Comparing EJ Advocates: Examples from a Large Community

There are many active environmental advocacy organizations, some are nationally based, and other are community based.  A community based example is ACE (Alternative for Community and Environment), and a nationally oriented example is Beyond Pesticides.  ACE is based in Roxbury, Massachusetts, and Beyond Pesticides has offices in Washington, DC.  Communications strategies used by ACE include community meetings, fund-raising and news releases.  Beyond Pesticides has a website with links to programs, resources, social media, and campaigning materials.

Environmental Advoacacy - What I Learned from an Opinion Piece on Bicycling Safety

"Cycling on roads can make you lose faith in humanity," by Joelle Renstrom, published in The Guardian, caught my attention.  I hate cycling on roads, and I think the current state of driver respect for pedestrians is atrocious.  I would prefer a world with no cars, and abundant public transportation and space for pedestrian travel.  However, I think the intended audience of this essay would be car drivers, because she makes a convincing appeal for mindfulness and caution when driving near cyclists.  I wonder if the objective of Ms. Renstrom, cyclist advocate, would be successful?  I would suspect that the road-ragers that she describes would also be unlikely readers of The Guardian, and unlikely to move past the title.  But, if the goal is to provide a lively reminder to sympathetic readers that cycling in the US sucks - her writing is a success.

Some strategies that this piece uses that I found compelling include:

• An engaging hook about a terrible story involving a large number of cyclist deaths
• Very interesting stories about her own commuting by bike
• Appeal to being reasonable, by acknowledging that sometimes cyclists are also terrible (not following road rules, etc.)

Goal-setting in the SDGs Relevent to the US

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a framework to prioritize the development agenda as we move forward over the next 15 years.  Each of the 17 SDGs includes a series of targets to be met.  I believe the US should adopt and move forward on each of these goals, and collect and provide data for each of the targets.  One goal of particular interest to me, is the first one, to end poverty, in all its forms, everywhere.  One of the targets within this goal is 1.b "Create sound policy frameworks at the national, regional and international levels, based on pro-poor and gender-sensitive development strategies, to support accelerated investment in poverty eradication actions."  I think much can be done domestically to reduce poverty, as we define it in the US, and a pro-poor gender-sensitive strategy is salient here.  In New Jersey, obstacles to poverty include the high cost of living, the lack of affordable public transportation, and affordable health and mental health care.  Pro-poor and gender-sensitive policy locally might include improving access to affordable housing and transportation.  All this is to illustrate the usefulness of the SDGs, for industrialized countries, even at local levels within countries.  The UN report linked below, also outlines the challenges that social and economic inequalities impose.

Comparing Sustainability in the Master Plans for US Cities: Portland and Newark

The comprehensive master plan for Portland, Oregon (2015) is predicated on a number of guiding principles that also reflect the goals of sustainable development including: economic prosperity, human health, environmental health, equity and resilience.  The goal for resilience aims to "Reduce risk and improve the ability of individuals, communities, economic systems, and the natural and built environments to withstand, recover from, and adapt to changes from natural hazards, human-made disasters, climate change, and economic shifts" (p. I-7).  In the vision for the master plan for Newark (2009), the three areas of focus are: economy, equity and environment (p. 16).  From the perspective of these urban planning documents, both cities hope to embrace strategies proposed by sustainable development practitioners. 

Figure 1.  Sustainability Illustration from Newark's Sustainability Action Plan