Hybrid Lecture: Lourdes Vera on Empowering Communities in Environmental Justice
Kate Huber from Tilburg University introduces a presentation by Lourdes Vera about Empowering Communities in Environmental Justice. Vera's talk gives an overview of what community-based environmental justice is and how we might use it in the Netherlands. Environmental justice addresses the uneven distribution of the benefits and burdens of extraction economies. That means that certain communities and neighborhoods experience more pollution and risks than others. Environmental justice research has found that environmental burdens disproportionally affect marginalized communities, often based on race, class, gender, and citizenship and documentation status. Environmental justice studies in Europe lag behind those done in the USA. There are different reasons for this, but one reason is that the kind of demographic data often used to identify issues of environmental racism, for example, is not collected in many parts of Europe as a result of how such data was used during the Holocaust. Yet as the negative effects of PFAS intensify in particular Dutch communities, like those in Dordrecht, or as Dutch municipalities like Bonaire start to bring official complaints against the Dutch government for unevenly mitigating the impacts of the climate crisis on Dutch coastlines, the need for environmental justice work in the Netherlands comes into sharp relief. Vera’s talk identifies strategies for getting started on the important environmental justice work we need to do to support communities in the Netherlands.
Vera is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Department of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Buffalo. As an environmental sociologist and civic scientist, she works with communities living near oil and gas development to monitor their air for contaminants. She also serves on the coordinating committee of the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, envisioning and building digital tools and research infrastructures for environmental data justice. Her interdisciplinary work spans environmental science, social science, and critical theory with articles appearing in Atmospheric Environment, Engaging Science, Technology, and Society and Mobilization.