that work could become more difficult.

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.