This post is part of a series related to Teaching Environmental Law in Context, a recent book by Member Scholars Rebecca Bratspies and Carmen Gonzalez.
If the role of the environmental justice scholar, as the venerable Robert Bullard contends, is to support environmental justice communities, then the responsibility of the environmental law classroom is to develop legal scaffolding to protect ecologies and inhabitants.
Rebecca Bratspies and Carmen Gonzalez’s Teaching Environmental Law in Context succeeds as an indispensable reference and support tool for classrooms and others seeking a deeper understanding of environmental protection, law, and policy. Within the book’s immersive take on a suite of pressing environmental issues, the Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) chapter stands out for its methodical approach to framing quantitative aspects of environmental decision-making.
Bratspies and Gonzalez engage in the dual work of highlighting the substantial role that quantitative analysis plays in environmental protection, along with exposing the limitations of quant-centric assessment. Their work reveals gaps in status quo regulatory processes while demanding that social and equity dimensions in risk assessment be centered. Offering a peek behind the numerical curtain, the text exposes an environmental policy stage often devoid of democratically accountable decision-making.
The text highlights the deficiencies of the “Cult(ure) of Expertise,” which often obscures and diminishes the roles and (scientific) contributions of non-credentialed, lay populations. This cult(ure) has worked to minimize the standing and the potential of general populations — especially racially and economically marginalized ones — to protect their own health and the livelihoods of their communities. This ultimately erodes public trust and the overall potential for comprehensive ecological and human health protection.
To be clear, community actors aren’t meant to supplant the skillsets of those with acute scientific expertise, but ultimately to work collaboratively toward equitable environmental futures. Absent centering community knowledge and experience, data gaps prevail along with an incomplete understanding of cumulative impacts. This can ultimately compound the risks that frontline communities are bombarded with. It’s important for those engaging in environmental analysis to develop skills that allow them to evaluate risk assessments, along with raising critical underlying questions. This chapter supports those working with students to develop the demanding and rigorous skillsets needed to do this work.
Teaching Environmental Law in Context’s approach to QRA reconciles with the social life cycle assessment (SLCA)-involved work that several colleagues and I initiated nearly a decade ago after confronting the deficiencies of energy systems analysis’ lack of engagement with questions involving democratic principles, transparency, and societal inequality. Whereas traditional life cycle assessment is indispensable for capturing the quantifiable impacts of energy projects (e.g., carbon emissions at the point of extraction or the amount of waste generated across a project’s various phases), SLCA helps qualify those impacts by illuminating how communities and stakeholders are affected and often imposed upon. Consequently, we developed a series of justice-oriented indicators across stakeholder categories and the various life cycle stages (e.g., whether or not energy consumers have choice in energy types (including renewables), who owns (and controls) energy resources, workers’ access to healthcare, and the relationship between violent conflict and resource extraction). The book will certainly resonate with others engaging in similar critical environmental analysis.
There is little doubt that the current political landscape for ecological protection and environmental enforcement is under siege in the U.S., particularly on the federal level, as environmental controls are obliterated, natural habitat and species protections are weakened, and climate and renewable energy policy is dismantled, not to mention the assault and erasure of environmental justice policy and claims. There is, however, reason to be hopeful.
First off, there’s more than one game in town; that is, the national level isn’t the only place to do the business of environmental law and policy. In the face of unconscionable federal environmental rollbacks and forthright assaults, support for environmental management in domestic firewalls like California, New York, and Maryland becomes even more urgent, along with pushing those entities to be even more thorough in their rulemaking when deficient.
Additionally, there is fertile ground to engage in similar work at the regional, local, and global levels. Our environmental law and policy reckoning won’t occur without further learning and resistance, and the development of new tools to shape and support healthy, sustainable, and just engagement with ecologies is requisite; I elaborate on this in my recently released book, Unlearn Power: Strengthening Communities in the Age of Environmental Crisis.
These efforts won’t materialize without advocacy, struggle, and preparation. The environmental protection (and sanity) pendulum will ultimately pivot back toward responsibility. Preparation will involve an ensemble of players doing the work, and environmental law interests must be amongst the vanguard. I suspect Teaching Environmental Law in Context will be a critical tool in the hands of those parties at the front and supporting lines of this fight.
