Environmental Justice Advocacy Playbook – Format
1. Summarize your case in 2-3 sentences – What was the main issue and what was done to tackle it?
2. Based on what was done/is being done about the situation in the case, which of the following voluntary environmental initiatives are feasible, and are likely to get the best results given the local context (local context may include people’s willingness and ability to work well with the government, effectiveness of communication within the group and outside the group etc)
a. Unilateral initiatives – for example, business actions to improve environmental performance
b. Private codes – for example, initiatives by industry associations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) etc.
c. Government sponsored programs
d. Negotiated agreements – Contracts between government and industry, or government and community to improve environmental performance
e. Sole initiatives of the community to alter their daily lives to incorporate improved environmental health
3. Evaluate the methods proposed above in the following lights:
a. Environmental – Will the impact be concentrated (e.g. Richmond) or dispersed (e.g. overall air quality in the bay area). How does this affect what solution you proposed? What are the resource issues involved, that is, does the solution indeed help to optimize the use of natural resources?
b. Technical – Are the benefits of the solution quantifiable, and replicable over time? In other words, is the solution sustainable? What new technologies will make remediation of this environmental problem better? Does the solution improve business efficiency (Chevron)?
c. Sociopoliical – Is there strong stakeholder pressure and political will to resolve this issue? Does the government possess the administrative capacity to implement more complex approaches? Are there incentives for resource users and/or emitters of pollution to cooperate well and/or take a leading role in dealing with the issues?
d. Economic – What are the costs of abatement of pollution? Are there any benefits of using a regulatory approach? Is there transparency of compliance – that is, is the compliance by emitters/resource users easy to determine?