"We can do better": how land trusts engage with environmental justice
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The mainstream environmental movement in the U.S. has long promoted land conservation and natural resource management. More recently, some within the movement have begun to emphasize environmental justice, examining the ways in which conservation intersects with social and political issues. Using the 1991 Principles of Environmental Justice as an orienting framework, this study uses surveys and interviews to examine the ways in which land trusts engage with issues of equity, justice, and access in their work. Land trusts are private nonprofit conservation organizations which have traditionally worked to conserve ecologically and scenically important land through a variety of acquisition mechanisms, including land purchase and conservation easements. A subset of these organizations are increasingly interested in environmental justice. Using the Land Trust Alliance’s 2015 Census data, I find that significant justice, equity, and access work is most likely to occur within organizations that protect land in urban areas, draw on a broad base of volunteers and visitors, and prioritize local community work over broader landscape-scale conservation efforts. Through six case study interviews, I find that land trusts engage in a wide variety of programming that centers marginalized communities, including education, community gardens, local partnerships, and active community governance. Yet many roadblocks, both practical and systemic, prevent broader implementation of environmental justice principles. In addition, because land trusts are constantly beholden to competing and varied interests and stakeholders, I find that programs run by individual land trusts may simultaneously promote and undermine the principles of environmental justice. Ultimately, I propose a series of recommendations at both the individual and systemic levels for land trusts to align their purpose and programming with environmental justice principles.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | May 7, 2021 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Beckman, Caroline Mitchell |
|---|---|
| Primary advisor | Ardoin, Nicole |
| Advisor | Thompson, Barton H. |
| Advisor | Casciotti, Karen |
| Degree granting institution | Stanford University, Earth Systems Program |
Subjects
| Subject | Earth Systems |
|---|---|
| Subject | School of Earth Energy & Environmental Sciences |
| Subject | land trusts |
| Subject | environmental justice |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
Access conditions
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Beckman, Caroline Mitchell. (2021). "We can do better": how land trusts engage with environmental justice. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/pn623tn3013
Collection
Undergraduate Honors Theses, Doerr School of Sustainability
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- Contact
- beckmanc@alumni.stanford.edu
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