Air, Water, & Land

Current State of Environmental Justice

The current consensus among scholars is that environmental burdens, particularly poor air and water quality, are not shared equitably by all demographic groups (Shamasunder 2018). Low-income communities of color suffer from worse air and water quality, resulting in more severe health problems like increased preterm births and respiratory illness (Environmental Justice Coalition for Water 2014; Jerrett et al. 2001; Pearce and Zawar-Reza 2006; Schaider et al. 2019; Su et al. 2009).

Beyond this consensus, however, academics disagree on certain aspects and definitions. For instance, the exact definition of air and water quality is contentious, with scholars using different metrics to parameterize these variables. Some studies look specifically at one pollutant and its effects (e.g. PM10 or PM2.5), while others may look at multiple in conjunction (e.g. PM2.5 and tropospheric ozone) (Jerrett et al. 2001; Zesemayat 2021). Typically, the more pollutants included in the analysis, the more comprehensive the results. However, increasing the number of pollutants in a study can make data analysis too unwieldy and the project's scope too broad.

Furthermore, scholars also disagree about the extent to which environmental inequity leads to negative outcomes and which particular socioeconomic groups are most vulnerable to pollution (Pastor & Sadd 2004). Often, the most pertinent predictors for air pollution vary across different cities. For instance, studies in New Zealand and Canada have found that ethnicity did not strongly correlate with air pollution, while communities of color in Los Angeles experience significantly higher pollutant levels (Jerrett et al. 2001; Pearce and Zawar-Reza 2006; Su et al. 2009). Therefore, there is still room to explore environmental justice beyond the current consensus.

For urban green space, literature suggests that the amount of urban tree canopy cover in a neighborhood positively correlates with income level; however, scholars disagree as to whether race and ethnicity correlate with urban tree canopy across all cities, with one study finding that urban tree canopy correlates more with income than race among metropolitan areas across the United States. The same study argued that any correlations between a neighborhood’s racial or ethnic makeup and tree canopy cover is confounded by other variables, such as income (Schwarz et al. 2015). However, for Los Angeles, other studies observed a strong negative correlation between the percentage of Black and Hispanic individuals in certain areas and green space (Sister, Wolch, and Wilson 2010).

In addition, scholars generally agree that more urban green space reduces air pollution and thus improves a community's health (Lai and Kontokosta 2019; Nowak, Crane, and Stevens 2006). However, questions still remain regarding the best practice policies and guidelines for addressing environmental injustices, both within Los Angeles County and globally (West and Cohen 2016).