Standard Research Grant: Explaining Variations and Social Outcomes of Cumulative Impact Assessment for Environmental Justice by Government Agencies in Environmental Permit Review

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Standard Research Grant: Explaining Variations and Social Outcomes of Cumulative Impact Assessment for Environmental Justice by Government Agencies in Environmental Permit ReviewABSTRACTRacially marginalized, Indigenous, and working-class communities across the U.S. are disproportionately subjected to environmental problems such as contaminated drinking water, industrial air emissions, and dangerous workplaces. Vulnerable communities often endure multiple such harms simultaneously. These layered environmental inequalities lead to serious inequalities in illness, quality of life, and life expectancy. This study will examine government agencies’ use of cumulative impact assessment for environmental justice (CIAEJ) to improve quality of life in these overburdened, vulnerable, and underserved communities. This study aims to strengthen government agencies’ abilities to reduce environmental inequalities and foster environmental justice (EJ) by identifying agency practices that are most effective toward this end and the conditions that foster them. In addition to providing substantial graduate student training in methods of empirical data collection and analysis, the project findings will be shared to scientists, government agencies, EJ advocates, and the broader public through academic publications, invited presentations, formal comments at public hearings, and the PI’s participation in agency EJ advisory councils.This three-year, empirical study will examine the ways three environmental regulatory agencies are currently applying CIAEJ techniques into environmental permit review. Data will be gathered from agency documents, public comments on these initiatives, confidential interviews with agency staff and external stakeholders, and observation of agency meetings. This project will advance scientific knowledge in STS, political ecology, and EJ studies by identifying social factors shaping the use of CIAEJ within regulatory decision-making, and analyses will focus on how bureaucrats determine what counts as risk, and how different contexts and creative bureaucratic practices may foster social justice reforms through regulatory agency practice.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.