The goal of our project was to strengthen the ties between the domestic environmental justice movement in the United States and rapidly growing international environmental justice movements. Our team worked in coordination with the Environmental Justice, Organizations, Liabilities, and Trade (EJOLT) project, an international collaboration among scholars, activists, and leaders seeking to enhance the sharing of knowledge and experiences to better preserve natural resources and combat environmental injustices. Our project consisted of two primary deliverables: 1) a map of the forty most influential environmental justice conflicts in the United States with detailed information on each conflict and 2) an article on the evolving history of the U.S. environmental justice movement through the lens of activism. The map will be included on the EJOLT Environmental Justice Atlas and the article will available publicly on the EJOLT website.
This report outlines the research design, methodology, and analytical decisions involved in producing our project’s two core deliverables. We begin by discussing the primary goals and objectives of our research as they relate to the larger EJOLT mission. A comprehensive literature review provides background on the history of the environmental justice movement within the U.S. and previous efforts to apply social movement and organizational theory to this unique movement. The remainder of the report is divided into two sections. Deliverable I: EJOLT Mapping Initiative describes the process we used to determine the forty most influential conflicts and analyze trends and patterns across those conflicts. Deliverable II: Article on the History of Environmental Justice Activism in the United States describes the process of conducting interviews with environmental justice actors on the evolution of environmental justice activism. We conclude by summarizing future plans for our research and ongoing opportunities for collaboration with the international environmental justice community.