Environmental Reviews and Case Studies: Accounting for Diversity in Environmental Justice Screening Tools: Toward Multiple Indices of Disproportionate Impact

Abstract

To comply with President Bill Clinton's Executive Order 12898 addressing environmental justice, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been working for over two decades to develop consistent indices and screening tools to measure disproportionate impact and identify environmental justice communities. Its efforts have been complicated by methodological problems, divergent interpretations of policy, and concerns about the misuse of such screening tools. This review of recent scholarship and developments in EPA environmental justice policy proposes that instead of a single index of disproportionate impact associated with a single type of environmental justice community, regulatory agencies should aim to produce screening tools that incorporate multiple indices of impact and a diverse typology of environmental justice communities. It argues that adopting such an approach would not only better reflect the environmental justice movement's emphasis on difference and diversity, but also produce more effective and acceptable screening tools that are less susceptible to misuse.

Acknowledgments

This article has benefited from questions and critiques offered by the anonymous referees and by audience members following presentations at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Department of Geography, the University of Tennessee Department of Geography, the 2012 Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, and the 2012 Race, Ethnicity, and Place Conference. The author also gratefully acknowledges the support of a fellowship from the Center for 21st Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and the helpful feedback from colleagues at the Center.