Waves of change: a preliminary literature review of non-drinkable water and environmental justice research

ABSTRACT

For decades, researchers have sought to document injustices, highlight activism, and identify pathways in moving toward environmental justice (EJ). EJ research regarding water has been predominantly focused on drinking water. This project sought to identify and analyze the breadth of peer-reviewed research on EJ and water beyond drinking water. We conducted a systematic literature review to catalog a representative sample of academic literature on EJ and surface water. We found a focus on freshwater rather than marine EJ research, with the biggest focus on anthropogenic-induced change and management and policy considerations. Distributional and procedural injustices were more commonly investigated than recognitional and capabilities injustices. The most common research efforts were qualitative case studies and larger spatial analyses of disparities. There remains considerable need for research connected to the complex issues of EJ and water.

KEYWORDS:

• environmental justice
• literature review
• surface waters
• environmental equity

Editor A. Castellarin; Associate Editor E. Volpi

Editor A. Castellarin; Associate Editor E. Volpi

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Dale Sheehy for acquiring more than 300 articles for this work and to Mike Charpentier for plotting the study locations in GIS. Thank you to the anonymous peer reviewers for improving the manuscript with your topic-specific insights. Reviewers Katie Williams, Peg Pelletier, and Amalia Handler provided recommendations on earlier versions of the manuscript. This is ORD contribution ORD-053131. This document has been reviewed in accordance with the US Environmental Protection Agency policy and approved for publication. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2023.2280679

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.